187. CONCERNING SPIRITS, SEPARATE AND CONJOINED For the most part, spirits act as a society with many of the same species. They have also as a society frequently spoken with me, which it was given me manifestly to perceive. But there are, in addition, separate spirits who speak as it were from themselves; but they were separated in order that they might receive and gather together, as it were, the reasonings of others and indeed of very many species of the same kind and so speak with me. When these spirits seemed to have departed from me, they fell back again to their own species, that they might lead a life conjointly with them. Different species, moreover, distinguish themselves by many indications, even by the sounds of their speech; and when they are together and converse and act, they are distinguished one from another by a certain differing murmuring and noise. 1747, Aug. 28, o.s.