Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/240

224 spirits, and it was contrary to all their opinion in the life of the body that spirits can have touch." Luckily Emanuel was around to enlighten them. As he modestly puts it, "It was given to tell them that this should by no means be wonderful, since man during life does not have the sense of touch, and the other senses, from the body, but from the spirit that is in the body from which the body has its life. . . Wherefore, after the death of the body a similar principle remains; for the spirit supposes itself to be certainly in the body, ''which opinion at last ceases. This is the reason of the corporeal touches, which only exist with them, who come recently from the life of the body into the other life''. Subtler senses succeed, all of which must still be referred to the sense of touch, in order that they may be senses." 24 (Author's italics.)

He never tires of saying that "the life of the body does not belong to the body" but only appears to do so. "Spirits take that life with them, because they have become accustomed to corporeals. . . ." But life is "formed in the body according to its organs," so, because spirits are accustomed to this, the old body-senses seem for a while to remain with them.25

One is not surprised that he had vivid personal arguments on this topic. Inconsistency he soon discovered was no peculiarity only of the material world. "I conversed with those who in the life of the body believed that spirit was not extended," people who had such rooted phantasies (false ideas) on the subject "that they would not even admit the use of a term implying the idea of extension. Upon being aware of the fact, I inquired of one who was deeply rooted in this persuasion what he now thought respecting the soul or spirit, whether it was extended or not, reminding him that he saw, heard, smelled, touched and had appetite just as if he was actually in the body . . . He confessed that during life he had been of the opinion that the soul or spirit was not extended . . . He was then held a while in the idea in which he was when he thought thus in the world, and he then said that spirit was thought. But I answered him as if he were still living in the world by inquiring whether sight could exist without an organ of sight . . . [or] whether he could conceive of thought. . . apart from organs. . . He then acknowledged that he had during the life of the body indulged the phantasy of supposing that spirit was only thought,