is less than the stars; and that then the bodies of men,
whether they be mouldering carcases, or mummies eaten by men, or reduced
to mere dust, will meet and be united again with their souls? We, during
our abode in the world, from the inductions of reason, believed the
immortality of the souls of men; and we also assigned regions for the
blessed, which we call the elysian fields; and we believed that the soul
was a human image or appearance, but of a fine and delicate nature,
because spiritual." After this, the assembly turned to the other
stranger, who in the world had been a POLITICIAN. He confessed that he
did not believe in a life after death, and that respecting the new
information which he had heard about it, he thought it all fable and
fiction. "In my meditations on the subject," said he, "I used to say to
myself, 'How can souls be bodies?--does not the whole man lie dead in
the grave?--is not the eye there; how can he see?--is not the ear there,
how can he hear?--whence must he have a mouth wherewith to speak?
Supposing anything of a man to live after death, must it not resemble a
spectre? and how can a spectre eat and drink, or how can it enjoy
conjugial delights? whence can it have clothes, houses, meats, &c.?
Besides, spectres, which are mere aerial images, appear as if they
really existed; and yet they do not. These and similar sentiments I used
to entertain in the world concerning the life of men after death; but
now, since I have seen all things, and touched them with my hands, I am
convinced by my very senses that I am a man as I was in the world; so
that I know no other than that I live now as I lived formerly; with only
this difference, that my reason now is sounder. At times I have been
ashamed of my former thoughts." The PHILOSOPHER gave much the same
account of himself as the politician had done; only differing in this
respect, that he considered the new relations which he had heard
concerning a life after death, as having reference to opinions and
hypotheses which he had collected from the ancients and moderns. When
the three strangers had done speaking, the sophi were all in amazement;
and those who were of the Socratic school, said, that from the news they
had heard from the earth, it was quite evident, that the interiors of
human minds had been successively closed; and that in the world at this
time a belief in what is false shines as truth, and an infatuated
ingenuity as wisdom; and that the ligh