1904. Spirit has also been confounded with mind or soul, or so associated that we speak of the spirit of a friend, when intending to convey the idea of soul or mind.
1905. The soul seems to be understood as the basis both of the passions and the reason, uniting both the power of thinking and reasoning with those of loving and hating, of benevolence and malevolence, so that even the soul of Jehovah has been represented in Scripture as being actuated by jealousy, wrath, and vindictiveness.
1906. According to information from the spirit world, spirit is viewed as the clothing of the soul, and is not constant in its characteristics; but, on the contrary, varies with the plane which it occupies, so that its density is inversely as the rank attained. It is on this account that the inferior spirits cannot rise above the level to which they rightfully belong.
1907. The impression is conveyed that there is a state to be attained in the spiritual heaven, wherein the tenuity of the integuments of the soul are still more refined.
1908. According to the speculation in which I indulged in a previous page, a centre cannot differ from the nihility involved by the conception of a mathematical point, without a circumambient something, to which the difference is due, and, however difficult to conceive in what way the attributes of a human soul are associated about the centre whence their influence proceeds, this difficulty, having been shown to exist no less in the case of ponderable atoms, would be an objection to the existence of matter as much as of mind.
Of the Soul, as distinguished from Mind and Matter.
1909. The word mind is much used as synonymous with intellect or understanding, though it seems to me we consider it as more or less associated with the passions which actuate it. The word soul, on the other hand, involves the association of every thing which distinguishes a being capable of passion, and competent to reason, from a corpse. It is remarkable that, as spirits become more pure and intellectual, they should be alleged to become more refined in their spiritual integuments, thus removing further from the mundane state, and becoming less capable of giving those manifestations in which violent movements are witnessed.
On the Odic, or Odylic, Force.
1910. There never was perhaps a more eloquent exhibition of that which has been designated as ratiocinatio verbosa, than in the appeals made to the odic force as the means of explaining spiritual manifestations. It may be inferred, from the speculation into which I entered, when treating of mediumship, ([806],) that there is a spiritual light and spiritual electricity, which performs for spirits in the spiritual world what our electricity and light does for us in this world. It was pointed out that the term magnetism had been applied to mesmeric phenomena rather in consequence of an analogy between them and those of electro-magnetism, than from any identity. To this spiritual electricity, mortals, in their spiritual organism, which coexists with the mortal body, during mundane life, are liable; being unconsciously under its influence.
1911. The phenomena of mundane light being ascribed to the undulations of an ethereal fluid pervading the visible universe, ([1831],) and electricity being ascribed to the polarization of the same fluid, so the spirits ascribe their electricity and their light to the undulation and polarization of an analogous ethereal fluid. It is to this ethereal fluid of the spiritual world, that the phenomena called odic belong, as I conceive. We may speak of that ether as the odic fluid, and we may designate the light and electricity which it produces as odic light, and odic electricity.