331. [323.] It should be known, however, that each and every one of the things I have recounted is not material but spiritual, or from a spiritual origin; and yet spirits do not know but that they are material. The reason is that when a spiritual being touches something spiritual, or tastes something spiritual, the experience is altogether the same as when a material being touches or tastes something material. Because of this appearance, I have virtually argued quite often with spirits themselves. In various ways and by various arguments empirically demonstrated, I have shown those believing that the things they see and touch are material that nothing in their world is material, but everything there spiritual. I have shown this in reference to their houses, that they materialize in an instant and in an instant are destroyed or evaporate; from the evidence of their garments, that in an instant they are put on, replaced by new ones, or transformed; from the evidence of their meals and dinners, that the tables and the foodstuffs upon them in an instant appear, and afterward in an instant vanish; and from the fact that spirits themselves can enter their houses by passing through the walls, and do so quite frequently without going through the doors. There was a certain person, known to me, with whom I spoke when his body that he had in the world was being buried, and I told him that he was now being buried. He replied that he did not know what part of him was being buried, since he had everything with him, including the same body as before, and everything else the same. For he, like others, did not know but that he was a material being, when in fact he was a spiritual one. He was presently informed that what was being buried was the body that he bore about him in the world and which then clothed his spiritual body.