3472. Another subject of discourse was the form of spirits; for they know not that they are possessed of any other form than the human, inasmuch as the inmost things of the spirit aspire [and tend] to a form similar to the human body, as the spirit of the parent in the embryo to that form, and the whole spirit of man to the form of the body, but yet to a much more perfect form, one fitted and accommodated to the celestial life. This was illustrated by the case of the nymphae which are transformed from worms into winged insects, and thus into a form adapted to generation and to a life in the atmosphere, and to uses in that their heaven. This form is altogether unlike the form of the worm, because the use creates the form. But that spirits are not [earthly] bodies, is manifest from this, that the [earthly] bodies answer to the worms, and are the food of worms, but in the other life the various viscera, as the ventricle, the intestines, the liver, the heart, the lungs, are of no use, for these are all formed for the sake of the blood, and this for the sake of the muscles and the organs of sense, that the man may be able to live and act in the world. Wherefore the forms of spirits are much more perfect, and the cause of their representing the human form has already been stated. But of what quality are the forms of spirits, it is not, for various reasons, given to know. - 1748, October 4.