3511. That they are thus invisible arises with them from a natural cause, viz. their unwillingness that men should know their thoughts. Hence they are silent, and conceal their designs, and ponder upon the characters of others, and how they may be made useful to their ends. From this taciturnity, and the desire to veil their ends from others, they contract this character of invisibility, notwithstanding they are natural, and thus it is that other spirits know not where they are, nor in what way they enter heaven. There is another spiritual cause of the same fact, and that is, that they think so grossly of spiritual things and of the other life, believing, in their own fashion, simply in a Supreme Being, whom they acknowledge, but not diffusing their thoughts over a wider field. Hence they tolerate in their temples neither statues, images, nor pictures, lest their ideas should be rendered gross. This was evinced by their immediately flying away and vanishing when an image of the Lord on the cross, which is common in other places, was shown to them. I heard and perceived that they were of such a quality that things of this nature could not fix their ideas, but that they chose rather to abide in things obscure [and indefinite], so that they understand and perceive nothing that is superior or interior to nature, nor do they reason concerning them. On the other hand if they hear anyone reasoning on these subjects they think him insane, and openly make light of all but the rich, whom, from a view to private ends, they shrink from offending, leaving it to others to think and bewilder themselves [as they please], still cherishing the idea that their interior thoughts may be [at length] laid open. What their quality is was represented by a thin watery fluid contained between substances transparent on either side, which is the appropriate representation of the natural.