3852. CONCERNING NATURAL THINGS. There are spirits who care nothing for natural things, which I was enabled to observe when I wrote anything respecting natural things, as these were despised as being of no value, inasmuch as they regard only spiritual things. I spoke with them at length, [saying] that they served for the confirmation of spiritual things, especially with those who are in corporeals, both men and spirits, and that they perceive nothing abstracted from them, because natural and corporeal things are the planes of their thought, and also that order is terminated in material things, which when some spirits miss, they seem to themselves to have nothing on which to rest, so that they appear to lose their feet, besides other things, which they also acknowledged; for they admitted [my] reasons, although otherwise they seemed to me to adhere to their own reasons, saying it was true that corporeal and the like things did not weigh of themselves, but such was the quality of men and spirits that they were not affected by them only [or in themselves considered], but by confirmations more than by anything else; and because these have more effect with them, and because the diversities are innumerable to which they ought to apply themselves in order to the production of use, therefore it could not be otherwise than that such things should be confirmatory. To this it was added that females both old and young, when they perceive that paradisaical things are given [exist], are more allured to the knowledges of faith than in any other way, and that moreover they are introduced [into these knowledges] through such and similar things as through a portico.