wooden bodies in this. How absurd soever such an opinion as this
may appear, our European philosophers have maintained several
notions altogether as improbable. Some of Plato's followers, in
particular, when they talk of the world of ideas, entertain us with
substances and beings no less extravagant and chimerical. Many
Aristotelians have likewise spoken as unintelligibly of their
substantial forms. I shall only instance Albertus Magnus, who, in
his dissertation upon the loadstone, observing that fire will
destroy its magnetic virtues, tells us that he took particular
notice of one as it lay glowing amidst a heap of burning coals, and
that he perceived a certain blue vapour to arise from it, which he
believed might be the substantial form that is, in our West Indian
phrase, the soul of the loadstone.

There is a tradition among the Americans that one of their
countrymen descended in a vision to the great repository of souls,
or, as we call it here, to the other world; and that upon his return
he gave his friends a distinct account of everything he saw among
those regions of the dead. A friend of mine, whom I have formerly
mentioned, prevailed upon one of the interpreters of the Indian
kings to inquire of them, if possible, what tradition they have
among them of this matter: which, as well as he could learn by
those many questions which he asked them at several times, was in
substance as follows:

The visionary, whose name was Marraton, after having travelled for a
long space under a hollow mountain, arrived at length on the
confines of this world of spirits, but could not enter it by reason
of a thick forest, made up of bushes, brambles, and pointed thorns,
so perplexed and interwoven with one another that it was impossible