There are in man three things: the body, or material being, analogous to the animals, and animated by the same vital principle; the soul, or immaterial being, a spirit incarnated in the body; the link which unites the soul and the body, a principle intermediary between matter and spirit. Man has thus two natures.: by his body he participates in the nature of the animals, of which it has the instincts; by his soul, he participates in the nature of spirits. The link, or perispirit, which unites the body and the spirit, is a sort of semi-material envelope. Death is the destruction of the material body, which is the grossest of man's two envelopes; but the spirit preserves his other envelope, viz., the perispirit, which constitutes for him an ethereal body, invisible to us in its normal state, but which he can render occasionally visible, and even tangible, as is the case in apparitions.