2488. Before I had been instructed by living experience, I had supposed, as do others, that no spirit could possibly know the things in my memory and in my thought; but that they were solely in my possession, and were hidden. But I can assert that the spirits with man know and take note of the smallest things of his memory and thoughts; and this much more clearly than the man himself; and that the angels know and take note of the ends themselves, how they bend themselves from good to evil, and from evil to good; and of many more things than the man knows; such as those which he has immersed in his delights, and thus as it were in his nature and disposition; for when this is done such things no longer appear, because he no longer reflects upon them. Let no man therefore any longer believe that his thoughts are hidden, and that he is not to render an account of his thoughts, and of his deeds according to the degree and the quality of the thoughts that have been in them; for the deeds have their quality from the thoughts, and the thoughts from the ends.