821. There are people who outwardly present an honest face and life so that nobody can suspect them of being anything other than honest. In every way they study carefully how, for the sake of preferment and of getting rich without loss of reputation, to preserve this appearance. Consequently they do not act openly, but by means of others deprive other people of their goods by cunning devices, not caring at all whether the families they deprive might die of hunger. If they could avoid being seen by the world, they themselves would carry it out without any conscience in the matter. In character therefore they are just the same as if they had actually done it themselves. Secretly they are robbers, and coupled to their variety of hatred are contempt, avarice, mercilessness, and deceit. Such people in the next life wish to be considered guiltless, saying that they have done nothing wrong because nothing had been discovered. And to show that they are blameless, they take off their clothes and stand naked as a way of attesting their innocence. But while they are being examined, what they are really like is perceived from the particular expressions they use and from the particular ideas comprising their thinking, though they do not realize this.
[2] Such people in the next life wish to murder without conscience any associates they light upon. They also have with them an axe and a mallet in their hand, and there seems to be another spirit present with them whom they strike as he lies stretched out, without however shedding any blood, for they are afraid of death. Nor can they cast those instruments out of their hands, however much they try with all their might to do so, to prevent its being seen that they are such, and to prevent the viciousness of their disposition becoming apparent before the eyes of spirits and angels. These spirits are at a middle distance beneath the feet, towards the front.
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