157. CONCERNING A DISTURBANCE OF THE UNDERSTANDING FROM THE DISAGREEMENT OF SPIRITS When spirits are granted the opportunity or license to disagree about some particular matter, so that one feels differently about it from the other, which very easily happens through some slight relaxation and lack of restraint, the understanding is at once so confused that scarcely anything that lies concealed in the more interior sense is understood; there is, as it were, a darkness that overwhelms and extinguishes the light, as I have sometimes experienced with great indignation. For sometimes the opportunity of disputing amongst themselves is given to ratiocinating spirits, who may be called ratiocinators, but who wish to be saluted by the angels as intellectual; from this a similar disturbance arises also among the lower spirits, which altogether confuses the mind, and entirely takes away the light of truth. The temptation is great when the mind is at the time kept in the necessity of thinking - one's conscience, which I could not resist, demanding it - for then all patience is lost, as it were, and the mind then becomes distressed, fearing lest it should omit that which has been conjoined. 1747, Aug. 22 o.s. It is for this reason also that the intellectual wish to be distinguished from the ratiocinators, thus to be called angels, when yet they are also spirits, and indeed are not at all intellectual when left to themselves. Thus angels are spirits, and not even good, when left to themselves; but they are truly angels when they suffer themselves to be ruled by God Messiah. When I spoke with them about this today, they were very indignant, and therefore it was shown them by living experience.