158. THAT AN INTELLECTUAL IDEA EXISTS FROM, AND CONSISTS OF, VERY MANY IDEAS Today, by the mercy of God Messiah, I was permitted to perceive by living experience that true and good intellectual ideas themselves successively exist from, and thus consist of, very many of the ideas of those who are intellectual angels, so that there is a form of consentient things when truth flows in, and a form of dissentient things when any confusion arises; the intermediate differences between the consent and the dissent are indefinite. These forms are disposed by God Messiah alone, altogether according to the state into which a man comes; therefore not even the least or most trifling thing of human thought concerning the truths and goods of faith flows in from man. When, however, it is for a short while conceded to man that something should flow in from what is in his memory, it immediately disturbs and confuses the idea. The case is similar when it is permitted spirits to argue, etc., etc. 1747, Aug. 23 o.s. Such continued dissension fatigued my mind; but the agreement renders it alert and lively, as I have sometimes experienced before.