4167. CONCERNING THE NATURE OF SPIRITS. Inasmuch as it is not permitted to spirits to use the memory of particular or material things [particularium], there are interior memories - which however cannot properly be called memories, but rather faculties of the memory of particulars - corresponding to the quality of the man when he does not think from this material kind of memory; man in fact often thinks in this way, though he is not aware of it. Still the memory of particular or material things is the plane from which he is enabled to do it, since the very faculty of thinking is from that ground. Such are spirits, and thus are they more excellent than man. They are with man, so that they think from his memory, because they are faculties and potencies, and then they know no otherwise than that the are the man, and that the particulars of the man are theirs. This I have learned by a multitude of experiences, having spoken with them and been assured that the fact is so. They indeed resent the idea, and suppose that all the particulars which they utter are their own, but when the truth was demonstrated, and especially that they spoke in my own language and that they knew all the languages which I know, and were ignorant of all of which I am ignorant, they became silent under the force of conviction. The memory of man is their ultimate plane; of this they were convinced from their being told that if they were with the insane, they also would be insane; if with the intelligent, that they would be intelligent, and yet would think everything to be their own. In a word, the life of man's first principles is with them, and according to that life they reason, which life when it flows into man's memory excites similar things, as was clear to me for many reasons. The life of their cupidities excites cupidities, and these lives appear as instinct. - 1749, March 11.