4195. CONCERNING SPHERES, INSTINCT, AND THE EXCITATION OF IDEAS WITH MAN. Every spirit, and still more every society of spirits, exhales a sphere from itself which is from its principles or the life of principles or persuasions; with the evil genii from the life of cupidities. Thence flows their sphere, which is a sphere, as it were, of instincts, arising from this source, and when this sphere exists, it is a certain operative general principle [commune], which, when it acts upon a man's memory, summons up thence whatever is in agreement with it, and thus the general principle of spirits excites all the concordant particulars from the man's memory; thence spirits speak, and think that it is from themselves, and they also persuade man that what he says is from himself. Where such a sphere predominates, there everything which is excited, though in fact most false, appears as true, and is confirmed. The confirming things which flow forth are very numerous, and of such variety that I have wondered whence they could have procured them, as it were, extempore, when yet it is nothing else than this general sphere which excites them; for spirits as they lack memory, are possessed of a certain instinctive something which acts in the manner described. - 1749, April 2.