4324. CONCERNING THE END AND THE LIFE OF SPIRITS THENCE [AND CONCERNING] MEMORY. It is not permitted to spirits to be such towards each other as they were in their social relations in the body, namely in externals, as, for instance, in well-seeming but fictitious externals, for all externals are abolished in the other life, as also actions merely external, whether good or evil, so that nothing there acts from externals, as in the world, but the quality of each one's thought and affection [is then discovered] from internals, thus from the end and the love, and by this is their conversation and interaction with each other governed. They are sometimes remitted into externals, but only for a short time, and then they speak otherwise than as they think, and act otherwise than as they will, as is the case with many preachers; but as soon as their externals are taken away they are no more known; they become different persons; and their ends and loves are laid open. Thus all their [external] acts are abolished. Some say, while in externals, that they have never injured anyone, that they have been upright, that they have preached, that they have done many good things for the Church; but when these external semblances are removed, the quality of their ends and the quality of their loves is laid open, and some are found to be such as to have done evil from ignorance with a good end; these are of the better sort. For the same reason, neither is the memory of material things granted. - 1749, July 14.