4339. CONCERNING PHANTASIES. It is wonderful that the phantasies of evil spirits should appear as altogether real, as, for instance, while they think themselves invested with garments, with hair, and the like, yea, with a multitude of similar things. Indeed I observed that when the conversation turned upon their having garments they touched them and saw them and said that they were real; though they still can be taken away by phantasies and others assumed instead of them. I perceived also that they fancied they had not merely two arms, but more, nor do they then know otherwise than that the fact is so, which they affirm. The illusions that I have seen of this kind are innumerable, and in conversing with them it was given to say that they were phantasies, though they appear to be real. I spoke with spirits concerning the cause of this, and was informed that everything that proceeds from the Lord is real, that what proceeds from spirits is not real, though it appears so, just as a man who is in phantasies thinks evil to be good, and the reverse, besides other things of like kind. If phantasies had not a semblance of reality, they could not exist at all, for they themselves are mere phantasies; the case is with them as with the life of those who think they have life when in fact they have death, yet were it not for this impression they could not live, for the impression in the two cases acts alike. But good spirits have no such phantasies. - 1749, August 4.