4471. CONCERNING THE STATE OF EVIL SPIRITS BEFORE AND WHEN THEY ARE LET DOWN INTO HELL IN GENERAL. Evil souls or evil spirits return at first into their own life, and afterwards, in the world of spirits, exercise their wickedness according to their various dispositions; and when they then exceed the delight of their life they are punished, and this frequently, until they are deterred - which punishment may take place to the number of twenty, fifty, an hundred, or two hundred times and more. Still, however, it is provided by the Lord that they shall not do evil to the good, and those evils which they attempt to inflict are turned by the Lord into good; these are the temptations by which the good are fortified. After they have led this life for several years, and exercised their wickedness, they then collect their evils together and become nothing else but evil of their own genus, and goods are then taken away from them; thus their wickedness is at length consummated, until they are made thoroughly fearful of doing evils, whereupon they precipitate themselves into the hell where are those of their own quality. There they torment one another in various ways, according to all their skill and magic, and, in the meantime, sit like skeletons, or those deformed in body and face; they are tormented from time to time interiorly, and are every where then remitted among themselves into their delights; although they still return to the state above mentioned. They do not then dare to rise into the world of spirits, for they know immediately that grievous punishments await them in that case, and they therefore recede into their hells. At length, after many ages passed in this kind of torment, their corporeal delights can be laid asleep to some extent, and they are then from time to time elevated into the world of spirits, that they may serve for the vilest uses, with very little life and scarce any delight; for everyone born in the world passes into the other life, and no one is tormented or punished unless that some use may arise from it; all things there are on account of use. Such is the lot of the evil.