4100. CONCERNING [THE BEING] NOTHING. Spirits are especially unable to bear the expression that they are nothing. But it was said to them that they are indeed always something, but that something, whatever it be, is from the Lord, so far as it has in it anything of the good and true; so also that they should be able to understand the good and the true, to reflect, and to know, this is of the Lord; but that as to themselves they are nothing. - 1748, November 29. It was then said that they were so much the more something in proportion as they could understand the good and the true, and still more, the more they were themselves good and true, because so much more from the Lord.