4111. Such punishments continue for a long time, even through many years and many ages, as, for instance with the dragon David; and they carry with them a process of vastation, but yet a final vastation follows, by which he is dissociated from those of such a character, and because he is then in scarcely any society he sits in darkness and in torture, with very little life, until he becomes capable of rendering some kind of use; thus he continually descends to the ultimate of his punishment.