4115. CONCERNING THE LIFE OF PERSUASION. The life which remains after death is the life of persuasion and the life of cupidity. When a spirit is in the life of his persuasion he excites everything in the memory of a man, that is in the conformity with the persuasion, just as if the man knew it from himself. This it was given to know by experience when spirits were present in their persuasion, as they then excited whatever was conformable to the persuasion, so that I sometimes wondered whence flowed such prudence, astuteness, cunning, and keenness of discovery in regard to things which they had never known. I supposed it to be taken from the corporeal memory [of spirits], but the fact is not so; it comes from the memory of the man which is made subservient to them; the spirit merely comes into his persuasion, when immediately whatever is conformable is excited. That there are such lives with spirits, that they are a kind of remaining instinct from the confirming and persuading things of the bodily life, that by means of this instinct the spirit excites other confirmations, with many things besides, and that much more acutely than in the life of the body, things too which were previously unknown - all this was made evident by much experience.