4161. CONCERNING THE PROPRIUM OF SPIRITS. There were spirits with me who, from their proprium, wished to direct what I should write. They were of a quality scarcely to be described. They limit the ideas in such a way that I seemed to know nothing of what would be of advantage and what would not. They take away all extension of thought, narrowing it in such a manner that scarcely anything [general] can be known. They take away from other spirits all freedom, and all the delight thence arising. In a word, they are closed [as to their minds], so that there is scarcely anything of life in them; they know nothing, and yet desire to know everything, being, as it were, a kind of wooden entities. They bring a man into bondage, nor leave him any freedom; they wish to occupy and possess him, when yet so long as man is in consort with the angels everything is free, and he has extension of thought, and is enabled to know what is good and true; but with these everything is the reverse. - 1749, March 5.