Certain spirits were with me who during their bodily life had dwelt much, and mostly, not on the meaning of words, but just on the words, thus who had been devoted to the art of criticism. Many of them had also labored on translation of the sacred scripture. But I can declare that while they were present, everything whatever that I wrote and thought was so obscure and confused that I could hardly understand anything. It seemed even as if my thought was being held in a prison, because they were directing all my thinking toward words, drawing it away from the sense of the words. They made me extremely tired, even indignant, and yet considered themselves on this account wiser than others, when yet others from the lowest class of people, and little children, were much wiser and understood the meanings more wisely. This shows, therefore, what human learning or wisdom is like and that it is far below the wisdom of the lowest class, and of boys and girls. For these people had closed off the way toward the inward regions. * Paragraph 1949 is placed according to the author's instruction after 1894.