3025. As long as people live the mental images of their memory vary, change, spread to many objects, are confined to fewer because of convictions. In short, they can even until death become worse, or become better. But with spirits it is not so. Moreover, the fact is that ideas can spread to many good things, thus having different relationships, be differently joined together, divided, and then contract new relationships, and so on. 1748, 1 Sept.
About someone who imagined he could do good and love the neighbor from his own power*
I spoke with a certain one who was higher up toward the right at some distance, who said he was able to do good, and in fact just like that, from himself, but I was prompted to tell him that no one can do anything except from the will. If the will is not present, then he may be able, to be sure, to do apparent good, but it is recognized at once that this is not from the will. He said that he would like to try to do good and thereby force the will; then I was prompted to say that there must be a love that will rule.... * This incomplete and unnumbered paragraph seems to have been deleted and rewritten in the next article.
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