In regard to those who desire to be the highest in heaven, I observed that during their bodily life, other, similar inclinations had become attached to them, to want to surpass others, either in worldly glory or in other respects. And therefore they ambition more or less the same thing in the other life, even though this is opposed to the love of the neighbor. Such people in the other life are deprived of all rationality, and become as though they were not humans; for not knowing what they are doing, they go about everything from instinct, and as if in sleep, as said before [372, 696]. And because they had thought there was something good in such ambition, they are allowed to follow their instinct most zealously in whatever they do. So, trying to copy all [good qualities], they appear as good. When these are permitted, they seem to themselves to fashion wings, and so to fly aloft. And then out of sheer fantasy, they fly so high that they believe it hardly possible to be any higher, as has also been shown to me. So far does their ambition uplift them. 1748, 10 February.