Someone slightly known to me during his bodily life, who was brought to me just for the purpose of conversing, but had nothing to say, was so dull and seemingly stupid that he knew of nothing that we might talk about. His dullness was communicated to me, so that I could learn about it. It cast such shadows over my thought that I could hardly understand what I was writing. During his bodily life, this man had been cleverer than others, although only outwardly, so that due to his sharpness of mind in regard to trivial matters, he was highly acclaimed. Thus ingenuity in outer, worldly and bodily matters turns into stupidity. But I do not yet know whether this was the result of his being left to a company of similar spirits. In this circumstance any spirit is stupid, and still more one who, like this one, had only died a few months earlier [see 400]. 1748, 12 February.