805. A certain person had thought and talked of nothing else but giving phrases and words a clever twist; whatever came up he would bend in such a way that in one phrase or another, something witty would emerge. I wondered who this was, because one could not distinguish him from the other spirits except by the way his speaking and thinking were directed to things of this kind. But I was informed that these are the kind whose only goal in the life of the body had been studies dealing with their own favorite ideas, which they loved, such as critical analyses, variant readings of classical authors and of the Sacred Scripture; or who had just loved to compile dictionaries, or who in their everyday life had loved nothing more than eloquence with words, double meanings, or plays on words. I was shown what his, or their, life was like. It was as though I could sense nothing living in them, but only words, and scarcely anything else but words. While they were certainly alert mentally, able to speak at length, still their thought dwelt on the details just mentioned. Of these their speech also consisted, as if it were something lifeless, like something in which none but the very least life was present. Yet, he was not evil; he could simply not stretch his thought further, but confined it to some special feature of words, as well as to the least characteristics of speech. Consequently he did not look like a living being, but like an artfully carved, talking statue.