The more difficult for spirits to examine are souls who can actually be brought into a state of benevolent feeling, as is usual even with the wicked in the world. When they are engulfed by misfortunes, sadness, temptation, sickness, at such times they seem as though they have changed completely, but if their former character is still there, they readily fall back into it. Therefore, with souls also, such states of mind can be created, and when they come into them, they appear to be different, as I was taught today by actual experience in the case of one who had been cunning in bodily life. But if they take on a stance of goodness out of cunning, the pretense immediately becomes apparent before the angels, as if seen in broad daylight, but not so before cruder spirits, whom they can fool by brilliant simulations. Pretense does occur among souls, for they bring this with them from their bodily life, thinking nothing else than that they can fool spirits in the same way; but their pretenses show plainly. And if those pretenses are natural to them, they are punished as though their inward and outward elements were being split apart [from each other], by [various] kinds and species of [the process of] being torn apart described before [404].