4729. CONCERNING PERCEPTION. I spoke with angels concerning perception, saying, that men are not possessed of it, because they thereupon would aggravate their wickedness to such an extent that they would interiorly and clandestinely injure each other. It is a property of perception that they who have it would know what another thinks and wills; indeed, this power exists among spirits in the other life. They perceive of what quality another is, merely from his approach. Angels [perceive] still more and more interior things, from the Lord. [4730] And I, then, also, spoke about brute animals, that they all possess perception after their kind; and this, for the reason, that they are in their own order, and are therefore born into all their nature, and are therein from earliest nativity, nor have they any need of learning it in addition: as, for instance, that they know their prey, their master, their enemies, their companions, and very many particulars which natural history records. This appears as though it is from a certain sense of smell, but it is not; for perception is the foundation of smelling, and it is turned into smelling, in the other life, when it suits the Lord's good pleasure. [4731] And this was the reason that the sparrows had the knowledge to pluck up the first shoots of the chick-peas, because they were aware, from perception, that the chick-pea, which they wished to draw out, lay hidden beneath.