562. The people before the Flood were such that at length they possessed practically no remnants at all, the reason being that they were now of such a disposition that they became steeped in dreadful and abominable persuasions regarding everything that suggested itself to them or entered into their thinking. Consequently they had no wish at all to retreat from such persuasions. And indeed they were possessed so very greatly by self-love as to imagine that they themselves were like gods and that everything they thought was divine. Nowhere else has such persuasion arisen with any set of people before or since that time, for it is deadly or stifling. For this reason in the next life these people cannot possibly be where other spirits are, for when they are present, they deprive other spirits, by flowing in with their own most stubborn persuasions, of all ability to think. These along with other matters will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with later on.