3256. CONCERNING THE SPIRITS OF MERCURY, THAT THEY DESIRE TO KNOW WHAT IS TO COME. Certain things were written concerning what is to come. When I was unwilling to read these in their presence, they were highly indignant, and desired to scoff at me, contrary to [their] usual custom, only saying that I was the worst [of men] and the like. Hence may be concluded how much special delight they take in the knowledges of future things, because they are the internal sense; and moreover, it was granted them to excite something from my interior memory, which was done readily, besides that, I knew what it was. (They did not [excite] anything but certain dreams, and the like. Such is the sagacity of those spirits, that they immediately perceive from others, and their [ideas] what they know. To such they cannot propose opposites [for] thus they could not be present in their society. - 1748, September 22.