3633. Whoever is a subject, inasmuch as he supposes that he speaks from himself supposes also that those who speak through him are nothing - that they do not even think - while they that speak through him, or the interior [spirits], suppose him also, through whom they speak, to be nothing; which was evinced to me by the case of one who was a subject, and who said that they were nothing. In reflecting upon this it was said and perceived, and perhaps also made a topic of conversation, that the interior [spirits] thought in like manner of the subject himself, that he was nothing. Hence it appears how it should happen that every spirit imagines that he lives and thinks, and thus is the man [in whom he acts] while he knows so little of the man that he is not even aware that he is anything distinct from himself. Thus men walk about as machines; they are nothing in the eyes of spirits; and if they know one to be a man, and also a spirit, they would still look upon him as an inanimate machine, while the man all the time supposes himself to be living and thinking, and the spirit to be nothing.