400. THAT THE SOULS OF THE DEAD RECEIVE MANY FACULTIES AFTER THE DEATH OF THE BODY, ABOVE THOSE WHICH THEY HAD WHEN THEY LIVED IN THE BODY The souls of the dead, whether for a short or a long time after the death of the body, before they are consociated with spirits, are very dull, and know almost nothing; but as soon as they are associated with a number, they acquire a power of ingenuity, not only the acumen which they had in the body, but when they are associated in a certain manner with similar spirits, so that they can serve as subjects of concentrations, then their ingenuity, of whatsoever quality it was, is sharpened to such a degree, that they are much more acute than when in the life of the body. Add to this, that they do not then act from the memory of particulars, which memory in the life of the body withdraws them [from things interior], but they at the same time act from a kind of instinct. Thus they also perceive the sense of conversations as it were more interiorly and fully, because the "animus" is withdrawn from the body and its objects, so that the perception in the body is scarcely able to penetrate so far. Moreover, they can speak with man in his native tongue, wherever he was born. In like manner a spirit comes into the possession of all those things which are in a man's memory, so that he even seems to be the man; consequently, he also comes into his faculty of understanding, but with this difference, that he retains his own life, that is, the life of his love, or cupidity, which causes him to feel in a different manner. But still those spirits are deprived of that life when men are being led through them. They also very easily put on various states, as the innumerable states of wakefulness and sleep, besides many others. 1747, Dec. 25.* * Paragraph heading crossed out: "THAT MEN ARE VERY GREATLY SEDUCED IN SPIRITUAL THINGS, AND ARE HENCE BLINDED BY..."