4010. From what has been said we are at liberty to conclude, that it is better to be ignorant of all these matters, and simply to believe that the life of the Lord flows into all and singular things, and that His providence governs all and singular things, than to suffer one's self to be absorbed in such speculations. It is better, I say, to be ignorant; for if men covet this kind of knowledge, they must necessarily launch out into a boundless field; just as in my own case, when I wished to know in what manner the actions of the muscles were ordered in their representative relation to the ideas of the thoughts, and how the endeavors and forces of the will conspired to the effect, I spent many laborious years in investigating the appliances of the lungs in each of their functions, then those of the muscles, of the motive fibers, of the nervous fibers, together with the connection and disposition of all the parts, how actions resulted from the fluction of the brains, as in the case of the tendinous fibers drawing backwards, obliquely or into a gyre, and so on, when yet, after all, the action was dependent on other laws, all which thoroughly to explore were the labor of many years, and still scarcely even the most general things could be known. Wherefore it is better simply to know that the will flows in [and actuates the body]; far more is this expedient in those things to which pertain the influx of the Lord's life, and of His providence. - 1748, November 20. These things were thought with spirits, through spirits, from the angels.