958. CONCERNING THE HARDNESS AND SOFTNESS OF CALLUSES The calluses which the soul takes with him after his bodily life, and which are removed and examined as to what he is like in external or corporeal things, are harder or softer according to his state of life in act. Those which are hard are softened, this being done by various punishments. Before they are softened, better things cannot be conjoined with the internals, nor can evil things be as it were obliterated, together with their connections which are to be torn out, as it were, in a spiritual manner. Those who have harder calluses sustain great and intense pain, and the torments are the more deep-seated because the roots of the evil are touched. But those whose calluses are softer do not sustain such pain, as I have learned by experience when a similar oppression and tearing was wrought in me as in another. 1748, Feb. 23.