This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

has a divided mind;—no longer wears any disguise, or appears outwardly different from what he is inwardly. This judgment, or letting each man drop, as it were, into himself, takes place in the intermediate state, or world of spirits. And it is accomplished by means of the all-revealing light of truth. "The Word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." Swedenborg says:

"With the wicked, all those things which belong to the exterior thought from which they speak, and to the exterior will from which they act, are not properly theirs, but those things which belong to their interior thought and will.

"When the first state [after death] is passed through, which is the state of the exteriors, the spirit is let into the state of his interiors. . . . In this state he thinks from his own will, therefore from his own affection or from his own love; and then his thought makes one with his will, and so completely one that he scarcely appears to think but merely to will.

"All men without exception are let into this state after death, because it is the proper state of their spirits. . . . When a spirit is in the state of his interiors, it manifestly appears of what character the man was in himself when in the world; for he then acts from his selfhood. He who was evil in the world, then acts foolishly and insanely—more insanely, indeed, than he did in the world, because he is in freedom and under no restraint.