5556. I have also been allowed to know who those spirits are that constitute the scaly area of the skin. This area of the skin, more than any other casings of the body, possesses the least amount of feeling, since it is thickly covered with scales which are rather like soft gristle. The communities constituting that scale-like skin are ones who engage in reasoning about everything, about whether such-and-such a thing is true or not, yet go no further than just reasoning. When I spoke to them I was allowed to perceive that they had no understanding at all of what was true or untrue; and the more they go on reasoning the less they understand. Even so, they seem to themselves to be wiser than others, for they identify wisdom with an ability to reason. They are totally unaware of the fact that the chief characteristic of wisdom is perceiving, without the use of reasoning, that a thing is true or untrue. Many of these spirits belong to those who in the world became like this because of the confusion into which goodness and truth had been thrown by philosophical arguments, as a result of which they possess less common sense than anybody else.