2019. THE DIFFERENT STATES OF MEN AND SPIRITS IN GENERAL. There are many differences between the states of spirits as spirits and those that distinguished them as men, concerning which I have treated fully elsewhere; this only is to be observed here, that men have various external objects which move, modify, and bend their internal senses; but with spirits it is not so: that men live in such societies as they can, from various causes, associate with, even when their associates are dissimilar to themselves; it is otherwise with spirits, who associate only with their like. Men are distinguished by the possession of a corporeal memory, by means of which their acquisitions are made; but not so with spirits. Men also from the past conjecture the future, but not so with spirits, who have no memory of the past, except when it is excited for certain ends. Men have comparatively little penetration, spirits much more; they see the thoughts of others, but with a difference [from the perceptions of men], in that they see in others the things that flow from them. The thoughts of men are bound, as it were, to corporeal things, like their organic substances; but not so with spirits. - 1748, May 20.