says that some spirits are so far deprived of their own evil life by long-continued sufferings, they lose their memory and their reflective faculties to such an extent, that they do not know they are men or that they ever were men. They appear imbecile and almost lifeless; sometimes as skeletons sitting solitary in sandy wastes or among stony ruins; sometimes as almost formless masses, mere ghosts in our view, flickering in dark caverns or gliding along the forest shades. It seems that a step farther, and they would cease to be.
Another and more cheering view of this subject, not distinctly stated by Swedenborg, but clearly deducible from his writings, is, that hell, by means of punishment, suffering and discipline, will be reduced to such thorough external order and submission, that its evils shall become fairly quiescent, and its life made to correspond with the sensual-corporeal sphere of human life, when it is compelled to live and act in severe subordination to the higher faculties.
In this state the devils will be under a perfect but salutary despotism, compelled to useful labors or excited to them by rewards and all the selfish motives which animate unregenerate men. They will be bound by their own lusts and interests,
