[Footnote l:  In the heavens there is a communication of all goods, inasmuch as heavenly love communicates all its possessions to others; and hence the angels derive wisdom and happiness, nos. 549, 550, 1390, 1391, 1399, 10130, 10723.]

16.  The spirits of Mercury, on account of their knowledges, are more conceited than others; wherefore they were told that, although they know innumerable things, there is yet an infinity of things which they do not know; and that even were the knowledges with them to increase to eternity, they would still be unable to attain to so much as an acquaintance with the generals of all things.  They were told that they were conceited and elated of disposition, and that this character is unbecoming; but they replied, that it is not conceit, but only a glorying on account of the capacity of their memory.  Thus they have the art of excusing their faults.

17.  They are averse to verbal speech, because it is material; wherefore, when I conversed with them without intermediate spirits, I could only do so by a kind of active thought.  Their memory, because it is a memory of things, not of purely material images, brings nearer to the thought its proper objects; for the thought, which is above the imagination, requires for its objects things abstracted from those of matter.  But notwithstanding that this is the case, the spirits of Mercury excel but little in the faculty of judgment.  They take no delight in the things which pertain to judgment and to conclusions from knowledges; for their delight is in the bare knowledges.

18.  It was suggested to them, whether they did not wish to make any use of their knowledges; for it is not enough to be delighted with knowledges, because knowledges have respect to uses, and uses ought to be their ends; that from knowledges alone no use results to themselves, but to others with whom they are willing to share or communicate them; and that it is not at all meet for a man who wants to become wise to stand still in knowledges alone, inasmuch as these are only instrumental causes, meant to be serviceable for the investigation of matters which ought to belong to the life.  But they replied that they were delighted with knowledges, and that to them knowledges were uses.

19.  Some of them, also, wish to appear, not as men, like the spirits of other earths, but as crystalline globes.  Their wanting to appear so, although they do not, arises from the circumstance that the knowledges of immaterial things are in the other life represented by crystals.

20.  The spirits of Mercury differ entirely from those of our Earth, for the spirits of our Earth concern themselves not so much about [immaterial] things as about worldly, corporeal, and terrestrial things, which are material.  For this reason the spirits of Mercury cannot be together with the spirits of our Earth, and therefore wherever they meet them they flee away, for the spiritual spheres that are exhaled from both are almost contrary.  The spirits of Mercury have a common saying, that they do not want to look at the sheath, but at things stripped of their sheath, thus at interior things.