510. IV. THAT THEIR LOT AFTER DEATH IS A MISERABLE ONE BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT THE INMOST OF LIFE. Every one has pre-eminence of life according to his conjugial love; for this life conjoins itself with the life of the wife, and by the conjunction exalts itself. But because with these men not the least remnant of conjugial love is left, and hence nothing of the inmost of life, therefore their lot after death is a miserable one. After passing a period of time in their externals, during which they speak rationally and act civilly, they are let into their internals, and then into the same lust and its delights in which they had been in the world, and in the same degree thereof. After death every one is let into that state of life which he has appropriated to himself, to the end that he may be led out of it; for no one can be led away from his evil unless he has first been led into it, otherwise the evil would hide itself and pollute the interiors of his mind, and spreading like a pestilence, would finally burst the barriers and destroy the externals which are of the body. To this end brothels on the side of hell are open to them, where are harlots with whom there is opportunity of varying their lusts; but this is granted them with only one harlot a day, and it is forbidden them under penalty to be with more than one on the same day. [2] Afterwards, when they have been examined [and it is found] that the lust is so inbred that they cannot be led away from it, they are taken to a certain place which is directly over the hell assigned to them. To themselves they then appear as though falling into a swoon, and to others, as though sinking down with upturned face. The ground under their backs is actually opened and they are swallowed up and sink down into the hell where are their like. They are thus gathered to their oven. It was given me to see them there, and also to speak with them. Among themselves they appear like men, this being granted them that they may not be a terror to their companions; but at some distance they appear with a white face consisting, as it were, of skin only, and this because within them is no spiritual life, every one having this according to the conjugial implanted in him. Their speech is dry, parched, and sad. [3] When hungry, they lament, and their lamentations are heard as a peculiar snorting. They have tattered garments, and their breeches are drawn up over the belly around the breast because they have no loins, the ankles of their feet starting from the lowest part of their belly, and this because with men the loins correspond to conjugial love, and this they do not have. Because they have no potency, they said that they loathe the sex. Yet among themselves they can reason about various matters as if from rationality; but because they are cutaneous, they reason from the fallacies of the senses. Their hell is in the western quarter towards the north. At a distance they appear, not as men, nor as monsters, but as things of ice. It should be known, however, that those become such who are so imbued with that lust that they have rended the human conjugial with themselves and annihilated it.
