nk from
good become angels. In order that they might know that this was the
case, there came from the heaven of angels from our Earth choirs, one
after another, who glorified the Lord together with one voice, and
with harmony[bb]. These choirs affected the spirits of Jupiter
who were with me, with such intense delight, that they seemed to
themselves as it were caught up into heaven. This glorification by the
choirs lasted about one hour. The delights which they experienced from
this were communicated to me, and I was enabled to feel them sensibly.
They said they would relate this occurrence to those of them who were
elsewhere.

[Footnote bb: It is called a choir when many spirits speak at once
and unanimously, concerning which see nos. 2595, 2596, 3350. In their
speech there is harmony, concerning which see nos. 1648, 1649. By
means of choirs in the other life an inauguration into unanimity is
effected, no. 5182.]

62. The inhabitants of the earth Jupiter place wisdom in thinking well
and justly on all things that occur in life. This wisdom they imbibe
from their parents from childhood, and it is successively transmitted
to posterity, and goes on increasing from the love they have for it
as existing with their parents. Of the sciences, such as exist on our
Earth, they know nothing whatever, nor have they any desire to know.
They call them shades, and compare them to clouds which come between
[the earth and] the sun. They were led into this idea concerning
the sciences by the conduct of some who had come from our Earth,
who boasted in their presence that they were wise by reason of the
sciences. The spirits from our Earth, who thus boasted, were such as
placed wisdom in such things as are matters of the memory only, as in
languages, especially the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in the noteworthy
publications of the learned world, in criticism, in bare experimental
facts, and in terms, especially philosophical ones, and other similar
things, not using them as means for becoming wise, but making wisdom
to consist in those very things. Such persons, in consequence of not
having cultivated their rational faculty by the sciences as means, in
the other life have little perception, for they see only in terms and
from terms, and, for those who see in this way, those things are as
little formless masses, and as clouds before the intellectual sight
(see above, no. 38); and those who have been conceited of their
learning from this so