The second positive evil, to which the soul is liable from the notions of the Memory, comes from the devil, who by these means has great power over it. For he can heap forms upon forms, and thereby infect the soul with pride, avarice, envy, and hatred. He can also excite unjust enmities, vain love, and delude us in many ways. Besides, he is wont so to impress matters on the fancy, that falsehood seems true, and truth false. Finally, all the greatest delusions of Satan, and the evils of the soul, enter in through these notions and forms of the memory. Now if the memory were blind to these things, and annihilated in forgetfulness of them, it would shut the door against the evil spirit, so far as this evil is concerned, and free itself wholly from these things, which would be a great blessing. The evil spirit cannot molest the soul but through the operations of its faculties, and chiefly by the help of forms and fancies: for upon these depend, more or less, all the operations of the other faculties. And, therefore, if the memory annihilates itself as to them, the
* Ts, xlviii, 18.
217devil can do nothing; because he can find nothing to lay hold of, and without something of that kind he can do nothing whatever. Would that spiritual directors could clearly see, how great are the evils, which the wicked spirits inflict upon souls through the Memory, when they make use of it; what sadness and affliction and vain joys they occasion, both with regard to the things of God and the things of the world; what impurities they leave rooted in the mind, distracting it so profoundly from that supreme self-reeollection, which consists in fixing all the powers of the soul on the One Incomprehensible Good, and withdrawing them from all objects of sense. This emptying of the memory, though the advantages of it are not so great as those of the State of Union, yet, merely because it delivers souls from much sorrow, grief, and sadness, besides imperfections and sins, is in itself a great good.