Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/276

260 their own superb memories. "Consequently, if I demonstrated anything falsely, they would be persuaded concerning that also, for in respect to material things, they cannot judge from themselves, though they still suppose that the knowledges which are in my memory are in theirs." 39

The ease with which spirits had access to Swedenborg's conscious and subconscious memories was greatly aided, he explains, by the fact of ideas being visible in the other world. "In the spirit world," he explained, thoughts can be seen "as when one sees in a picture everything simultaneously represented to him . . . a single obscure idea [to man in the body] is made clear by means of many representative and intelligible ideas that are set forth by spirits. Angelic spirits employ comparatively still more illustrations, for as is a man compared to spirits, so is a spirit compared to angelic spirits, and so are angelic spirits compared to angels." 40

In a manner of speaking, Swedenborg seems to have considered that his "memories" were complete pictorial archives available at a glance, or a presentational field, from which clusters of information could be fished with the hook of a single fact. "I had no need to do more than think about a person with the idea of his qualities and at the same time of his position, dignity and other circumstances, without any idea of his face, body, and of such things as a man is described by in human speech—still less his name—and they at once discerned and knew who it was, and of what quality he was in my thought. In like manner respecting kingdoms, cities and similar things." 41

These "idea-patterns" (in Tyrrell's language) seem to remain constant. Swedenborg says specifically that whatsoever is connected with the idea of a person remains connected, "whatsoever one has heard concerning him, has seen in connection with him, has observed while he spoke with him, whatever he has thought about him, both well and ill—all remain; and many more things than he was ever aware of . . . all these ideas remain and are presented simultaneously in the other life, when anything is thought about anyone . . . also ideas of places are presented at the same time; and with these all things that happened there. Whatever happened there adheres to the memory of the place and is presented at the same time with it, thus thousands of things simultaneously." 42