Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/283

XX ] with man in the body." 10 Nor could spirits understand the greater part of the language of the spiritual angels, and these again could not always grasp the infinitely wise and loving speech of the celestials. One has a slight shock when Swedenborg mentions that the editor of the London Spectator (identified as Addison) had doubts whether there really was such wisdom in celestial speech that he couldn't grasp it. As all reasonable wishes are granted, he was "let into the company of the celestials, and then he perceived those things which they spoke; but when he went back to his fellows who were spiritual, he was not able to express anything, not even by ideas of thought. He said that the things spoken were most replete with wisdom." 11

Swedenborg noted that in changing from one spiritual realm to another the language of one's own state is forgotten, nor is it always possible to remember what was heard and understood in the superior state—something to which many rapt but inarticulate mystics bear witness.12

Angelic thought when visible, he said, was like a transparent wave or a surrounding sphere in which all things were seen in order.13

He frequently despairs when he tries to give an inkling of angelic language, because angels have the power, he says, of expressing myriads of things either by visible representation or in a few words made eloquent by the inflection of the voice. He cites the case of a certain hard-hearted spirit who wept when an angel spoke to him, saying he had never wept before, but this was love speaking.14 The innermost angels can tell a person's whole life from the sound of his voice in a few words, since in it they hear his ruling passion and hence know the details of his life. Yes, Swedenborg said, they can even tell all about a person from a single sigh, "because a sigh is a thought of the heart." 15

Just as in this world, Swedenborg observed, there are other ways of perceiving what a man is like than by what he says. "There is a sphere, as it were, of spiritual effluvia, which exhale and produce a perception of the life of one's mind. This sphere I recollect myself to have perceived and it has rarely if ever deceived me. Nor need this appear wonderful, when a shrewd and intelligent man is aware