Page:The Golden Age - The Story of the Most Ancient Church.djvu/89

Rh articulate like the vocal speech of our time, but tacit, and was produced not by external but by internal respiration. It was also granted me to perceive the nature of their internal respiration,—that it advanced from the navel toward the heart, and so through the lips, without sound; and that it did not enter into the ear of another and strike upon what is called the drum of the ear by an external way, but by a certain way within the mouth, in fact, by a passage there which is now called the Eustachian tube. And it was shown me that by such speech they could much more fully express the sentiments of the mind and the ideas of thought than can possibly be done by articulate sounds or vocal words, which likewise are directed by the respiration, but the external. For there is nothing in any word that is not directed by applications of the respiration. But with them this was done much more perfectly, because by the internal respiration; which, from the fact that it is interior, is at once far more perfect and more applicable and conformable to the very ideas of thought. Besides, they also conversed by slight movements of the lips and correspondent changes of the face; for, being celestial men, whatever they thought shone forth from the face and eyes, which were varied conformably. They could by no means put on an expression of countenance different from that which was in agreement with their thoughts. Simulation, and still more deceit, was to them a monstrous iniquity." (A. C. 1118.)

As to the communication of ideas by means of the face and the lips we learn further that "the first speech of all on every earth was by means of the face, and this from two origins in the face,—from the lips and from the eyes. The reason was that the face was formed altogether to effigy those things which a man thinks and wills. Hence the face has been called the effigy or index of the mind. A further reason was that in the most ancient or first times there was sincerity, and man did not think, and did not wish to think, anything but what he desired should shine forth from the face. Thus also the affections of the mind and the ideas of thought could be presented to the life and fully. In this way they appeared to the eye also, as in a