Page:The Other Life.djvu/101

 the answer given to the Lord, who asked the name of the evil spirit controlling the poor maniac:

"My name is Legion; for we are many."

The third method of communicating ideas in the spiritual world is by objective means, of which writing is the type.

In the first method, by signs and gestures, the soul speaks through the face and the whole body. We see a faint shadow of it in the wonderful facility with which our educated deaf and dumb interchange ideas. In the second method the soul speaks through the lungs, involves an idea in a sound, and passes it from one to another. In the third it works with the hand or other means, giving the thought an ultimate and objective form and shape, more or less fixed and permanent, thus transmitting it to others without the personal presence of the thinker.

The first method corresponds to the celestial, the second to the spiritual, and the third to the natural spheres of life and thought, all of which exist or may exist in every man, spirit or angel.

Swedenborg says that communication by writing was provided by the Lord for the sake of a written Word, dictated by Himself, involving all the mysteries of his Love and Wisdom, to remain for ever