2142. CONTINUATION CONCERNING THE SPEECH OF SPIRITS. ((((Spirits speak, as already said, with the primitive ideas of words; for it must be known that every word has some idea therein, and every composition of words a composite idea expressed by many words. Such as is our thought apart from words, such is the speech of spirits with each other, and it is in fact not only thought which also they have, but is their speech with each other. This I could also observe, and they had told me that they were speaking with each other, and I heard the murmur thereof. This, when it entered my internal sense, was then parted into distinct words, and the discourse of spirits unexpectedly flowed into my ideas, and therefore into words, when they were conversing, and they said that they were then conversing about me, or concerning such and such. But spirits cannot observe, nor do they know that they speak in a spiritual speech, because they do not reflect thereupon, as neither can man know with what tongue he speaks, and what are his words, unless he reflects.))))
2142 1/2. But angelic language is still more interior. That it may be comprehended, I will relate only what it was granted me to learn from experience, that in a single, simple idea are indefinite things. This can be evident only to such as take note, that if but a single word be assumed, as, for instance, heaven or earth, which are simple words and similar in idea, and yet these contain indefinites, so in all the rest, which are in the simple idea of spirits, do these things appear in an interior degree, and in truth indefinite [in number]. These a spirit can never perceive by any perception, but only intellectually, and consequently by a common gross and most obscure perception, hardly otherwise, if I may use the illustration, than famine and thirst is perceived as a common affection, and scarcely aught is perceived but famine and thirst, when yet there are indefinites in the body, every member, every fiber, and every globule of blood, and the interiors which constitute and make hunger and thirst to be what they are. In like manner is it with every sense, as, to wit, with taste, which is only perceived as a common affection, yet do innumerable things constitute it both in the tongue and the object. So is it with all the rest.
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