1641. Spirits in the other life converse among themselves as men do on earth; and they who are good, with all familiarity of friendship and love, as I have frequently heard; and this in their own speech, by which they express more in a minute than a man can in an hour. For their speech, as before said, is the universal of all languages, being by means of ideas, the primitives of words. They speak upon subjects with such acuteness and perspicuity, by so many series of reasons following one another in order, and exercising persuasion, that if a man knew of it he would be astounded. They join persuasion and affection to their discourse, and thus give it life.
[2] Sometimes also they discourse by means of simultaneous representations before the sight, and thus to the life. As for example: let the discourse be about shame, whether it can exist without reverence: among men this cannot be discussed except by means of many reasonings from evidence and examples, and still it remains in doubt; but with a spirit all would be done within a minute, by means of the states of the affection of shame varied in their order, and by means of those of reverence also; thus by perceiving the agreements and the disagreements, and at the same time beholding them in the representatives adjoined to the speech; from which they forthwith perceive the conclusion, which thus flows of itself from the disagreements thus reduced to agreement. So in all other cases. Souls come into this faculty directly after death; and good spirits then love nothing more than to instruct those who are newly arrived, and the ignorant.
[3] The spirits themselves are not aware that they speak with one another with speech of such surpassing excellence, and that they are furnished with an endowment so preeminent, unless it is given them by the Lord to reflect upon it; for this mode of speaking is natural to them, and is then inherent. The case in this respect is the same as it is with a man when he fixes his mind on the meaning of things, and not on the words and the mode of speaking, in that, without reflection, he sometimes does not know what kind of speech he is making use of.
