2251. WHAT SORT OF SPEAKING WITH SPIRITS IS ALSO GIVEN. I also spoke with spirits by ideas alone, without words, and they understood as well as with words, by [my] merely representing from internal sight, as was the case when [I told them] what I ate: I represented merely from the internal sight what I ate, without words, and they clearly [bene] comprehended; and if also at the same time [were represented] these things, viz. whatever a man has on his table, or whatever is worn on the same occasion, or whatsoever it might be which was displayed to the sight, they were immediately understood and seen by the spirits by the discourse [loquela] of ideas without words. Some better understand and perceive [this discourse] than that which is carried on by words, for they are in the like. Sometimes [the discourse is not carried on] save by subtle thoughts, and these are better perceived than if [one] spoke in words. Some do not love to speak, but they are so shrewd that they immediately perceive the sense, together with the affection, and indeed in an instant, for it is not memory which operates with them, but it is the natural disposition, which they are unwilling to acknowledge, but suppose that they have such (a memory) as in the life of the body, but because they put on the memory of man they so imagine from a fallacy of sense. - 1748, June 8.