5585. ABOUT THE SPEECH OF SPIRITS. ((((The speech of spirits is natural.* It is from their interior memory, the ideas from which become words, but such as comport with the matters themselves; which, also, are the beginnings of natural** words. Such ideas are with man, although he is unaware of it; and in the other life he speaks from them. It is, therefore, a universal tongue; for everyone is able to speak it with another, nor needs to be previously instructed. That speech is heard as sonorously as speech in the world only, however, by a spirit; not by a man. When spirits speak with a man, that speech falls into the words of the man's language, like his interior ideas into the speech of his words. When a spirit turns himself to such a man, then the spiritual speech perishes, and he does not know any other speech but the man's:*** he is even unaware that any other speech exists. Some, also, speak from ideas; but this now rarely, for, then, the quality of his truth and good is perceived; but, if there are with anyone genuine truths in connection, he is able to speak from ideas readily; and the more instructed anyone is, the better [the speech]; but he must beware of that speech: it is interior. I have frequently spoken in such speech, by means of ideas, with spirits and angels. * I.e. as distinguished from "artificial," or "acquired." -ED. ** I.e. as distinguished from spiritual. -ED. *** The rendering here given, though not representing all that occurs in the Latin edition, does represent what, even according to the Editor of the Latin, Swedenborg himself wrote. All we have omitted is the portion added by Dr. Immanuel Tafel, which gives a different, and, we are satisfied, an erroneous sense. -ED.