e hours long, until he suddenly finds himself
again in his true place. This has happened to him two or three times.
The third or ordinary kind of visions is that which he has daily when
wide awake; and from this class his narrations are chiefly taken. All
men, according to Swedenborg, stand in an intimate connection with the
spiritual world; only they are not aware of it; and the difference
between himself and others consists simply in this--that his innermost
nature is laid open, of which gift he always speaks with the most
devout spirit of gratitude (Datum mihi est ex divina Domini
misericordia). From the context it is apparent that this gift consists
in the consciousness of those obscure representations which the soul
receives through its continual connection with the spiritual world.
Accordingly he distinguishes in men between the external and the
internal memory. The former he enjoys as a person who belongs to the
visible world, but the latter in virtue of his intercourse with the
spiritual world. Upon this distinction is grounded also the
distinction between the outer and inner man; and Swedenborg's
prerogative consists in this--that he stands already in this life in
the society of spirits, and is recognised by them as possessing such a
prerogative. In the inner memory is retained whatsoever has vanished
from the outer; and of all which is presented to the consciousness of
man nothing is ever lost. After death the remembrance of all which
ever entered his soul, and even all that had perished to himself,
constitutes the entire book of his life. The presence of spirits, it
is true, strikes only upon his inner sense. Nevertheless this is able
to excite an apparition of these spirits external to himself, and even
to invest them with a human figure. The language of spirits is an
_immediate_ and unsymbolic communication of ideas; notwithstanding
which it is always clothed in the semblance of that language which
Swedenborg himself speaks, and is represented as external to him. One
spirit reads in the memory of another spirit all the representations,
whether images or ideas, which it contains. Thus the spirits see in
Swedenborg all the representations which he has of this world; and
with so clear an intuition that they often deceive themselves and
fancy that they see the objects themselves immediately--which however
is impossible, since no pure spirit has the slightest perception of
the material universe: nay they cannot g