574. It can be inferred from their facial speech that they understand quite fully and quickly whatever a companion, and what their spirits speak, and of course, those who are more perfect, what their angels speak. For it is a speech free of elaborations that distract the thoughts and break them up into main points. Thus they can see the thoughts as a whole, for there are many things in them simultaneously, as when a person thinks or sees what is pictured almost at a single glance, as they say, together with all the feelings that are in it; so they are able to recognize what feeling lies within the speech. Therefore with them, the face speaking is the index of their true feelings - and around the eyes, even of their mind. And they are not at all able to dissemble, and therefore their inward and more inward life itself is in their speech. So they are able to speak with their heavenly beings, because their ideas are not thus immersed in earthly and bodily matters. Such an immersion causes the inward parts to be cut off, and, on this earth, makes people outwardly like angels, but inwardly like wild animals. They are surprised that any beauty can exist on the faces of this earth, and that they are not deformed. But this results from a different cause. 1748, 27 January. Just now I spoke to those spirits from Jupiter who were present, saying that the evil people of this earth in the other life gradually become so ugly and deformed in their face, that they cannot look at them on account of their ugliness. I was told that their beautiful faces come from their infancy, which is innocent. 1748, 4 Sept.