5589. This memory is pictorial, formed from the visible objects in the world; and when it becomes active through the influx of light out of heaven, it constitutes that speech - which, because it is from the light of heaven, renders the ideas thereof conformable to the nature of the things in the universe. Every single thing has its conformity from the influx of heaven. Those heavenly-fashioned ideas, fall, among spirits, into words, which, also, are distinctly spoken out, and distinctly and sonorously heard amongst themselves, like all speeches on the earths amongst men. Hence it is that the speech of spirits is a natural* speech, and also the universal of all, whereby spirits from every nation of the earth, and from every globe, are able to converse together; and this as readily with the most ancient people as with the moderns. Into this speech, every man spontaneously comes immediately after death; and when he then speaks, he is unaware that he has ever spoken differently. Hence, also, it is manifest, that the common speech of spirits is in every man whatsoever, and would become of the same character [as it is with spirits] if one man should enter into the thought or another with his own thought; and, also, that thus he can bring forth, in one moment, more things than, by words, during half-an-hour. From these things it was also manifest, that that speech is one of words, but entirely different words, formed according to the notion of the thing, and articulated by means of sound, so that the sound is articulated, expressing all the things belonging to the matter. It differs from the speech of brutes in this way: that that is continuous, but that of spirits discrete, because there is with them the thought of the thing itself out of heaven and from the Divine truth there, - which, there, is light. Hence, with men, [speech] is discrete and articulate, because they are intellectual: with beasts it is continuous.** * I.e. "natural" as distinguished from "artificial," or acquired. -ED. ** Dr. R. L. Tafel is of opinion that these signs in the margin are used by Swedenborg, here, as elsewhere, to indicate the days of the week on which the occurrences he is recording happened. The signs themselves stand, in astronomical usage, for the sun, moon, and planets, after which the days of the week are named, or to which they have been allotted. We take the arrow of the Latin Edition - which see - to be a misreading for "[circle with an arrow pointing upwards]" the sign for Mars, with which Tuesday is associated. The sign "[circle with a plus sign below and an inverted arc above]" stands for Mercury, which indicates Wednesday. These two signs occurring together, as in the margin in the present place, would, in this point of view, stand for "the night between Tuesday and Wednesday;" a phraseology paralleled by Swedenborg himself, in no. (4791m), which was written in "the night between the 15th and 19th November 1751." The reader should know that Swedenborg used the various astronomical signs to which days of the weeks are allotted, in connection with specific dates, almost habitually, during the seven and a half months between the 2nd February and the 15th September 1749. Between nos. [4139 1/2] and 4389, they appear, as maybe seen from the Latin, no less than 130 times. This fact makes it possible to test Dr. Tafel's opinion of their significance, by seeing whether the sign occurs in septennial periods (or multiples thereof. For the purpose of making this test in such a way that the reader may form his own judgment, we have drawn up the "Analytical table of Swedenborg's use of Astronomical Signs in connection with Dates," which may he found in the Preface to the present volume. -ED.