The same was the case even for science ". . . whatever one has learned and thought concerning that matter is simultaneously presented, thus more fully when he has thought much about such a thing."
These idea-pictures, available with the speed of thought, were not only to be got from the minds of the incarnate, however; Swedenborg admitted that at times spirits could gather facts from each other's memories and in this way unlock them. "I heard a certain spirit speak with another. I was acquainted with both in the life of the body. He described the genius and character of the other, and what opinion he had of him, and then recited a letter which he had written, and many other things in a series. The other acknowledged the whole, and was silent." 43
When Swedenborg spoke of "spirits" he usually meant the ordinary run of what he called "middle-character" deceased, neither good nor bad, hardly changed from their uninstructed life on earth, and hardly as yet aware of their change of condition. Most of them could not grasp what he persisted in trying to tell them, that though they had apparently lost their "corporeal memory" they now had access to another and better mental apparatus.
For if they really learned to make use of their interior memory and their inmost memory they would be able to think "much more subtly and distinctly," since the interior memory was part of the faculty of rational understanding, and the inmost memory enabled one to judge of what was "true and good." 44
The mere verbal knowledge of philosophy and religion Swedenborg considered part of the corporeal memory. It was "the understanding of these things which belongs to the interior memory"; 45 therefore when the merely book-learned arrived in the other world they often appeared quite idiotic.
