17、他们不喜欢有声的言语，因为这种言语是物质的。所以，当没有中间灵人时，我只能通过一种活跃的思维与他们交谈。他们的记忆因由概念，而非纯物质的图像构成，故能展现更接近思维的东西。因为高于图像层级的思维需要抽象的概念作为它的研究对象。尽管如此，水星灵在判断力上却不怎么出众。他们并不以需要判断力的事，或出于已知事实的推论为快乐。唯独赤裸裸的知识或事实给予他们乐趣。
17. They have a distaste for verbal speech because it is a physical thing, so if there were no mediating spirits 1present, the only way I was able to talk with them was through a kind of active thinking.
Since their memory retains concepts rather than purely physical images, it more readily supplies subject matter to their thoughts, because on the level of thinking that transcends mere mental imaging, the objects of thought are things that have been stripped of their materiality. Yet even though this is the case, spirits from Mercury have very little skill in the exercise of judgment. They take no pleasure in exercising judgment or drawing conclusions from what they have learned. Knowledge by itself is their delight.
Footnotes:
1. For more on various kinds of mediating spirits and their role in creating lines of communication among spirits and angels in different parts of the spiritual world, and between the inhabitants of the spiritual world and the inhabitants of earth, see Other Planets 22; Secrets of Heaven 4047-4048, 4403, 5427, 5856, 5983-5989, 9671:3; Heaven and Hell 601; Spiritual Experiences (= Swedenborg 1998-2013) 2285, 4210. [LSW]
17. They dislike speaking aloud because it is a physical process. So, when there were no spirits to act as intermediaries, I was only able to talk with them by a kind of thought activation. Their memory, being of ideas, not of purely material pictures, presents these more directly to their thinking. For thinking above the pictorial level needs abstract ideas as its object. For all this the spirits of Mercury are not particularly distinguished for their powers of judgment. They take no pleasure in matters requiring judgment or in inferences from known facts. It is the bare facts that give them pleasure.
17. They are averse to vocal speech, because it is material; wherefore when I conversed with them without intermediate spirits, I could only do it by a species of active thought. Their memory, as consisting of things not of images purely material, supplies objects that are nearer to the thought; for the thought, which is above the imagination, requires for its objects things abstracted from material. But notwithstanding this, the spirits of Mercury are little distinguished for their judgment, having no delight in the exercise of that faculty, and the deducing of conclusions from knowledges; for bare knowledges alone are delightful to them.
17. Loquela vocum, quia illa materialis est, aversantur, quare cum illis, cum absque spiritibus intermediis, non aliter quam per Speciem cogitationis activae loqui potui. Memoria illorum, quia est rerum, non imaginum pure materialium, propius subministrat cogitationi objecta sua; cogitatio enim, quae supra imaginationem est, requirit pro objectis res a materialibus abstractas: sed tametsi ita est, usque tamen spiritus Mercurii parum facultate judicii pollent rebus, quae judicii sunt, ac conclusionum ex cognitionibus, non delectantur; sunt enim nudae cognitiones illis delectationi.