23、有一个灵人来自另一个星球，他能与他们熟练交谈，因为他说话如此轻松和迅捷，但在谈论中却故作优雅。对于他所说的，他们瞬间就能作出判断，声称这句话太优雅，那句话太矫饰。因此，他们只关心一件事，即他们能否从他那里听到他们闻所未闻的事，由此拒绝造成模糊，尤其在话语和学问上故作优雅、矫揉造作的事；因为这些会将真实事物隐藏起来，取而代之的是话语，也就是对物质物体的表述。事实上，说话的人会将注意力专注于这些东西，并想叫人去听他说的话，而不是这些话的意思，以致他更多地是影响别人的耳朵，而不是别人的心灵。
23. There was a spirit from another planet who was able to communicate with them quite skillfully because he could talk fluently and rapidly, but who adopted an air of elegance in what he said. In an instant they passed judgment on what he was saying. This one point of his, they said, was expressed too elegantly; that other point, too cleverly. All they were looking for was whether he was telling them anything they did not already know. They had no use for things that as far as they are concerned cloud the issue, which are mainly pretensions to eloquence and erudition, because these hide the true message and substitute mere words, which are only matter-based forms for conveying underlying realities. 1The speaker keeps the mind focused on the words and wants the words rather than their meaning to be heard, so what is affected is the hearing of the other more than the mind. 2
Footnotes:
1. The Latin here translated “matter-based” is materiales, literally, “material.” It is used here in the sense “representative of material things rather than spiritual.” Compare Secrets of Heaven 2643:1, where Swedenborg says, in interpreting a difficult passage, “It is hard to explain these words to the intellect more clearly. If the explanation were drawn out further, the meaning would grow still dimmer. The subject is divine, after all, and it can be presented to angels only through heavenly and spiritual images. If it were presented to people in some lofty style, it would sink down into the kind of ideas that people have-ideas connected with matter and with the physical body.” [SS]
2. This sentence does not appear in the parallel passage in Secrets of Heaven 6924, so it seems Swedenborg thought it worth adding for the sake of clarification when he edited the material for republication in Other Planets. Compare Secrets of Heaven 241: “When we fail to pay attention to the meaning of a speaker’s words but concentrate on the words themselves, we gather little of the meaning and still less of any universal significance within the meaning. Sometimes from a single word, or even from a single point of grammar, we leap to judgment about the whole of a speaker’s message.” Swedenborg’s comments accord with a trend that began in the early Enlightenment toward a simple literary style, which was seen as both “natural” and “classical.” For discussion and examples, see Lovejoy 1960a, 95-97. Lovejoy quotes the French theologian and writer Fénelon (François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon, 1651-1715): “Tout ornement qui n’est qu’ornement est de trop” (Every ornament that is only an ornament is superfluous). The scholar who wrote the history of the British Royal Society in the seventeenth century captured the same sentiment (and inadvertently contravened it) when he declared that its members carried out “a constant Resolution to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men delivered so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness, bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can” (Sprat 1667, 113). Compare note 141, which discusses the inelegancies that Swedenborg’s contemporaries perceived in the imagery and repetitions of the Bible. [SS, GFD]
23. There was a spirit from another world who could talk with them with dexterity, because he spoke so readily and quickly, but he made a point of elegance in his discourse. They arrived at instant judgments about what he said, saying one expression was too elegant, another too clever. But in doing so, they only paid attention to whether they heard anything from him they did not already know. In that way they rejected anything that caused obscurity, especially efforts at elegant discourse and displays of learning, since these conceal the real ideas, substituting for them words which are the expressions of material objects. For the speaker concentrates on these and wants his words to be listened to rather than what the words mean, so that he has more effect on the other's hearing than on his mind.
23. There was a spirit from another earth, who could speak dexterously with them, because he spoke promptly and quickly, but who affected elegance in his discourse. They instantly decided on whatever he spoke, saying of this, that it was too elegant; of that, that it was too polished: so that the sole thing they attended to was, whether they could hear anything from him which they had never known before, rejecting thus the things which caused obscurity, which are especially affectations of elegance of discourse and erudition; for these hide real things, and instead thereof present expressions, which are only material forms of things; for the speaker keeps the attention fixed herein, and is desirous that his expressions should be regarded more than the meaning of them, whereby the ears are more affected than the mind.
23. Erat spiritus ex alia Tellure, qui cum illis dextre loqui potuit, quia prompte et celeriter, sed qui affectabat in sermone elegantiam; momento judicabant de illis quae is loquebatur, dicendo hoc nimis eleganter, hoc nimis scite; sic ut modo attenderent, num aliquid illis nondum notum ab eo audirent, rejiciendo sic talia quae inumbrabant, quae sunt praecipue affectationes elegantiae sermonis et eruditionis, nam illae ipsas res abscondunt, et loco illarum sistunt voces, quae sunt formae rerum materiales; loquens enim in illis animum tenet, ac vult ut voces prae sensu vocum audiantur, inde afficitur alterius auditus plus quam mens.