1394. THAT THE SPIRITUAL IS IN THE NATURAL, AND THE NATURAL APPEARS AS NOTHING This can be evident from many things, as from this one example. The words of speech are all from natural things, thus speech is natural. But the sense of the speech is - or can be - spiritual, and the sense being perceived, the words become nothing; thus the words or the corporeal things should be only instrumental and of no account. There is also a deeper sense. Thus if there are many meanings which are denoted by their own words, or signified by signs, and a more interior meaning is formed therefrom, then their sense is spiritual, and the signs or composite expressions, that is, composite ideas, called their meaning, are of no account. 1748, Mar. 15.