The spirits which correspond to Hearing, or which constitute the province of the Ear, are those which are in simple Obedience: that is those which do not reason to see if a thing is thus, but which, because it is said to be thus by others, believe that it is thus: whence they can be called Obediences. If these spirits are like this, this is because the relation of hearing to language is like that of passive to active, as like the relation of him who hears speech and acquiesces to him who speaks: whence too in common language, “to listen to someone” is to be obedient: and to “listen to the voices” is obey: for the insides of the language of man have for the most part drawn their origin from Correspondence , for the reason that the human spirit is among the spirits which are in the other life, and it is there that it thinks, man is absolutely ignorant of this, and corporeal man does not even want to know it...
Emanuel Swedenborg: Treatise of Representations and Correspondences (1750)