4653. The spirits who correspond to the hearing, or who constitute the province of the ear, are those who are in simple obedience, that is, those who do not reason whether a thing is so, but believe it to be so because it is said by others to be so: hence they may be called "obediences." The reason of their being such is that the hearing is to speech as the passive is to its active, thus as one who hears a speaker and acquiesces. Hence also in common speech, to "give ear to anyone" is to be obedient, and to "hearken to the voice" is to obey; for the interior things of man's speech have in great part derived their origin from correspondence, for the reason that man's spirit is among spirits in the other life, and thinks there; although man is altogether ignorant of this, and a corporeal man is not willing to know it.
[2] There are many differences among the spirits who correspond to the ear, that is, to its functions and offices. There are those who bear relation to each of its little organs-some to the external ear, some to the membrane called the drum of the ear, some to the interior membranes which are called windows, some to the hammer, to the stirrup, to the anvil, the cylinders, and the cochlea; and there are those who bear relation to parts still more interior, even to those substantiated parts which are nearer to the spirit, and finally to those which are in the spirit; and last of all they are inmostly conjoined with those who belong to the internal sight, from whom they are distinguished by their not having so much discernment, but giving as it were a passive assent to them.