1. PART ONE
Love is a person’s life. People know that love exists, but they do not know what love is. They know from common speech that it exists. For instance, people say that he loves me, that a king loves his subjects and the subjects love their king, that a husband loves his wife, and a mother her children, and vice versa; also that this or that person loves his country, his fellow citizens, his neighbor. So, too, in regard to matters apart from person, as when it is said that someone loves this or that thing.
But even though love is so frequently mentioned, still scarcely anyone knows what love is. Whenever someone reflects on it, he cannot then form for himself any mental idea of it. Therefore he says either that it is not anything, or that it is merely some stimulus flowing in through his vision, hearing, touch, and social interaction, which thus affects him. He is totally unaware that love is his very life, not only the general life in his whole body and the general life in all his thoughts, but also the life in every single particle of them.
This the wise person may perceive from considering the following proposition: If you take away any impulse having to do with love, can you form any thought? Or can you perform any action? Is it not the case that as the affection belonging to love cools, in the same measure thought, speech and action cool? And the warmer the affection grows, the warmer they grow?
Still, the wise person perceives this not from any concept that love is a person’s life, but from his empirical observation that it is so.
(We say that thought is the first effect of life, but there exists an interior thought and a still more interior one, and an exterior thought and a still more exterior one. The inmost thought, which is a perception of ends or purposes, is actually the first effect of life. However, these levels of thought will be discussed below where we take up the degrees of life.)
The same is the case with love in a person, for love and warmth correspond to each other. So it is, too, that love is warm.
From Him who is uncreated, infinite, being itself and life itself, no one can be created directly, because the Divine is one and indivisible. Rather he must be created out of elements already created and finite, so formed that the Divine can be present in them.
[2] Because people and angels are such creations, they are recipients of life. Consequently, if anyone allows himself to be so led astray in his thinking as to suppose he is not a recipient of life, but is life, he cannot be averted from the thought that he is God.
A person’s feeling as though he were life and so believing it to be the case is owing to a fallacious appearance; for in any instrumental cause, the principal cause is invariably perceived as inseparable from it.
That the Lord is life in Himself, He Himself teaches in John:
…as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son (also) to have life in Himself… (John 5:26)
And He says that He is “the life” (John 11:25, 14:6).
Now since life and love are one (as is apparent from the discussions above in nos. 1, 2), it follows that because the Lord is life itself, He is love itself.
* I.e., The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem.
** Cf. Exodus 3:14, 15.
Not only do that spiritual warmth and that spiritual light flow into and affect angels, but they also flow into and affect people, to the degree that they become receptive. And they become receptive in the measure of their love toward the Lord and love for the neighbor.
[2] That sun itself, or Divine love, cannot by its warmth and light create anyone from itself directly, for such a one would in that case be love in its essence, which is the Lord Himself, but it can create someone out of substances and materials so formed as to be capable of receiving that warmth and light-even as the sun in the world cannot by its warmth and light produce sprouts in the earth directly, but out of materials in the soil in which it can be present by its warmth and light and cause growth.
(On the Lord’s Divine love appearing as the sun in the spiritual world, and the emanation from it of spiritual warmth and spiritual light, from which angels have their love and wisdom, see the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 116-140.)
It cannot be comprehended if a natural idea is formed of it for the reason that a natural idea has in it a notion of space. For it is formed on the basis of such things as exist in the world, and each and every element of them that the eyes behold involves space. All magnitude there, great or small, is a matter of space. Every dimension there, of length, breadth and height, is a matter of space. In a word, every measure, figure or form there is a matter of space. That is why we say that if a merely natural idea is formed of it, it cannot be comprehended that the Divine does not exist in space when we are told that He is everywhere.
[2] Still, however, people can comprehend this while thinking naturally of it provided that they admit into that thought some ray of spiritual light. Therefore we must first say something about spiritual ideas and the spiritual thinking resulting from them.
A spiritual idea derives none of its character from space, but draws all of its character from state. State is predicated of love, life, wisdom, affections, their resulting joys-of good and truth in general. A truly spiritual idea of these has no characteristic in common with space. It is a higher idea, and it regards ideas of space as beneath it in the way that heaven regards the earth.
[3] Nevertheless, because angels and spirits see with their eyes just as people do in the world, and because objects can be seen only as being in space, therefore in the spiritual world where spirits and angels are, intervals of space appear, like intervals of space on earth. But still they are not intervals of space, but appearances, for they are not fixed and constant as they are on earth. Indeed, they may become longer or shorter; they may change or vary. And because their extents as a result cannot be ascertained by any measure, they cannot be comprehended there by forming a natural idea of them, but only by forming a spiritual idea of them, which regards intervening intervals of space as intervening intervals of good or intervening intervals of truth, whose affinities and similarities vary in accordance with people’s states.
This much must be stated in advance, because without the knowledge and some perception that the Divine does not exist in space, it is impossible to understand anything of the Divine life, which is love and wisdom, the subject of this work. Consequently, neither would it be possible to understand more than a little if anything of Divine providence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, infinity and eternity, subjects we are going to take up in succession later.
The case is the same with people, in whom and with whom the Lord is present throughout the entire world; and this solely because the Lord does not exist in space.
It is because God is human that all angels and all spirits are human beings in perfect form. The form of heaven causes this, its form being the same in its greatest and in its least constituents.
(That heaven in its totality and in every part is in its form as though a single person may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 59-87; and that thoughts proceed in accordance with the form of heaven in nos. 203, 204. That people were created in the image and likeness of God is known from Genesis 1:26, 27; and it is also known that God appeared as a person to Abraham and others.)
People in ancient times, from the wise to the simple among them, thought of God only as a person, and when they eventually began to worship a plurality of gods, as they did in Athens and Rome, they worshiped them all as persons.
[2] These observations may be illustrated by the following account, which we related in a short work previously:*
(Gentiles, especially Africans,) who acknowledge and worship one God as the creator of the universe, have of God the idea of a person. They say that no one can have any other idea of God. When they hear that many people entertain an idea of God as a kind of small cloud (at the center of the universe), they ask where those people are, and when they are told that they are found among Christians, they say it is not possible. But they are informed in reply that those Christians acquire that idea of theirs from the fact that in the Word God is called a spirit,** and they think of spirit only in the way that they do of a bit of vapor, not knowing that every spirit and every angel is a person.
Nevertheless, those Christians were examined to see whether their spiritual idea was like their natural idea, and it was found not to be like it in those who inwardly acknowledged the Lord as God of heaven and earth.
I heard one church elder among the Christians saying that no one can have the idea of a Divine Human. I then saw him conveyed to various gentile nations, to progressively more and more interior ones, and from these to their heavens, and finally to the Christian heaven, everywhere having communicated to him the inhabitants’ interior perception of God; and he observed that they had no other idea of God than that of a person, which is the same as the idea of a Divine Human.
* See Continuation Concerning the Last Judgment and the Spiritual World, no. 74.
** John 4:24. Cf. 2 Corinthians 3:17.
In contrast, people who go to the Lord alone think of His Divine Humanity, thus of God as a person.
The observation that a person’s state of life after death accords with the idea of God he has affirmed in himself is clearly apparent from its antithesis, namely, that a denial of God forms hell-and in Christianity, a denial of the Lord’s Divinity.
This concept reason comprehends when it considers whether there can be any being that does not have expression, or any expression that is not one of being. And because one exists together with the other and not apart from the other, it follows that they are one, but one in a distinct combination.
They are one in a distinct combination like love and wisdom. Love, too, is being, and wisdom its expression, for love does not exist except in a state of wisdom, and wisdom does not exist except as a result of love. Consequently, when love is in a state of wisdom, then it has expression. These two are one in a relationship so formed that they can indeed be distinguished in thought, but not in fact. And because they can be distinguished in thought and not in fact, therefore we say that they are in a distinct combination one.
Being and expression in the human God are also in a distinct combination one like soul and body. A soul does not exist apart from its body, nor a body apart from its soul. The Divine soul of the human God is what we mean by the Divine being, and His Divine body is what we mean by its Divine expression.
To believe that a soul can exist and can think and be wise apart from a body is an error arising from misconceptions; for every person’s soul exists in a spiritual body after it has cast off the material integuments which enveloped it in the world.
That which has expression as a result of being is united with the being by virtue of the fact that it is an expression of the being. The consequent effect is a union into one; and so it is that each mutually and reciprocally is the complement of the other, and that each is the all in all things of the other as it is in itself.
The infinite elements in God cannot be said to be infinitely many or even to be infinitely all, because of people’s natural idea of “many” and “all.” For a natural idea of “infinitely many” is limited, and the idea of “infinitely all,” while being indeed unlimited, still draws its origin from the limited elements in the universe. Consequently, because people have a natural idea of these, they cannot by extrapolation or estimation arrive at a perception of the infinite elements in God. On the other hand, because angels have a spiritual idea of them, they can by extrapolation and estimation arrive at a perception of them beyond the level attainable by people, though still not reaching the goal.
We compare the uncreated person who is God with a created one for the reason that God is a person, and He Himself says that He created man in the world in His image and into His likeness (Genesis 1:26,27).
Heaven in its entirety, in its component parts, and in its individual inhabitants exists in such a form because of the Divine character that angels receive; for in the measure of the Divine character he receives an angel is a person in perfect form. So it is that angels are said to be in God, and God in them, and that God is their all.
How many things exist in heaven cannot be described. And because the Divine is what forms heaven, and these inexpressibly many things are consequently from the Divine, it is clearly apparent that there are infinite elements in the supreme person who is God.
The reason for this is that these constituents are all in such a form that not one of them can be lacking; for it is a form receptive of life from the human God (as we established in nos. 4-6 above). The arrangement and interconnection of all these constituents in such a form produces the sensation and consequent idea of their being as though not many and not beyond number, but seemingly one.
One may conclude from this that the incalculably many elements which are united as though into one in a person, are, in the supreme person who is God, in a distinct combination one-indeed, in a most distinct combination one.
* No. 18.
For this there are two reasons. The first is that the very ability to think rationally regarded in itself is not a person’s own, but is God’s gift in him. On it depends human reason in general, and that dependence in general causes it to see, as though of itself, the existence of one God.
The second reason is that through that faculty a person either is in the light of heaven or draws the general tendency of his thought from it, and the universal precept of the light of heaven is the existence of one God.
A different circumstance occurs if a person has used that faculty to corrupt the lower constituents of his intellect. He possesses that faculty indeed, but by a twisting of its lower elements he turns it in another direction so that his reason becomes unsound.
The same is the case with a spiritual body of people as with a civil one. The church is a spiritual body. Its head is the human God. It is apparent therefore how the church would appear in this perception of it as a single individual if one were to think not of one God as the creator and sustainer of the universe, but of more than one instead. It would appear, in this perception of it, as a single body having upon it several heads, thus not as a human entity, but as a monster.
If someone were to say that the several heads possessed one essence, and that by virtue of that they together formed one head, no other idea could result from it but that either the one head had several faces, or that the several heads had one face. Thus the church would be presented to the perception as grotesque. Yet in fact one God is the head, and the body is the church, which does what it does at the bidding of the head and not on its own, as is also the case in the human individual.
So it is, too, that in any one kingdom there is only one king. For more than one king would divide it, whereas one is able to hold it together.
People know that the head directs the body under it to do its bidding; for in the head reside the intellect and will, and the body is impelled into action by the intellect and will, so much so that the body is simply an obedient servant. The body is incapable of doing anything unless impelled by the intellect and will in the head; so neither is a person of the church capable of doing anything unless impelled by God.
It does appear as though the body acts of itself. For example, it appears as though the hands and feet in functioning move of themselves, and as though the mouth and tongue in speaking articulate of themselves. Yet in fact they do so not at all of themselves, but in response to an affection of the will and a consequent thought of the intellect in the head.
Think then what it would be like if the same body were to have more than one head, and if each head were to operate independently in accord with its own intellect and its own will. Could the body survive? The heads could not possibly have between them the kind of unanimity possessed by a single head.
As the case is in the church, so also in heaven, which consists of millions of angels. If each and every angel did not look to the same one God, they would fall away from one another and heaven would disintegrate. Consequently, if an angel in heaven merely thinks of more than one God, he immediately vanishes; for he is banished to the outmost perimeter of the heavens and falls downward.
The same is true of all the components in the life of the collective person, meaning, as before said, a society greater or smaller, a kingdom or empire, the church, and also the angelic heaven.
Take from these love and wisdom and consider whether they have any reality, and you will find that without love and wisdom as their origin they do not exist.
The created universe, too, regarded in terms of its design, is so full of wisdom springing from love that you may declare all its facets in their entirety to be wisdom itself. For it contains incalculable elements so organized sequentially and concurrently that taken together they constitute a single unit. It is for this reason and no other that they can be held together and unceasingly maintained.
It is apparent from this that the Divine resides in a person in these two faculties, in the faculty for becoming wise and in the faculty for loving-or rather, that He is able to do so.
That everyone has in him the ability to become wise and the ability to love, even if he is not as wise and loving as he might be, is something that has become well known to me from a good deal of experience, experience which you will see amply presented elsewhere.
Now because man was created to be a recipient vessel, and is a recipient vessel in the measure that he loves God and out of love for God becomes wise, which is to say, in the measure that he is affected by those things which are from God and so thinks from that affection, it follows that the Divine essence, as the creative cause, is Divine love and wisdom.
We say that they are in a distinct combination one because love and wisdom are two distinct attributes, but so united that love is a property of wisdom and wisdom a property of love. For love has its being in wisdom, and wisdom has its expression in love.
Moreover, because wisdom takes its expression from love (as said in no. 15 above), therefore Divine wisdom also is being; and it follows from this that love and wisdom taken together are the Divine being, whereas in considering them in distinction from each other we call love the Divine being, and wisdom the Divine expression.
Such is the angelic idea of Divine love and wisdom.
Moreover, since there is such a union of the two, therefore the Divine life also is one-the life being the Divine essence.
Divine love and wisdom are one for the reason that their union is reciprocal, and a reciprocal union produces oneness. However, we will say more about reciprocal union elsewhere.
Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of Your throne. (Psalm 89:14)
Again in the Psalms:
(Jehovah) shall bring forth…righteousness as the light,
And…judgment as the noonday. (Psalm 37:6)
In Hosea:
I will betroth Myself to you forever…
In righteousness and judgment… (Hosea 2:19)
In Jeremiah:
…I will raise to David a righteous Branch,
(Who) will reign as a king….,
And execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. (Jeremiah 23:5)
In Isaiah:
(He will sit) upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,
To establish it…in judgment and righteousness… (Isaiah 9:7)
Again in Isaiah:
Jehovah will be exalted, for…
He has filled (the land) with judgment and righteousness. (Isaiah 33:5)
In the Psalms of David:
When I shall have learned the judgments of Your righteousness…
Seven times a day I praise You,
Because of the judgments of Your righteousness. (Psalm 119:7,164)
The same is meant by life and light in John:
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4)
By life there is meant the Lord’s Divine love, and by light His Divine wisdom.
The same is also meant by life and spirit in John:
(Jesus said,) “The words that I speak to you are spirit and life.” (John 6:63)
Love and wisdom in a person appear as two separate attributes for the reason that the faculty of understanding in him can be raised into the light of heaven, but not the faculty of loving except to the extent that the person does as he understands. Consequently, any measure of apparent wisdom that is not united with the love proper to wisdom sinks back to the love with which it is united, which may be a love of something other than wisdom, even a love of insanity. For a person may know from wisdom that he ought to do this or that, and still not do it, because he does not love it. However, to the extent that he does do from love what wisdom teaches, to the same extent he is an image of God.
People who do see that they are substance and form still perceive love and wisdom round about the subject of which they are predicated as properties emanating from it; and what they perceive round about a subject as emanating from it-even if perceived as something flying about or floating-they also call substance and form, not knowing that love and wisdom constitute the subject itself, and that whatever is perceived as flying or floating round about it is simply the appearance of the subject’s underlying state.
[2] This has not been seen before for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is that the first perceptions out of which the human mind forms its understanding are appearances, appearances which it cannot dispel without investigating their cause; and if the cause lies deeply hidden, the mind cannot investigate it without keeping its intellect for a long time in spiritual light, which it cannot do because of the natural light that constantly draws it back down.
Yet the truth is that love and wisdom are real and actual substance and form, which constitute the very subject of which they are predicated.
A person has five outward senses, which we call touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight.
The subject of which the sense of touch is predicated is the skin that envelops a person. The very substance and form of the skin cause it to feel whatever is brought into contact with it. The sensation of touch does not exist in those things which are brought into contact with it, but it exists in the substance and form of the skin, which are the subject of which it is predicated. The sensation is simply the affecting of it by the things brought into contact with it.
The case is the same with taste. This sensation is simply the affecting of the substance and form which constitute the tongue. The tongue is the subject of which it is predicated.
It is the same with the sense of smell. People know that an odor affects the nostrils and is sensed in the nostrils, and that it is an affecting of them by odorous emanations coming into contact with them.
So, too, with hearing. It seems as though the hearing of a thing exists in the place where the sound originates; but the hearing is in the ear, and is an affecting of its substance and form. The hearing of things at a distance by the ear is only an appearance.
[2] It is the same with sight. When a person sees objects at a distance, it seems as though the sight exists there, but in fact it is in the eye, which is the subject of which it is predicated, and the sight is similarly the affecting of it. Distance is only a conclusion of the judgment regarding the intervening space based on the objects that lie in between, or on the dwindling and consequent fading of the object seen, the image of which is produced within the eye in accordance with its angle of incidence.
It is apparent from this that sight does not go out from the eye to the object, but that an image of the object enters the eye and affects its substance and form. For the case is the same with sight as it is with hearing. Hearing does not go out from the ear to capture sound, but sound enters the ear and affects it.
[3] From these illustrations it can be seen that the affecting of the substance and form which produces a sensation is not something separate from the subject of which it is predicated, but simply causes a change of state in it, the subject remaining still the subject it was before and that it continues to be thereafter. It follows as a consequence that sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are not some aerial emanation flowing out from their organs, but that they are the organs regarded in terms of their substance and form, the affecting of which produces sensation.
All affections, perceptions and thoughts in those substances and forms are not exhalations from them, but are actually and really subjects which emit nothing from them, but simply undergo changes of state in accordance with the incoming stimuli that affect them, as may be seen from the observations above regarding the outward senses. (Regarding the incoming stimuli that affect them, more will be said below.)
* See no. 17.
Now because the one and only absolute is substance and form, it follows that it is the one and only absolute substance and form. And because that absolute substance and form is Divine love and wisdom, it follows that it is the one and only absolute love, and the one and only absolute wisdom; consequently, that it is the one and only absolute essence, and the one and only absolute life. For love and wisdom together are life.
People of that sort cannot conceive of being and expression in itself, and of its being eternal, uncreated and infinite. Nor can they conceive of life except as some aerial entity fading away into nothingness. They also cannot think in any other way of love and wisdom, and are utterly incapable of seeing that they are the origin of all things of nature.
That love and wisdom are the origin of all things of nature cannot be seen unless nature is regarded in terms of the uses it serves in their series and succession, and not in terms of some of its forms, which are objects only of the eye. For useful endeavors spring only from life, and their series and succession from wisdom and love, while forms are the vessels serving those uses. Consequently if one regards only the forms, it is impossible to see anything of life in nature, still less anything of love and wisdom, and so neither anything of God.
Love consists in willing what one has to be another’s, and in feeling the other’s delight as delight within oneself. That is what it is to love. In contrast, to feel one’s own delight in another, and not the other’s delight within oneself, is not to love; for this is loving self, whereas the first is loving the neighbor.
These two types of love are diametrically opposite each other in nature. Both indeed conjoin, and to love what one has in another-in other words, to love oneself in another-does not appear to undo that conjunction; but in fact it does so undo the conjunction that the more anyone has loved another in this way, the more the other eventually hates him. For such a conjunction gradually becomes undone of itself, and love then turns to hatred to the degree that it does.
From these observations it is apparent that Divine love cannot but be and have expression in others whom it loves and by whom it is loved. For inasmuch as there is such an ingredient in all love, it must exist especially, which is to say, infinitely, in love itself.
Consequently the possibility of loving and being loved in return must be found in others who have in them nothing of the Divine in itself. It will be seen below that this is possible in beings created by the Divine. The possibility, however, requires infinite wisdom, in union with infinite love. That is, it requires the Divine love of Divine wisdom and the Divine wisdom of Divine love (of which above, nos. 34-39).
[2] The existence of such a correspondence is not apparent to anyone in the natural world, but it is to everyone who takes note of it in the spiritual world. That world contains all the phenomena that occur in the three kingdoms of the natural world, and they are correspondent manifestations of the affections and thoughts of the inhabitants there-of the affections emanating from the will and of the thoughts emanating from the intellect-and of the outmost constituents of their life. Moreover, these correspondent manifestations and phenomena appear round about them in a visible form like that of the created universe, with the difference that they do so in a lesser image of it.
[3] It is clearly apparent to angels from this that the created universe is a representative image of the human God, and that it is His love and wisdom which are displayed in an image in the universe. Not that the created universe is the human God, but that it exists from Him. For nothing whatever in the created universe is substance and form in itself, or life in itself, or love and wisdom in itself, indeed neither is the human being human in himself, but all is from God, who is human in Himself, wisdom and love in itself, and form and substance in itself. Whatever exists in itself is uncreated and infinite. Whatever exists from that, however-this, because it retains nothing in it that exists in itself, is created and finite, and it reflects an image of Him from whom it exists and takes form.
There are people who maintain that the world in its entirety was created out of nothing, and the idea they entertain of nothing is one of absolutely nothing, even though out of absolutely nothing comes nothing, nor can anything be produced from it. This is an immutable truth. Therefore the universe-being an image of God and thus full of God-could only have been created in God from God. For God is being itself, and from being must come whatever is. To create from nothing, which has no being, something that is, is completely contradictory.
[2] Still, however, whatever is created in God from God is not a continuous extension of Him, for God is being in itself, and created things do not have in them any being in itself. If created things were to have in them any being in itself, it would be an extension of God, and an extension of God is God.
The angelic idea of this is as follows, that what is created in God from God is like something which in the case of a person had originated from his life, but from which the life has been withdrawn, which is such as to accord with his life, but still is not his life. This angels affirm on the evidence of many testifications which occur in their heaven, where they say that they are in God and God in them, and yet have in their being nothing of God which is God. (We will report further testifications on whose evidence they affirm this in subsequent discussions. Let what we have said here serve simply to inform.)
* See Psalms 92:4, 102:25, 143:5; Isaiah 5:12, 19:25, 29:23, 45:11, 60:21; Job 10:3, 14:15, 34:19.
The same is the case with people on earth.
From these observations it can now for the first time be seen that every constituent of the created universe is a recipient of the Divine love and wisdom of the human God.
* See no. 48.
Conjunction with these depends on the uses they serve; for all good and useful forms originate solely as the result of a like conjunction with God, but one that differs in accordance with degrees. In its descent this conjunction becomes progressively such that no element of freedom remains, owing to an absence of any element of reason, and consequently its recipients have nothing of any apparent life in them. But still they are recipients. Because they are recipients, they are also reactive, for as recipients they are containing vessels.
As for conjunction with forms of use that are not good, this we will discuss after we have demonstrated the origin of evil.
Moreover, even though the Divine is present in each and every constituent of the created universe, still there is nothing of the Divine in their being. For the created universe is not God, but from God. And because it is from God, it has in it His image, like the image of a person in a mirror, in which the person indeed appears, but which nevertheless has nothing of the person in it.
* See Psalms 92:4, 102:25, 143:5; Isaiah 5:12, 19:25, 29:23, 45:11, 60:21; Job 10:3, 14:15, 34:19.
Therefore I asked them whether they could not see it simply from the marvelous ability that exists in every seed to reproduce its own kind of plant in such a progression of development as to culminate in new seeds. Or from the fact that in every seed there is a reflection of the infinite and eternal, for they have in them a striving to multiply and produce fruit infinitely and to eternity.
[2] Consider also any animal, even the smallest-that it has in it sense organs, a brain, heart, lungs, and all the other organs, including arteries, veins, fibers, muscles, and the functions of these, not to mention the amazing phenomena inherent in their character, on which subject we have available whole books written.
All of these wonders come from God, while the forms in which they are clothed come from materials of the earth. Out of these are formed plants, and in turn human beings. Consequently of man it is said that he was created out of the ground, and that he is dust of the earth, and that the breath of life was breathed into him (Genesis 2:7). From this it is apparent that the Divine is not man’s but is something adjoined to him.
A resemblance to the human being in each and every constituent of the animal kingdom is apparent from the following observations: Animals of every kind have appendages used for locomotion, organs used for sensing, and viscera used to power these-components that they have in common with the human being. They possess also appetites and affections similar to the natural appetites and affections in the human being. Inborn in them, too, are various kinds of knowledge corresponding to their affections, some of which exhibit a seemingly spiritual element that in beasts of the earth, in birds of the air, in bees, silkworms, ants, and the like, is more or less visible to the eye. So it is that merely natural people deem creatures of this kingdom to be like themselves, lacking only the power of speech.
[2] A resemblance to the human being in each and every constituent of the plant kingdom is apparent from the following observations: Plants grow from seed and develop from it progressively through stages of their life. They possess some features akin to those involved in marriage, and these result in procreation. Their vegetative soul is one of useful endeavor, which they give form to. And they exhibit many other characteristics as well resembling those of the human being-characteristics which several observers have described.
[3] A resemblance to the human being in each and every constituent of the mineral kingdom is apparent simply in their endeavor to produce forms which exhibit that resemblance-these being, as we said, each and every constituent of the plant kingdom-and so in their endeavor to perform useful services. For as soon as a seed falls into the bosom of the earth, the earth nurtures it and from every side supplies from itself an abundance of what it needs to sprout and exhibit itself in a form representative of the human being. That this endeavor exists also in earth’s infertile areas is apparent from corals formed at the bottom of seas, and from efflorescences in mines, formed there both from mineral salts and from metal ores.
The endeavor to endow themselves with vegetable forms and so perform useful services is the outmost effect of the Divine in created things.
[2] Intermediate created forms are each and every constituent of the plant kingdom. These are grasses and herbs of every kind, shrubs and bushes of every kind, and trees of every kind. Their uses exist to serve each and every constituent of the animal kingdom, both the lower ones and the higher. They nourish these, gratify them, and enliven them. They nourish their bodies with their substances, gratify their senses with their taste, smell and beauty, and enliven their affections. An endeavor to serve in these ways is present in them also from life.
[3] The highest created forms are each and every constituent of the animal kingdom. The lowest forms in it are called worms and insects, the intermediate ones birds and beasts, and the highest ones human beings. For every kingdom has in it its lowest, intermediate, and highest constituents, the lowest existing to serve the intermediate, and the intermediate existing to serve the highest.
Thus do the uses of all things that have been created ascend in turn from the lowest created forms to mankind, which is the highest in order.
All animals are recipients of life. Higher animals are recipients of life in all three degrees of the natural world; lower ones are recipients of life in two degrees of that world; and the lowest ones are recipients in one of its degrees. In contrast, only the human being is a recipient of life not only in the three degrees of the natural world, but also in the three degrees of the spiritual world.
It is because of this that a person can be elevated to a plane above nature, unlike any animal. He can think analytically and rationally about civil and moral matters that exist within nature, and he can think analytically and rationally as well about spiritual and celestial matters which exist above nature. Indeed, he can be elevated into a state of wisdom even so far as to see God.
However, we must postpone discussion of the six degrees through which the uses of all things that have been created ascend in succession even to God the Creator and take them up in their proper place.
From the brief consideration here it can be seen that all things that have been created ascend to a highest being, who alone is life, and that the uses of all things-and therefore the forms of the uses-are themselves recipients of life.
A person is born into the lowest degree of the natural world. He is afterward elevated by various forms of learning into the second degree. And as by his studies he perfects his intellect, he is elevated into the third degree, and he then becomes rational.
The three ascending degrees in the spiritual world exist in a person above the three natural degrees, but these do not appear until he has put off his earthly body. When he has put this off, he has opened to him the first spiritual degree, after that the second spiritual degree, and finally the third-although the last is opened only in the case of people who become angels of the third heaven. These are the people who see God.* Those in whom the second degree can be opened become angels of the second heaven, and those in whom the lowest degree can be opened become angels of the lowest heaven.
Each spiritual degree in a person is opened in accordance with his reception of Divine love and wisdom from the Lord. Those who receive some measure of these come into the first or lowest spiritual degree. Those who receive more come into the second or intermediate spiritual degree. And those who receive much come into the third or highest degree. On the other hand, those who receive nothing of these remain in the natural degrees and gain from the spiritual degrees no more than their ability to think and thus speak, and to will and thus act, though not intelligently.
* Matthew 5:8.
Everything created by God has present within it a reaction, life alone being capable of action, and the reaction is occasioned by the action of life. This reaction appears as though it were a property of the thing created because it occurs when the thing is acted upon. Thus the reaction in a person appears as though it were his, because he has no other sensation than that life is his, when in fact the person is only a recipient of life.
It is because of this that a person prompted by his evil heredity reacts against God. However, to the extent that he believes all his life to be from God, and that all goodness of life is owing to the action of God, and all evil of life to the reaction of man, to that extent his reaction becomes one of action, and the person acts in concert with God as though of himself.
The equilibrium of all things is owing to a simultaneous action and reaction, and everything must be in equilibrium.
This much has been said to keep people from believing that they ascend to God of themselves rather than from the Lord.
In contrast, one who knows how to raise his mind above concepts drawn from space and time passes from darkness into light, and he discerns matters spiritual and Divine, and finally sees the components in them and effects springing from them. Moreover, from the light in which he is then, he dispels the darkness of his natural sight and banishes its misconceptions from the center to the peripheries.
Every man possessing the intellect has the capacity to think on a level above the aforesaid properties of nature, and also actually does so think, and he then affirms and sees that the Divine, being omnipresent, is not bounded by space. He is also able as well to affirm and see those points which we have presented above. But if he denies the Divine omnipresence and attributes all phenomena to nature, he is in that case unwilling to be elevated, even though he has the capacity to be.
* The general philosophical position that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.
The objects of their thought, which as we said are truths, draw nothing of their character from space and time. The objects of their sight, on the other hand, indeed appear as though they existed in space and in time, but still they do not think in accordance with them. The reason is that intervals of space and time there are not fixed as they are in the natural world, but are variable in conformity with the inhabitants’ states of life. As a result, instead of space and time, they have in the ideas of their thought states of life-instead of intervals of space, such notions as relate to states of love, and instead of intervals of time, such notions as relate to states of wisdom. It is in consequence of this that spiritual thought and therefore also spiritual speech differ so much from natural thought and its resulting speech that they have nothing in common except as regards the interior contents of their subjects, all of which are spiritual. Regarding this difference more will be said elsewhere.
Now, because the thoughts of angels draw nothing of their character from space and time, but from states of life, it is apparent that they do not comprehend it when they are told that the Divine fills space and intervals of space, for they do not know what intervals of space are, but that they comprehend it clearly when they are told, without any reference to space, that the Divine fills all things.
The merely natural person thinks in terms of ideas that he has acquired from objects visible to his sight, all of which exhibit in them a configuration possessing length, breadth and height and having a shape delimited by these, whether angular or curvilinear. These dimensions are clearly present in his mental conceptions of visible objects in the world, and they are also present in his mental conceptions of things not visible, as in his conceptions of civil and moral matters. He does not, indeed, see them, but still they are present as extended concepts.
[2] It is otherwise in the case of a spiritual person, especially in the case of an angel in heaven. His thinking is unrelated to configuration and form having anything do to with spatial length, breadth or height, but having to do with the state of a thing arising from the state of a person’s life. Consequently, instead of spatial length he pictures the goodness of a thing arising from the goodness of a person’s life, instead of spatial breadth the truth of a thing arising from the truth of a person’s life, and instead of height degrees of these. Thus he thinks in terms of correspondence, which is the relation of spiritual and natural things to each other. And it is because of this correspondence that length in the Word symbolizes the goodness of a thing, breadth the truth of a thing, and height degrees of these.
It is apparent from this that when an angel in heaven reflects on the Divine omnipresence, it is utterly impossible for him to think otherwise than that the Divine fills all things independently of space. What an angel thinks is true, because the light that enlightens his intellect is Divine wisdom.
The reality of this may be verified by your concept of this truth, that God is human. Read, please, attentively what we said above in nos. 11-13 and what we wrote in subsequent discussions. You will then understand that it is so. But relax your thinking and let it return to a natural sight which draws its character from notions of space-will you not see these same things as logical inconsistencies? And if you relax your thinking still further, you will reject them.
That is why we say that the Divine fills every space and interval of space in the universe, and not that the human God does so; for if we were to say the latter, merely natural sight would not give its assent. But to say that the Divine does so, this it assents to, because it accords with the common saying of theologians, that God is omnipresent and hears and knows all things.
For more on this subject see above, nos. 7-10.
Space in nature is measurable, and so, too, is time. Time is measured in terms of days, weeks, months, years and centuries, and a day then in terms of hours, a week and month in terms of days, a year in terms of the four seasons, and centuries in terms of years.
Nature has this measurement from the apparent orbital motion and cycling of the world’s sun.
[2] The same is not the case, however, in the spiritual world. Progressions of life there in similar manner appear to take place in time, since people live in that world with each other as people in this world do, which is not possible without an appearance of time; but time there is not distinguished into periods as in the world, for their sun stands constantly in their east, never moving, because it is the Lord’s Divine love that appears to them as the sun. Consequently they do not have days, weeks, months, years, or centuries, but instead of these states of life, which result in transitions, transitions which cannot be called transitions of time but transitions of state.
So it is that angels do not know what time is, and when they hear time referred to, they perceive instead a reference to state. Moreover, when state is what determines time, time is only an appearance; for a state of delight causes time to seem short, and a state devoid of delight causes time to seem long.
From this it is apparent that time in the spiritual world is nothing other than a quality of state.
[3] It is owing to this that hours, days, weeks, months and years in the Word symbolize states and their progressions in their sequence and in their entirety. Thus when times are mentioned in reference to a church, by its morning is meant its first state, by its noon or midday its fullness, by its evening its decline, and by its night its end. The same stages are meant by the four seasons of the year, namely spring, summer, fall, and winter.
As for distances encountered in travels through stretches of space in the spiritual world, the fact that these accord with the passage of periods of time can be illustrated by a number of examples. For routes there are actually shortened in accordance with the travelers’ longings, which are those of their thought from affection, and they are also conversely lengthened. So it is that intervals of time are called also spaces of time.
On the other hand, whenever a person’s thought is not conjoined with his own affection, in such states time goes unnoticed, as in dreams.
From this it follows that the Divine is present through all time independently of time.
Angels say that they can indeed conceive of God’s being from eternity, but not in any way of nature’s being from eternity, still less of nature’s originating from itself, and not at all of nature’s being nature in itself. For what exists in itself is being itself, the origin of all else, and being in itself is life itself, which is the Divine love belonging to Divine wisdom and the Divine wisdom belonging to Divine love.
This to angels is eternity, being thus independent of time, as the uncreated is independent of the created, or the infinite independent of the finite, which do not have even a mathematical relation.
The Divine is the same throughout these for the reason that the Divine is not variable and mutable as everything connected with space and time is, or as everything connected with nature is, but is invariable and immutable. Consequently it is everywhere and always the same.
It is likewise, owing to the appearance, a fallacy that the Divine is not the same in angels in heaven as in people on earth, because angels in heaven possess an inexpressible wisdom that people do not. But the apparent difference lies not in the Lord, but in the recipients in accordance with the quality of their reception of the Divine.
It is the same with the church and a member of it. The greatest recipient vessel in which the Divine dwells is heaven as a whole and at the same the church as a whole. The smallest recipient vessel is the angel of heaven or the person of the church.
Several times I have seen an entire society of heaven appearing as a single angelic person; and I have been told that it could appear as a person as great as a giant, or as one as small as a little child-and this because the Divine is the same in the greatest and least of things.
But how the Lord dwells in these will be explained in subsequent discussions where we take up creation.
Newton said that he knows that the Divine which has being fills all things, and that he himself is horrified at the idea of a vacuum as nothingness, because such an idea is destructive of all things. He said this urging those who speak of a vacuum with him to guard themselves against the idea of nothingness, calling it a state of insensibility, because in an idea of nothing no mental activity is possible.
* Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727, renowned English mathematician and natural philosopher, the most eminent physicist of his day. Among his principal achievements were formulation of the law of gravitation and laws of motion, invention of infinitesimal calculus, and the first correct analysis of white light. Newton found the existence of God reflected in the admirable order of the universe, but opposed the pantheistic notion of a world soul. He also denied the doctrine of the Trinity on the ground that such a belief was inaccessible to reason.
83. PART TWO
Divine love and wisdom appear in the spiritual world as the sun. There are two worlds, one spiritual and the other natural, and the spiritual world does not derive any of its character from the natural world, nor the natural world any of its character from the spiritual world. They are completely different worlds, communicating only through correspondent relationships, the nature of which we have shown many times elsewhere.
To illustrate this, take the following example. Heat in the natural world corresponds to the good of charity in the spiritual world, and light in the natural world corresponds to the truth of faith in the spiritual world. Who does not see that heat and the good of charity, and that light and the truth of faith, are altogether different in character?
[2] At first sight these appear to be so different as to be two completely disparate entities. That is how they appear if one ponders what the good of charity has in common with heat, or the truth of faith with light-when in fact spiritual heat is that good, and spiritual light is that truth.
Even though these are so different in themselves, still they accord by correspondence. They so accord that when a person reads in the Word of heat and light, the spirits and angels who are with the person then perceive, instead of heat, charity, and instead of light, faith.
We have cited this example to show that the two worlds, spiritual and natural, are so different that they have nothing in common with each other, and yet have been so created that they communicate-indeed, are conjoined-through correspondent relationships.
84. Since these two worlds are so different, it can be clearly seen that the spiritual world exists under another sun than that of the natural world. For the spiritual world has in it heat and light just like the natural world-only the heat there is spiritual, and so, too, the light; and spiritual heat is the good of charity, and spiritual light is the truth of faith.
Now, because heat and light can originate from no other source than a sun, it can be seen that there is in the spiritual world another sun than that in the natural world, and furthermore that the sun in the spiritual world is in its essence of such a character that spiritual heat and light can emanate from it, while the sun in the natural world is in its essence of such a character that natural heat and light can emanate from it.
Everything spiritual has some relation to good and truth, and as such it can spring from no other origin than Divine love and wisdom, for all good is connected with love, and all truth with wisdom. That these spring from no other origin every wise person can see.
85. The existence of a sun other than the sun in the natural world has previously been unknown. The reason it has been unknown is that the spiritual component in people has descended so far into the natural one in them that they do not know what the spiritual component is, and so neither do they know that there is a spiritual world in which spirits and angels dwell, a world other than and different from the natural world.
Since the spiritual world to people who live in the natural world lies so deeply hidden, it has therefore pleased the Lord to open the sight of my spirit, to enable me to see the things that exist in that world as I see those that exist in the natural world, and then to describe that world, as I have done in the book Heaven and Hell, which includes in one section a report of that world’s sun.* For I have seen it, and it appeared similar in size to the sun in the natural world and also to be similarly fiery, but more glowing. I have been informed as well that the entire angelic heaven is under that sun, and that angels in the third heaven see it constantly, angels in the second heaven frequently, and angels in the first or lowest heaven occasionally.
All the heat and all the light that they have comes from that sun, and so, too, everything else that appears in that world, as will be seen in subsequent discussions.
* Heaven and Hell, nos. 116-125.
86. The sun in the spiritual world is not the Lord Himself, but an emanation from the Lord. It is the emanating Divine love and wisdom which appear as the sun in that world. And because love and wisdom in the Lord are one-as shown in Part One*-we say that that sun is Divine love.** For Divine wisdom is a property of Divine love;*** consequently it, too, is love.
* See nos. 14, 34, 35, 37.
** As in nos. 5, 73.
*** See nos. 34, 35.
87. The sun in the spiritual world appears to the eyes of angels as fiery for the reason that love and fire correspond to each other. For angels cannot with their eyes see love, but instead of love see that which corresponds to it. That is because angels just as people have an inner component and an outer one. Their inner component is the component that thinks and perceives and that wills and loves, and their outer component is the component that feels, sees, speaks and acts. Moreover, all their outward elements are correspondent reflections of inward ones, but correspondent reflections that are spiritual and not natural.
Divine love is also felt as fire by spiritual beings.
So it is that when fire is mentioned in the Word, it symbolizes love. Sacred fire in the Israelite Church symbolized Divine love. It is because of this that it is customary in prayers to God to ask that heavenly fire may kindle the heart, meaning that Divine love may do so.
88. Since there is such a difference between something spiritual and something natural, as shown above in no. 83, therefore not one whit of anything arising from the sun in the natural world can pass over into the spiritual world-not one whit of its light and heat, or one whit of anything existing on the earth. The light of the natural world is darkness there, and its heat is death there. But still the heat of the world can be animated by an influx of the warmth of heaven, and the light of the world can be illumined by an influx of the light of heaven. Influx takes place through correspondent relationships, and cannot take place through a continuum.
89. From the sun arising from Divine love and wisdom emanate heat and light. The spiritual world where angels and spirits dwell has in it heat and light just like the natural world where people dwell. Moreover the heat is also felt as heat and the light seen as light in a similar way. But still heat and light in the spiritual world and heat and light in the natural world differ so much that, as said above, they have nothing in common. They differ from each other as something animate and something inanimate. Heat in the spiritual world is, in itself, animate, and so, too, light, whereas heat in the natural world is, in itself, inanimate, and so, too, light. For heat and light in the spiritual world emanate from a sun which is pure love, while heat and light in the natural world emanate from a sun which is nothing but fire; and love is animate, and Divine love is life itself, while fire is inanimate, and solar fire is lifelessness itself. We can call it that because it has not the least speck of life in it.
[2] Every person in the interiors of his mind is a spirit. When a person dies, he departs altogether from the world of nature, leaving all of its properties behind, and enters into a world which has not a speck of nature in it. And in that world he lives so detached from nature that he has no communication with it by any continuous connection, that is, by the kind of continuum that exists between something purer and something cruder, but by the kind of connection that exists between something prior and something subsequent, whose only communication is by correspondent relationships.
[3] It can be seen from this that spiritual heat is not a purer natural heat, and spiritual light a purer natural light, but that they are of an entirely different character; for spiritual heat and light take their character from a sun that is pure love, which is life itself, while natural heat and light take their character from a sun that is nothing but fire, which has in it absolutely no life (as we said above).
91. Since there is such a difference between the heat and light of the two worlds, it is clearly apparent why it is that people who live in one of these worlds cannot see those who live in the other world. For the eyes of a person who sees by virtue of natural light are formed from the substance of his world, and the eyes of an angel are formed from the substance of his world, so as to be suitably formed in each world to receive their own light.
It can be seen from this how ignorant the thinking is of people who do not accept into the tenets of their faith that angels and spirits are people, because they do not see them with their eyes.
92. It has not been known previously that angels and spirits possess a completely different light and heat from that of people. Indeed, it has not been known that a different light and heat is possible. For people have not penetrated in their thinking more deeply than into the interior or purer elements of nature. Consequently many people have even imagined the abodes of angels and spirits to be in the upper atmosphere, and some in the stars, thus within nature and not above or outside it.
But in fact angels and spirits are altogether above or outside nature, and they dwell in a world which exists under another sun. And because intervals of space in that world are appearances, as demonstrated above,* therefore one cannot say that they are in the upper atmosphere or in the stars; for they dwell with people, conjoined with the affections and thoughts of their spirits. For the human being is a spirit. It is owing to it that he thinks and wills. Consequently the spiritual world is where people are, and not at all removed from them.
In short, every person in the interiors of his mind is in that world, in the midst of spirits and angels there, and he thinks because of its light, and loves because of its warmth.
* Nos. 7, 10. See also nos. 70, 74.
93. That sun is not God, but it is an emanation from the Divine love and wisdom of the human God. So, too, the heat and light from that sun. In referring to that sun, visible to angels, from which they have their heat and light, we do not mean the Lord, but we mean the first emanation from Him, which is spiritual heat in its highest degree. Spiritual heat in its highest degree is spiritual fire, which is Divine love and wisdom in their first correspondent form.
So it is that that sun appears fiery, and to angels also is fiery, but not to people. The fire which is fire to people is not spiritual but natural, and the difference between these is as the difference between something animate and something inanimate. Therefore the spiritual sun by its heat animates spiritual beings and renews spiritual things, while the natural sun animates and renews natural beings and things, though doing so not on its own but as a result of an influx of spiritual heat, to which it contributes subsidiary assistance.
94. This spiritual fire-which has in it also light in its origin-becomes spiritual heat and light which decrease as they emanate, and the decrease takes place by degrees, degrees which we will consider in later discussions.
Ancient peoples represented this emanation by placing halos glowing with fire and glistening with light around the head of God, a representation which is also commonly employed today when God is depicted as a person in paintings.
95. That love produces heat, and wisdom light, is evident from simply the experience of it. When a person loves, he grows warm, and when he thinks wisely, he sees things as though in light. It is apparent from this that the first emanation of love is heat, and the first emanation of wisdom is light.
It is apparent that they are also correspondent forms, for warmth does not exist in the love itself, but arises from it in the will and so in the body, and light does not exist in wisdom, but in the thought of the intellect and so in the speech.
Consequently love and wisdom are the essence and life in heat and light. Heat and light are what emanate from them, and because they are emanations, they are also correspondent forms.
96. Anyone may discern that spiritual light is altogether different from natural light if he attends to his mind’s thoughts. For when the mind thinks, it sees the objects of its thought in light, and people who think spiritually see truths, and this just as well in the middle of the night as during the day. Therefore light is also predicated of the intellect, and the intellect is said to see. Indeed, in response to the declarations made by some other person, another sometimes says that he sees it to be so, meaning that he understands. Because the intellect is spiritual, it cannot see in this way on account of natural light. For natural light does not last, but departs with the sun.
It is apparent from this that the intellect has another light than the eye, and that that light comes from another origin.
97. Let everyone take care not to think that the sun in the spiritual world is God Himself. God Himself is human. The first emanation from His love and wisdom is a spiritually fiery one, which appears to angels as the sun. Consequently when the Lord manifests Himself to angels in person, He manifests Himself as a person, and this sometimes in the sun, sometimes outside of it.
98. It is because of this correspondence that the Lord is called in the Word not only the sun, but also fire and light. And the sun then means the Lord in respect to His Divine love and wisdom together; fire, the Lord in respect to His Divine love; and light, the Lord in respect to His Divine wisdom.
99. Spiritual heat and light as they emanate from the Lord as the sun are united, as His Divine love and wisdom are united. How Divine love and wisdom are united in the Lord was explained in Part One.* Heat and light are united in the same way, because they are what emanate, and any attributes that emanate are by correspondence united. For heat corresponds to love, and light to wisdom.
It follows from this that as Divine love is the Divine being, and Divine wisdom its Divine expression (as shown above in nos. 14-16), so spiritual heat is the Divine attribute emanating from the Divine being, and spiritual light the Divine attribute emanating from the Divine expression. Consequently, as by virtue of that union Divine love is a property of Divine wisdom, and Divine wisdom a property of Divine love (as shown above in nos. 34-39), so spiritual heat is a property of spiritual light, and spiritual light a property of spiritual heat. Moreover, because of that union, it follows that heat and light as they emanate from the Lord as the sun are one.
That they are nevertheless not received as one by angels and people will be seen in subsequent discussions.**
* See especially nos. 34-39.
** See no. 125.
100. The heat and light that emanate from the Lord as the sun are by virtue of their preeminence what we call the spiritual essence, and we call them the spiritual essence in the singular because they are one. Consequently in subsequent discussions where we mention the spiritual essence, we mean the two together.
It is because of that spiritual essence that that entire world is called spiritual. All the constituents of that world have their origin in consequence of that spiritual essence, and so also their designation.
The reason we call that heat and that light the spiritual essence is because God is called spirit,* and God as spirit is that emanating essence. In relation to His own essence God is called Jehovah; but it is by that emanating essence that He animates and enlightens angels in heaven and people in the church. Consequently animation and enlightenment are said to be accomplished by the spirit of Jehovah.**
* John 4:24.
** See for example Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 13:25, 14:6, 19, 15:14; 1 Samuel 10:6, 16:13; 2 Samuel 23:2; 1 Kings 18:12; Isaiah 11:2, 59:19, 61:1; Ezekiel 11:5, 37:1; Micah 2:7, 3:8. Cf. the spirit of God, Genesis 1:2, 41:38; Exodus 31:3, 35:31; Numbers 24:2; 1 Samuel 10:10, 11:6, 19:20, 23; Ezekiel 11:24; Daniel 5:14.
[2] It is the same in the spiritual world, only the earth there does not rotate or orbit the sun, but angels turn themselves more or less directly toward the Lord. Those who turn themselves more directly to Him receive more warmth and less light, while those who turn themselves less directly to Him receive more light and less warmth. So it is that the heavens formed of angels have been distinguished into two kingdoms, one of which we call celestial, and the other spiritual. Celestial angels receive more warmth, and spiritual angels more light.
The appearance of the lands on which they dwell also varies in accordance with their reception of heat and light.
There is a complete correspondence, provided one substitutes for the motion of the earth a variation in the state of the angels.
102. All spiritual creations arising in consequence of the heat and light of their sun are, viewed in themselves, likewise one, but viewed as emanations from the affections of angels, they are not one, as will be seen in subsequent discussions.
When heat and light are united in heaven, the climate to angels is like that in springtime. But when they are not united, the climate is either like that in summer, or like that in winter, though not like winter in the colder zones, but like winter in the warmer zones. For the reception of love and wisdom in equal measure is the essence of what it is to be an angel, and an angel is an angel therefore according to the union of love and wisdom in him.
It is the same with a person in the church, if the love and wisdom in him, or charity and faith, are united.
103. The sun in the spiritual world appears at a middle height as distant from the angels as the sun in the natural world does from people. Most people coming from the world bring with them an idea of God as being at a height above their head, and of the Lord as being in heaven among the angels.
They bring with them an idea of God as being at a height above their head because God is called in the Word the Most High, and is said to dwell on high. Consequently they raise their eyes and hands upward when they entreat Him and worship Him-not knowing that by “most high” is meant inmost.
They bring with them an idea of the Lord as being in heaven among the angels because they think of Him only as being like any other man, and some as being like an angel-not knowing that the Lord is the one and only absolute God who rules the universe. If He were to be among the angels in heaven, He could not hold the universe under His gaze and under His direction and government. And if He did not shine before the eyes of those who are in the spiritual world as a sun, it would be impossible for angels to have any light. For angels are spiritual beings, and therefore the only light that is suited to their essence is spiritual light. That there is light in heaven, surpassing by far light on earth, will be seen below where we take up degrees.
104. So then, as regards the sun from which angels have their light and warmth, it appears at an elevation above the lands on which the angels dwell, at an altitude of about 45 degrees, which is a middle height. And it also appears as distant from the angels as the sun in the natural world does from people.
The spiritual sun appears at that height and distance constantly and does not move. So it is that for angels there are no intervals of time divided into days and years, nor any day’s advance from morning through midday to evening and night. Neither do they experience the passing of a year from spring through summer to autumn and winter, but have perpetual light and perpetual spring. Consequently instead of periods of time they have intervals of state there, as explained above.*
* No. 101.
105. The sun in the spiritual world appears at a middle height chiefly for the following reasons:
First, the heat and light which emanate from that sun are then in their intermediate degree, and so are in balance and thus in their proper proportion. For if the sun were to appear above a middle height, the inhabitants would experience more heat than light; if it were to appear below it, the inhabitants would experience more light than heat-as is the case on earth when the sun stands above or below mid-height in the sky. When the sun stands above that point, heat increases over light, and when it stands below it, light increases over heat. In fact light remains the same in summertime and wintertime, but heat intensifies or lessens in accordance with the sun’s degrees of altitude.
The second reason the sun in the spiritual world appears at a middle height over the angelic heaven is that it results in a climate of perpetual spring throughout the angelic heavens, so that the angels are in a state of peace; for this state corresponds to springtime on earth.
The third reason is that angels are thus able to turn their faces constantly to the Lord and behold Him with their eyes. For in whatever direction they turn their bodies angels have the east, thus the Lord, before their faces. This is a phenomenon peculiar to that world. It would not be possible if the sun in that world were to appear above or below mid-height, and not at all if it were to appear at the highest point above their head.
106. If the sun in the spiritual world did not appear as distant from the angels as the sun in the natural world does from people, the entire angelic heaven, and beneath it hell, and beneath these our terraqueous globe, would not be under the Lord’s oversight, direction, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and providence.
It is comparatively like the sun in our world. If our sun were not as distant from the earth as it appears, it could not be present and effectual in all lands by its heat and light. Thus it could not render subsidiary assistance to the sun of the spiritual world.
107. It is most necessary for it to be known that there are two suns, one spiritual and the other natural-the spiritual sun for people who are in the spiritual world, and the natural sun for people who are in the natural world. Unless this is known, one cannot properly understand any facet of creation and mankind, which are the subjects we are going to take up. Some effects may indeed be seen, but unless the causes of the effects are seen at the same time, the effects can be visible only as though in the darkness of night.
108. The distance between the sun and angels in the spiritual world is an appearance in accordance with their reception of Divine love and wisdom. All misconceptions that prevail in evil people and in the simple originate from affirming appearances.
As long as appearances remain appearances, they are apparent truths, and everyone may think and speak in terms of them. But when they are accepted as actual truths, which happens when people affirm them, then apparent truths become falsities and misconceptions.
For example, it is an appearance that the sun travels daily about the earth and proceeds annually in a path along the ecliptic. As long as this is not affirmed, it is an apparent truth, and everyone may think and speak in terms of it. For one may say that the sun rises and sets, and so produces in succession morning, midday, evening and night. Or one may say that the sun is now in such and such a degree of the ecliptic or of its altitude and now in that, and so produces in succession spring, summer, fall and winter. But when one affirms this appearance as being the actual truth, then out of his misconception the affirmer thinks and speaks falsity.
So it is with countless other appearances, not only in natural, civil and moral matters, but also in spiritual ones.
109. The same is the case with the distance of the sun in the spiritual world, the sun which is the first emanation of the Lord’s Divine love and wisdom. The truth is that there is no distance. Rather the distance is an appearance in accordance with the degree of the angels’ reception of Divine love and wisdom.
That distances in the spiritual world are appearances can be seen from points we demonstrated above, as from those in nos. 7-10, showing that the Divine does not exist in space, and from those in nos. 69-72, showing that the Divine fills every space and interval of space independently of space. If, then, there are no intervals of space, neither are there distances, or to say the same thing, if intervals of space are appearances, distances also are appearances, for distances are intervals of space.
110. The sun in the spiritual world appears to be at a distance from the angels for the reason that Divine love and wisdom are received by them in a matching degree of heat and light. For being created and finite, an angel cannot receive the Lord in the first degree of heat and light such as exists in the sun, because he would in that case be entirely consumed by it. Angels therefore receive the Lord in a degree of heat and light corresponding to their love and wisdom.
This can be illustrated by the following circumstance. An angel of the lowest heaven cannot ascend to angels of the third heaven, for if he ascends and enters their heaven, he falls as though into a swoon and his life appears to struggle with death. The reason is that he possesses love and wisdom in a lesser degree, and in that same degree are the warmth of his love and the light of his wisdom.
What then would be the case if an angel were to ascend on toward the sun and enter into its fire?
Because of the differences in angels’ reception of the Lord, the heavens also appear to be set apart from each other. The highest heaven, called the third heaven,* appears above the second heaven, and the second heaven above the first. Not that the heavens are separated by distance, but they appear to be. For the Lord is just as present in angels who are in the lowest heaven as He is in angels who are in the third. What causes the appearance of distance lies in the recipient vessels, in this case the angels, not in the Lord.
* Cf. 2 Corinthians 12:2.
111. The reality of this can hardly be comprehended if a natural idea is formed of it, because it has in it a notion of space; but it can be comprehended if a spiritual idea is formed, because this does not have in it a notion of space. That is the idea angels have of it.
Still, even if a natural idea is formed, this much can be comprehended, that love and wisdom, or in other words, the Lord, who is Divine love and wisdom, cannot possibly travel through intervals of space, but that He is present in everyone in accordance with the person’s reception of Him.
That the Lord is present in all people, He Himself teaches in Matthew 28:20,* and that He makes His abode in those who love Him, in John 24:21.**
* “lo, I am with you always.”
** “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.”
112. But some may regard this as a matter of superior wisdom, because we have affirmed it in terms of the heavens and angels. Yet the same is the case in relation to people. People are, in the interiors of their mind, warmed and enlightened by that same sun. They are warmed by its warmth and enlightened by its light in the measure that they receive love and wisdom from the Lord.
The difference between angels and people is that angels are under the spiritual sun only, while people are not only under that sun but under the sun of the world as well. For the bodies of people must be under both suns to live and survive. Not so the bodies of angels, which are spiritual.
113. Angels are in the Lord and have the Lord in them;* and because angels are recipient vessels, the Lord alone is heaven. Heaven is called the habitation or dwelling place of God,** and also the throne of God,*** and consequently people believe that God dwells there as a king in his kingdom. But God, or the Lord, is in the sun above the heavens, and He is present in the heavens by His presence in their heat and light, as we showed in the discussions under the previous two headings. Moreover, even though that is how the Lord is present in heaven, still He is present there as He is in Himself, for as we demonstrated just above in nos. 108-112, the distance between the sun and heaven is not distance but an appearance of distance. Consequently, since that distance is only an appearance, it follows that the Lord Himself is present in heaven, for He is present in the love and wisdom of the angels in heaven. And because He is present in the love and wisdom of all angels, and angels constitute heaven, He is present in the whole of heaven.
* Cf. John 15:4-7, 17:22, 23, 26.
** Deuteronomy 26:15; 1 Kings 8:30, 39, 43, 49; 2 Chronicles 6:21, 30, 30:27; Psalm 33:13, 14; Isaiah 63:15. Cf. Jeremiah 25:30.
*** Isaiah 66:1; Matthew 5:34, 23:22; Acts 7:49.
114. The Lord not only is present in heaven, but He also is heaven itself. That is because love and wisdom are what make an angel, and these two properties are the Lord’s in angels. It follows therefore that the Lord is heaven.
The fact is that angels are not angels in consequence of their native character. Their native character is altogether like that of any person, which is evil. This is the native character of angels because all angels were once people, and this native character remains in them from birth. It is only set aside, and to the extent it is set aside, to that extent they receive into them love and wisdom, which is to say, the Lord.
If anyone simply raises his understanding to some degree, he can see that the Lord can dwell only in what is His in angels, that is, in His own inherent character, which is love and wisdom, and cannot dwell at all in the native character of angels, which is evil. So it is that to the extent evil is set aside, to that extent the Lord is present in them, and to that extent they are angels. The very angelic quality of heaven is Divine love and wisdom. This Divine quality is called angelic when it exists in angels. Thus it is again apparent that angels are angels owing to the Lord and not to themselves. Consequently the same may be said of heaven.
115. But how the Lord is in an angel, and an angel in the Lord, cannot be comprehended unless one knows the nature of their conjunction. It is a conjunction of the Lord with the angel, and of the angel with the Lord. Consequently it is a reciprocal conjunction.
This conjunction on the part of the angel is as follows. An angel has no other perception than that he possesses love and wisdom of himself, like any person, and thus he feels as though love and wisdom are his as qualities belonging to him. If he did not have that perception, there would be no conjunction; thus he would not have the Lord in him, and he would not be in the Lord. Nor is it possible for the Lord to be in any angel or person unless the one in whom He is present with His love and wisdom perceives and feels that presence as something his own. Because of this the Lord is not only received, but, having been received, is retained and also loved in return. Consequently it is because of this that an angel becomes wise and remains wise.
Who could possibly want to love the Lord and the neighbor, and who could possibly want to become wise, if he did not feel and perceive what he loves, learns and incorporates as being something his own? Who would otherwise retain it in himself? If the case were not as it is, any love and wisdom flowing in would have no seat, for it would flow on through a person without affecting him. Thus the angel would not be an angel, and the person would not be a person; indeed, the angel or person would be only like something inanimate.
It can be seen from this that there must be reciprocity for conjunction to exist.
The fact of the matter is essentially this. Every angel possesses in him freedom and rationality. He has these two faculties in him in order that he may be capable of receiving love and wisdom from the Lord. Still, neither faculty, freedom or rationality, is his, but both are the Lord’s in him. Yet because these two faculties are intimately bound up with his life, so intimately that they may be called integral to his life, therefore they appear as powers belonging to him. Because of them he can think and will, and speak and act, and what he thinks, wills, speaks and does by virtue of them appears as something emanating from him. This makes possible the reciprocity necessary for conjunction.
[2] Even so, however, to the extent an angel believes that love and wisdom are inherent in him and so claims them as his own, to the same extent he lacks in him the angelic quality and thus conjunction with the Lord. For he has not arrived at the truth; and because truth is inseparable from the light of heaven, to that extent he cannot be in heaven. Indeed, because of his belief he denies that his life is from the Lord, believing that he lives of himself and consequently that he possesses the Divine essence.
In these two faculties, freedom and rationality, consists the life which we call angelic and human.
[3] From this it can be seen that an angel possesses the ability to reciprocate for the sake of conjunction with the Lord, but that regarded in itself, the ability to do so is not the angel’s but the Lord’s. So it is that if this ability to reciprocate, which causes the angel to perceive and feel as his what is the Lord’s, is abused by him, which he does by making it his, he falls from the angelic state.
That conjunction is reciprocal, the Lord Himself teaches in John 14:20-24, 15:4-6;* and that a conjunction of the Lord with a person and of a person with the Lord is achieved in things that are the Lord’s, which are called His words, in John 15:7.**
* “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.” (John 14:20-24)
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” (John 15:4-6)
** “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” (John 15:7)
117. There are people who suppose that Adam had such freedom or free will that he could love God and be wise of himself, and that this free will was lost in his posterity. But this is an error. For a person is not life but a recipient of life (see above, nos. 4-6, 55-60), and one who is a recipient of life cannot love and be wise by virtue of any power his own. Consequently when Adam tried to be wise and to love by his own power, he too fell from wisdom and love and was cast out of Paradise.
118. What we have just said in regard to an angel must also be said of heaven, which consists of angels, since the Divine in the greatest and least of things is the same, as we demonstrated above in nos. 77-82.
What we have said of an angel and heaven must likewise be said of a person and the church, for an angel of heaven and a person of the church operate in union through their conjunction. Moreover, in respect to his interior elements, which are those of his mind, a person of the church is an angel. However, by a person of the church we mean one who has the church in him.
119. In the spiritual world, the east is where the Lord appears as the sun, and the other points of the compass are determined in relation to it. We have discussed the sun of the spiritual world and its essence, the heat and light emanating from it, and the Lord’s presence because of them. We must now consider as well the zones in that world.
The reason for our dealing with that sun and the spiritual world is that our subject is God and His love and wisdom, and to consider these from a standpoint other than that of their origin would be to consider them from their effects and not from causes. Yet effects teach us nothing but effects, and if these alone are examined, they do not bring to light any cause, whereas causes shed light on effects. Moreover, to know effects from causes is to be wise, but to inquire into causes from effects is not to be wise, for fallacious appearances then present themselves, which the inquirer calls causes, and this is to make wisdom foolish. For causes are prior elements, and effects subsequent ones; and prior elements cannot be seen from the standpoint of subsequent ones, but subsequent elements can be seen from the standpoint of prior ones. The latter is the proper procedure.
This is the reason we are dealing here first with the spiritual world, for that is where all causes reside. Then after that we will deal with the natural world, where all the phenomena that appear there are effects.
120. We must now say something here about zones in the spiritual world. There are zones in the spiritual world just as in the natural world, but the zones in the spiritual world are-like that world itself-spiritual, while the zones in the natural world are-like that world-natural. Consequently the zones are so different as to have nothing in common.
There are four points of the compass in each world, called east, west, south and north. These four points in the natural world are constant, being determined in relation to the sun at its zenith in the south. Opposite to this is the north, with the east on one side and the west on the other. These directions are everywhere determined in relation to the south, for the position of the sun at its zenith in the south is everywhere the same and thus provides a fixed point of reference.
Not so in the spiritual world. There the points of the compass are determined in relation to its sun which appears constantly in the same place, and where it appears is the east. Consequently the determination of these points in that world is made, not as in the natural world in relation to the south, but in relation to the east. Opposite to that is the west, with the south on one side and the north on the other.
Nevertheless, the resulting zones are not created by the sun there, but by the inhabitants of that world, who are angels and spirits, as we will see in the discussion following this.
121. Since these zones from their origin, which is the Lord as the sun, are spiritual, therefore the regions inhabited by angels and spirits-all of which are established in accordance with these zones-are also spiritual. And they are spiritual because the inhabitants dwell where they do in accordance with their reception of love and wisdom from the Lord. Those possessing a higher degree of love dwell in the east, those possessing a lower degree of love in the west, those possessing a higher degree of wisdom in the south, and those possessing a lower degree of wisdom in the north.
So it is that in the Word, by the east in its highest sense is meant the Lord, and in a relative sense, love toward Him; by the west, a decreasing love toward Him; by the south, wisdom in a state of light; and by the north, wisdom in a state of comparative darkness. Or similar things are meant relative to the state of the people being referred to.
122. Since all the zones in the spiritual world are determined in relation to the east, and by the east in its highest sense is meant the Lord, and also Divine love, it is apparent that all things stand there in relation to the Lord and love toward Him. And further, that to the extent anyone does not possess that love, to that extent he is removed from the Lord and dwells either in the west, or in the south, or in the north, at this or that distance there in accordance with his reception of love.
123. Since the Lord as the sun is constantly in the east, therefore people in ancient times-among whom all elements of worship were representative of spiritual things-in their adorations turned their faces to the east. And to ensure their doing the same in all their worship, they turned their temples as well in that direction. It is for this reason that even temples today are built similarly positioned.
124. The zones in the spiritual world are not created by the Lord as the sun, but they are created by the angels in accordance with their reception. We have said that angels live apart from each other, some in the eastern zone, some in the western zone, some in the southern zone, and some in the northern zone. We also said that those who live in the eastern zone possess a higher degree of love, those in the western zone a lower degree of love, those in the southern zone wisdom in a state of light, and those in the northern zone wisdom in a state of comparative darkness.
This diversity in the regions of their abodes appears to be caused by the Lord as the sun, when in fact it is caused by the angels. The Lord is not present with a greater or lesser degree of love and wisdom in one angel than in another, or as the sun He is not present with a greater or lesser degree of warmth and light in one than in another, for He is everywhere the same. But He is not received by this or that angel in the same degree, and the difference in reception causes the angels to appear to themselves to be more or less distant from each other, and also to be situated variously in relation to the points of the compass.
It follows from this that the zones in the spiritual world are simply reflections of the angels’ differing degrees of reception of love and wisdom and so of warmth and light from the Lord as the sun.
The fact of this is apparent from points we demonstrated above in nos. 108-112, showing that distances in the spiritual world are appearances.
The Lord is in an angel, and an angel in the Lord, as we showed in a previous discussion.* But because the Lord as the sun appears to be at a distance from the angel, it appears as well that the Lord sees him from the sun, and that he sees the Lord in the sun, almost as in the case of an image seen in a mirror.
Consequently if we are to speak in terms of that appearance, then the case is as follows, that the Lord sees and gazes upon every angel as being directly before Him, but that the angels do not thus see and gaze upon the Lord in return. Those who are in a state of love toward the Lord from the Lord see Him straight ahead of them. Therefore they are in the east and west. But those who are more in a state of wisdom see the Lord off to the right, and those who are not so much in a state of wisdom off to the left. Therefore they are respectively in the north and south.
[2] The latter see the Lord at an angle to one side for the reason that love and wisdom emanate from the Lord conjointly, but they are not received conjointly by the angels, as we also said above;** and wisdom that outpaces love appears indeed to be wisdom, but still it is not, because wisdom outpacing love does not have in it any life from love.
This makes apparent the reason for the diversity of reception which causes the abodes of angels to appear in different zones in the spiritual world.
* Nos. 113ff.
** No. 99.
126. That their varying reception of love and wisdom determines what zone angels are in the spiritual world can be seen from the fact that an angel changes zones according to the increase or decrease of love in him. This in turn makes it clear that the zone is not determined by the Lord as the sun, but by the angel in accordance with his reception.
The case is the same with a person in respect to his spirit. In respect to his spirit he is in this or that zone in the spiritual world, no matter what region he is in in the natural world. For as we said above, the zones in the spiritual world have nothing in common with zones in the natural world. A person resides in the latter in respect to his body, but in the first in respect to his spirit.
127. In order that love and wisdom in an angel or person may be united, there are paired elements in all the constituents of his body. His eyes, ears and nostrils are paired organs. His hands, loins and feet are paired. The brain is divided into two hemispheres, the heart into two chambers, the lungs into two lobes, and so on with other organs. Thus we find in angels and people a right side and a left; and all their constituents located to the right relate to love which gives rise to wisdom, and all their constituents located to the left relate to wisdom arising from love; or to say the equivalent, all their constituents located to the right relate to good which gives rise to truth, and all their constituents located to the left relate to truth arising from good.
Angels and people have these pairs in order that love and wisdom, or good and truth, may operate in union and look as one to the Lord. But more on this subject in subsequent discussions.
128. It can be seen from this what a misconception and consequent falsity those people are caught up in who suppose that the Lord allots heaven arbitrarily, or that He arbitrarily grants one person to be wiser and more loving than another, when in fact the Lord wills everyone to be as wise and saved as another equally. For He provides for all the means. To the extent anyone accepts these means and lives in accordance with them, to that extent he becomes wise and is saved; for the Lord is the same in one person as in another. On the other hand, the recipients, who are angels and people, are not the same owing to their differing reception and life.
The fact of this can be seen from what we have now said about zones and the abodes of angels in accordance with them, namely, that this diversity is caused not by the Lord, but by the recipients.
129. Angels turn their faces continually to the Lord as the sun, and thus have the south to their right, the north to their left, and the west to their rear. Everything we say here about angels and their turning to the Lord as the sun must be interpreted as applying to people, too, in respect to their spirit. For in respect to his mind a person is a spirit, and if he lives in a state of love and wisdom, he is an angel. Consequently after death, when he puts off his outer coverings which he took from the natural world, he also becomes a spirit or angel.
Furthermore, because angels continually turn their faces to the sun in the east, thus to the Lord, people also say of a person who is in a state of love and wisdom from the Lord that he sees God, that he looks to God, that he has God before his eyes, meaning that in his life he is like an angel.
People say things like this in the world both because they actually occur in heaven and because they actually occur in a person’s spirit. Who does not see God before him when he prays, in whatever direction his face is turned?
Actually, when angels think more interiorly of the Lord, they do not think of Him then as being other than in them. Interior thought does not itself produce an appearance of distance, but exterior thought does, thought which is bound up with the vision of the eyes. That is because exterior thought is caught up in space, unlike interior thought; and even when it is not caught up in space, as in the spiritual world, still it is caught up in the appearance of space.
[2] But this can be little understood by anyone who thinks of God in terms of space. For God is present everywhere, and yet does not exist in space. Thus He is both within and around an angel, and therefore an angel can see God, that is to say, the Lord, both within and around him-within him when he thinks in accord with love and wisdom, and around him when he thinks about love and wisdom.
On this subject, however, we will say something more particularly in treatises on The Lord’s Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence.*
Let everyone take care not to fall into the detestable heresy of supposing that God infused Himself into people so as to have existence in them and no longer in Himself. The fact is that God is present everywhere, both within a person and around him. For He is present through all space independently of space, as shown above in nos. 7-10 and 69-72. Indeed, if He were to have His existence in people, He would be not only divisible but also bounded by space. In fact a person might even then suppose himself to be God.
This heresy is so abhorrent that in the spiritual world it stinks like a rotting corpse.
* These treatises have not been found and perhaps were never written.
131. The turning of angels to the Lord is of such a nature that, in whatever direction they turn their body, they behold the Lord as the sun before them. An angel can turn around and around and so see the various sights surrounding him, but still the Lord as the sun appears continually in front of him.
This may seem extraordinary, but yet it is the truth. I have been granted as well to see the Lord as the sun in this way. I see Him in front of me now, and have seen Him in the same way for a number of years, no matter in what direction I have turned in the world.
132. Since angels in heaven all have the Lord as the sun-thus the east-in front of them, it follows that to their right is the south, to their left the north, and to their rear the west, and this continually in whatever direction they turn their body. For as we said before, all points of the compass in the spiritual world are determined in relation to the east. Consequently those for whom the east is before their eyes are in these zones-indeed, they are themselves what determine them; for as we showed above in nos. 124-128, the zones are not created by the Lord as the sun, but by the angels in accordance with their reception.
133. Now because heaven consists of angels, and angels are as described, it follows that the whole of heaven turns to the Lord, and that in consequence of that turning the Lord governs heaven as a single individual, which is also how heaven appears in the Lord’s sight. That heaven in the Lord’s sight is like a single individual may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 59-87.
This, too, is the reason there are zones in heaven.
134. Since the zones are thus engraved, so to speak, on every angel, and on the whole of heaven as well, therefore an angel knows the location of his home and of his place of abode wherever he goes, unlike a person in the world. A person does not know the location of his home and place of abode from any interior orientation for the reason that he thinks in terms of space, thus in terms of the points of the compass in the natural world, which have nothing in common with the zones in the spiritual world.
On the other hand, birds and animals have this knowledge in them, for it is inborn in them to know the location of their homes and places of abode instinctively, as people know from a good deal of empirical observation-evidence that a like phenomenon is found in the spiritual world. For all phenomena that occur in the natural world are effects, and all phenomena that occur in the spiritual world are the causes of those effects. One does not find anything natural that does not have its cause from something spiritual.
135. All the interior elements of both mind and body in angels are turned to the Lord as the sun. Angels possess an intellect and will, and they have a face and body. They also possess the interior elements of the intellect and will and of the face and body.
The interior elements of the intellect and will are those connected with their interior affection and thought. The interior elements of the face are the brains, and the interior elements of the body are its viscera, of which the primary ones are the heart and lungs.
In short, angels possess each and every component that people have on earth. It is because of them that angels are human. The outward form apart from those inner elements is not what causes angels to be human, but the outward form in conjunction with them, indeed, as a result of them. Angels would otherwise be only semblances of human beings, having no life in them, because they would lack any form of life within.
136. People know that the will and intellect direct the body to do its bidding, for what the intellect thinks, the mouth speaks, and what the will wills, the body does. And it is apparent from this that the body is a form corresponding to the intellect and will, and that because form is predicated also of the intellect and will, the form of the body corresponds to the form of the intellect and will. But to describe the nature of the one and the other form would be out of place here, except to say that there are countless elements in each, and that the countless elements in one operate in concert with those in the other, because they correspond to each other.
It is in consequence of this that the mind, or will and intellect, directs the body to do its bidding, thus governing it entirely as it does itself.
It follows from this that the interior elements of the mind operate in concert with the interior elements of the body, and that the outward elements of the mind operate in concert with the outward elements of the body.
We will say more about the interior elements of the mind later on after we have discussed the degrees of life, and more then as well about the interior elements of the body.
137. Since the interior elements of the mind operate in concert with the interior elements of the body, it follows that when the interior elements of the mind turn to the Lord as the sun, the interior elements of the body also do likewise; and that because the outward elements of each, of both the mind and the body, depend on their interior elements, these outward elements do the same as well. For whatever the outward component does, it does in consequence of the inner ones, inasmuch as the common whole takes all its character from the particular elements which form it.
It is apparent from this that because an angel turns his face and body to the Lord as the sun, all the interior elements of his mind and body are turned in that direction too.
The case is the same with a person if he continually has the Lord before his eyes, which he does if he is in a state of love and wisdom. He then beholds the Lord not only with his eyes and face, but with his whole mind and heart as well; that is, he regards Him with all the constituents of his will and intellect, and at the same time with all the constituents of his body.
138. This turning to the Lord is an actual one, entailing a certain elevation; for the person is elevated into the warmth and light of heaven, which is occasioned by the opening of his interior elements. When these are opened, love and wisdom flow into the interior elements of his mind, and the warmth and light of heaven into the interior elements of his body. This produces the elevation, an elevation which is like rising from a cloud into open air, or like rising from the air into the stratosphere. Love and wisdom with their warmth and light are then the Lord in the person, and it is the Lord in the person who, as we said above,* turns the person to Him.
The contrary is the case in people who are not in a state of love and wisdom, and still more in those who are opposed to love and wisdom. In them the interior elements of both mind and body are closed, and when they are closed, the outward elements act in opposition to the Lord, for it is inherent in their nature to do so. The result is that such people turn their back to the Lord, and to turn one’s back to the Lord is to turn toward hell.
* No. 130.
139. This actual turning to the Lord springs from love and at the same time from wisdom, and not from love alone, nor from wisdom alone. Love alone is like being without its expression, for love has expression in wisdom. And wisdom without love is like expression without its being, for wisdom has being from love.
It is possible indeed for love to exist without wisdom, but that is a love found in people and not in the Lord. It is also possible for wisdom to exist without love, but even though that wisdom comes from the Lord, it does not have the Lord in it; for it is like a wintry light which, although emanating from the sun, does not have in it the sun’s essence, which is warmth.
140. Every spirit of every kind turns in like manner to his dominant love. We must first define what we mean by a spirit and what we mean by an angel.
Every person after death comes first into the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell, and there he spends his days (or states) being prepared in accordance with his life either for heaven or for hell.
As long as he remains in that world he is called a spirit. A spirit who has been raised from that world into heaven is called an angel. One who has been cast down into hell is called a satanic spirit or devil.
While these spirits are in the world of spirits, one who is being prepared for heaven is called an angelic spirit, and one who is being prepared for hell is called a hellish or infernal spirit. An angelic spirit is in the meantime conjoined with heaven, and a hellish spirit with hell.
All spirits who are in the world of spirits are attached to people, because in respect to the interior elements of their mind people are likewise between heaven and hell, and through those spirits they have, in accordance with their life, communication with heaven or with hell.
The reader should be aware that the world of spirits and the spiritual world are not interchangeable terms. The world of spirits is the world of which we have just spoken. The spiritual world, on the other hand, includes in its entirety both that world and heaven and hell.
141. We must also say something about loves, because we are discussing the turning of angels and spirits toward their loves in accordance with their loves.
The whole of heaven is distinguished into societies in accordance with all the different kinds of loves existing there. So, too, hell. And so also the world of spirits. Heaven, however, is distinguished into societies in accordance with different kinds of heavenly loves; hell into societies in accordance with different kinds of hellish loves; and the world of spirits into societies in accordance with different kinds of both heavenly and hellish loves.
There are two loves which head all the rest, or to which all other loves are related. The love which is at the head of all heavenly loves or to which all other heavenly loves are related is love toward the Lord. And the love which is at the head of all hellish loves or to which all other hellish loves are related is a love of ruling stemming from a love of self. These two loves are diametrically opposed to each other.
142. Since these two loves-love toward the Lord and a love of ruling stemming from a love of self-are altogether opposed to each other, and because people who are prompted by love toward the Lord all turn to the Lord as the sun (as reported under the previous heading), it can be seen that people who are prompted by a love of ruling stemming from a love of self all turn their back to the Lord.
They turn thus in opposite directions for the reason that people who are prompted by love toward the Lord love nothing more than to be led by the Lord, and they want the Lord alone to rule, whereas people who are prompted by a love of ruling stemming from a love of self love nothing more than to lead themselves, and they want only themselves to rule.
We say a love of ruling stemming from a love of self, because a love of ruling is possible that stems from a love of performing useful services, a love which, because it goes hand in hand with love for the neighbor, is a spiritual love. But this love cannot be called a love of ruling, but a love of performing useful services.
143. Every spirit of every kind turns to his dominant love for the reason that love is everyone’s life (as we showed in Part One, nos. 1-3), and life turns its recipient vessels, which we call members, organs and viscera, thus the whole person, to that society which is prompted by the same love as he is, thus to where his love is.
144. Since a love of ruling stemming from a love of self is altogether opposed to love toward the Lord, therefore spirits who are prompted by that love of ruling turn their face in the opposite direction from the Lord, and so look with their eyes to the west in their world. Moreover, because they are in body turned around in a contrary direction, to their rear is the east, to their right the north, and to their left the south.
They have the east to their rear because they hate the Lord. They have the north to their right because they love fallacious ideas and consequent falsities. And they have the south to their left because they disdain the light of wisdom.
They can turn around and around, but all the sights that they see surrounding them appear to their love the same.
These spirits are all sensually natural, and some are of such a character as to believe that they alone are alive, regarding others as phantoms. They believe they are wiser than all others, even though they are insane.
145. The spiritual world has roads appearing in it, paved like roads in the natural world. Some lead to heaven, and some to hell. The roads which lead to hell are not visible, however, to spirits who are going to heaven, nor are the roads which lead to heaven visible to spirits who are going to hell. There are roads like this beyond number, for they go to every society in heaven and to every society in hell. Every spirit enters upon the way which leads to the society where his love is, nor does he see any paths leading elsewhere.
It is for this reason that as every spirit turns to his dominant love, he also proceeds toward it.
People call the Holy Spirit the emanating Divine, and yet no one knows why it is called emanating. People do not know because they have not known before that the Lord appears to angels as the sun, and that from that sun emanates warmth which in its essence is Divine love, and light which in its essence is Divine wisdom. As long as this remained unknown, people could not but suppose that the emanating Divine was a distinct Divine entity, which is also the reason we find it said in the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity that there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and still another of the Holy Spirit.
[2] Now, however, when it is known that the Lord appears as a sun, a proper idea may be had of the emanating Divine which is called the Holy Spirit-namely, that it is inseparable from the Lord, but emanates from Him like heat and light from the sun. This, too, is the reason that the more love and wisdom angels possess, the more Divine warmth and light they have.
Without knowing that the Lord appears in the spiritual world as the sun, and that His Divinity emanates from it in the way described, no one could ever know what is meant by its emanating-whether it means, for example, only a communication of those qualities which are properties of the Father and Son, or simply enlightenment and instruction. But even so, it is not the mark of enlightened reason to acknowledge it as a distinct Divine entity, and to call it a God and set it apart, when it is also known that there is one God, and that one omnipresent.
147. We have shown above that God does not exist in space, and that in consequence of this He is omnipresent, and also that the Divine is everywhere the same, but that we find a varying appearance of it in angels and people because of their varying reception.
Now because the Divinity emanating from the Lord as the sun is contained in its light and warmth, and because the light and warmth flow first into all-encompassing media which in the world are called atmospheres, and these are the containers of clouds, it can be seen that as the interior elements which form the intellect in people and angels are enveloped in such clouds, so the intellect is the receptacle of the emanating Divine. By clouds we mean spiritual clouds, which are thoughts, which, if they spring from truths, accord with Divine wisdom, but which, if they spring from falsities, conflict. Consequently when thoughts springing from truths become visible in the spiritual world, they also appear as white clouds, and thoughts springing from falsities as black clouds.
It can be seen from this that the emanating Divine is found indeed in all people, but that it is veiled by them in various ways.
148. Since the Divine itself is present in angels and people by means of spiritual warmth and light, therefore when those possessing truths of Divine wisdom and goods of Divine love are affected by those truths and goods and think in accord with them about them with affection, they are said to grow warm in God. At times this becomes also apparent to people’s perception and sensation, as when a preacher is speaking with zeal.
These same people are also said to be enlightened by God, because by His emanating Divinity the Lord not only ignites the will with spiritual warmth but also enlightens the intellect with spiritual light.
149. That the Holy Spirit is identical with the Lord, and is the truth itself by which people are enlightened, is apparent from these passages in the Word:
(Jesus said,) “…when…the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth; …He will not speak on His own, but whatever He has heard He will speak….” (John 16:13)
“He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:14)
…for He [dwells] with (the disciples) and will be in (them). (John 14:17)
(Jesus said,) “The (words) that I speak to you are spirit and…life.” (John 6:63)
From these declarations it is apparent that the truth itself which emanates from the Lord is called the Holy Spirit-truth which, because it exists in a state of light, enlightens.
150. The enlightenment attributed to the Holy Spirit exists indeed in people from the Lord, but still it is effected by means of spirits and angels. However, the nature of that intermediation cannot yet be described, except to say that angels and spirits cannot in the least enlighten people on their own, because they themselves are enlightened by the Lord in the same way as people; and because they are themselves enlightened in the same way, it follows that all enlightenment comes from the Lord alone.
We say that enlightenment occurs by means of angels or spirits because a person in a state of enlightenment is then placed in the midst of angels and spirits who more than others receive enlightenment from the Lord alone.
151. The Lord created the universe and everything in it by means of the sun which is the first emanation of His Divine love and wisdom. By the Lord we mean God from eternity or Jehovah, who is called the Father and the Creator, because the Lord is identical with Him, as we showed in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord. Consequently in subsequent discussions where we again consider creation, we use the term Lord.
152. We fully demonstrated in Part One, specifically in nos. 52-54, that everything in the universe was created by Divine love and wisdom. We will now show here that it was done by means of the sun which is the first emanation of Divine love and wisdom.
No one who is capable of seeing effects from causes, and of seeing from causes then effects in their order and sequence, can deny that the sun is the first work of creation; for all things that exist in its planetary system are sustained by it, and because they are sustained by it, they also arose from it. The one fact points to and attests to the other. For all things are under the sun’s gaze, because it established them to be so, and to keep them under its gaze is to establish them continually. That is why we also say that continued existence is a continual coming into existence. Moreover, if anything were to be totally removed from the sun’s flowing in through the atmospheres, it would instantly disintegrate. For there are purer and purer atmospheres, which are actuated in their operation by the sun, and these hold all things together in connection. Now because the continued existence of the universe and everything in it is due to the sun, it is apparent that the sun is the first work of creation, from which springs all else.
We say it is due to the sun, but we mean to the Lord by means of the sun, for the sun, too, was created by the Lord.
153. There are two suns by which the Lord created all things-the sun in the spiritual world and the sun in the natural world. The Lord created all things by means of the sun in the spiritual world and not by means of the sun in the natural world, for the sun in the natural world is far below the sun in the spiritual world. The sun in the natural world is in an intermediate position. Above it is the spiritual world, and below it is the natural world. And the sun in the natural world was created to contribute subsidiary assistance. (We will say more about this assistance in subsequent discussions.)
154. The Lord created the universe and everything in it by means of the sun in the spiritual world because that sun is the first emanation of His Divine love and wisdom, and everything originates from Divine love and wisdom, as we demonstrated above in nos. 52-82.
We find in everything created, in the grandest and in the most infinitesimal, three elements-end, cause and effect. There is nothing created that does not have in it these three elements.
In the grand scheme or in the universe these three occur in sequence as follows. In the sun which is the first emanation of Divine love and wisdom is found the end or purpose in all things. In the spiritual world are found the causes of all things. And in the natural world are found the effects of all things. But how these three exist in the firsts of creation and in the lasts of it will be told in subsequent discussions.
Now because there is nothing created that does not have in it these three elements, it follows that the Lord created the universe and everything in it by the sun which has in it the end or purpose in all things.
155. Creation itself cannot be explained to human comprehension unless one removes from his thinking any thought of space and time. But if these are removed, it can be comprehended.
Remove if you can, or as far as you can, thought of space and time, and keep your mind intent on an idea abstracted from these. You will then perceive there to be no difference between a large interval of space and an infinitesimal one, and in that case you cannot but have the same idea of the creation of the universe as of the creation of particular elements in the universe. You will also perceive that the diversity in created things arises from the fact that there are infinite elements in the human God, and consequently an indefinite number of elements in the sun which is the first emanation from Him-an indefinite number of elements which appear as in a reflected image in the created universe. That is the reason it is impossible to find anywhere one thing identical to another. That is the reason for the variety in all things, a variety visible to the eye together with space in the natural world, and in an appearance of space in the spiritual world. And that variety exists both in general characteristics and in particular ones.
These are points that we demonstrated in Part One. As for example, that the infinite elements in the human God are, in a distinct combination, one (nos. 17-22). That everything in the universe has been created by Divine love and wisdom (nos. 52-54). That everything in the created universe is a recipient of the Divine love and wisdom of the human God (nos. 55-60). That the Divine does not exist in space (nos. 7-10). That the Divine fills every space and interval of space independently of space (nos. 69-72). That the Divine in the greatest and least of things is the same (nos. 77-82).
156. The creation of the universe and everything in it cannot be said to have proceeded from point to point in space, or from moment to moment in time, thus progressively and successively. Rather it must be said to have proceeded from eternity and infinity-not from an eternity of time, because that does not exist, but from an eternity devoid of time, for that is identical with the Divine; and not from an infinity of space, because that does not exist, but from an infinity devoid of space, which is likewise identical with the Divine.
I know that these concepts transcend the ideas of thoughts which are caught up in natural light, but they do not transcend the ideas of thoughts which are formed in a state of spiritual light, for the latter have in them no notion of space or time. In fact, neither do these concepts completely transcend the ideas of thoughts formed in natural light, for when told that an infinity of space is not possible, everyone in accord with reason assents to it. It is the same with eternity, for this is an infinity of time. If we say, “to eternity,” this is comprehended from the standpoint of time, but it is not comprehended if we say, “from eternity,” unless the notion of time is set aside.
157. The sun in the natural world is nothing but fire and consequently lifeless, and because nature takes its origin from that sun, it too is lifeless. Creation itself cannot in the least be ascribed to the sun of the natural world, but must be ascribed wholly to the sun of the spiritual world, since the sun in the natural world is completely lifeless, while the sun in the spiritual world is alive, being the first emanation of Divine love and wisdom; and something that is lifeless does not do anything by itself, but as the result of some other agency. Consequently to ascribe to it any responsibility for creation would be like ascribing to the tool wielded in the hands of an artisan the work which the artisan accomplishes.
The sun in the natural world is sheer fire from which every particle of life has been withdrawn. In contrast, the sun in the spiritual world is fire which has in it Divine life.
The idea angels have of the fire of the sun in the natural world and of the fire of the sun in the spiritual world is this-that the Divine life is present inwardly in the fire of the sun in the spiritual world, but outwardly in the fire of the sun in the natural world.
It can be seen from this that the activity of the natural sun comes not from itself, but from a living force emanating from the sun of the spiritual world. Consequently if the living force of that sun were to be withdrawn or removed, the natural sun would collapse.
It is owing to this that worship of the sun is, of all the forms of worshiping God, the lowest, for it is altogether as lifeless as the sun itself. Therefore such worship is called in the Word an abomination.*
* Deuteronomy 17:2-5.
158. Since the sun of the natural world is nothing but fire and consequently lifeless, therefore the warmth emanating from it is also lifeless, and the light emanating from it, too, is lifeless. The atmospheres as well, which we call the ether and air, and which receive in their embrace and transmit the warmth and light of that sun, are lifeless.
Since these are lifeless, each and every one of the world’s constituents which lie below and are called earths is also lifeless. Yet each and every one is nevertheless surrounded by spiritual forces which emanate and flow out from the sun of the spiritual world. If they were not surrounded by these forces, the elemental earths could not have been activated to produce forms of useful service, which are plants, nor forms of life, which are animals. Nor could they have supplied the materials which enable mankind to exist and endure.
159. Now because nature originates from that sun, and everything that arises and endures from it is called natural, it follows that nature with each and every one of its constituents is lifeless.
That nature appears in people and animals as alive is owing to the life which accompanies and activates it.
160. Since the lowest constituents of nature which form the elemental earths are lifeless, and they are not changeable and variable in accordance with states of affections and thoughts as in the spiritual world, but are inalterable and fixed, therefore we find in nature intervals of space and extents of space.
These constituents are as described because creation terminated in them and in its resting ceased. Consequently it is apparent that intervals of space are properties of nature; and because intervals of space in nature are not appearances of space in accordance with states of life as in the spiritual world, they can also be called lifeless.
161. Since intervals of time are likewise set and constant, they are also properties of nature; for the duration of a day is constantly twenty-four hours, and the duration of a year is constantly 365 1/4 days.
The periods of light and darkness and of warmth and coldness, which cause these intervals to vary in character, themselves recur in constant cycles. The periods which recur in cycles every day are morning, afternoon, evening and night. The periods which recur in cycles every year are spring, summer, fall and winter. The seasons of the year also constantly vary the hours of daylight.
Because these periods are not states of life as in the spiritual world, they too are all lifeless. For one finds in the spiritual world a constant light and constant warmth, the light corresponding to the state of wisdom in angels, and the warmth to the state of love, so that the states they pass through are states of life.
162. One can see from this the foolishness of people who ascribe all things to nature. People who have confirmed themselves on the side of nature have induced in themselves a state of mind so set that they are no longer willing to raise their minds above nature. Consequently their minds are closed upwardly and opened downwardly, so that they become sensually natural people who are spiritually lifeless. Moreover, because they then think only in accord with ideas they have gained from their bodily senses, or by means of them from the world, they also at heart deny God.
Because any conjunction with heaven is then broken, a conjunction with hell is formed, leaving them only the faculties of thinking and willing-the faculty of thinking in accord with rationality, and the faculty of willing in freedom-two faculties which every person has from the Lord and which are not taken away.
These two faculties exist in devils and angels alike, but devils devote them to thinking insanely and doing evil, whereas angels devote them to thinking wisely and doing good.
163. Without the two suns, one alive and the other lifeless, creation would not exist. The universe is divided in general into two worlds, one spiritual and one natural. Inhabiting the spiritual world are angels and spirits. Inhabiting the natural world are people.
These two worlds are totally alike in their outward aspect-so alike that they cannot be distinguished-but in their inward aspect they are entirely unalike. The people who inhabit the spiritual world-who, as we said, are called angels and spirits-are themselves spiritual, and because they are spiritual, they think spiritually and speak spiritually. In contrast, people who inhabit the natural world are natural, and therefore they think naturally and speak naturally; and spiritual thought and speech have nothing in common with natural thought and speech.
It is apparent from this that these two worlds, one spiritual and one natural, are entirely distinct from each other, so distinct that they cannot in any way blend together.
164. Now because these two worlds are so distinct, it is necessary that there be two suns, one from which everything spiritual originates, and the other from which everything natural originates. And because everything spiritual from its origin is alive, and everything natural from its origin is lifeless, and their origins are the suns, it follows that the one sun is alive and that the other sun is lifeless, and that the lifeless sun was itself created by the Lord by means of the alive sun.
165. A lifeless sun was created in order that everything in the final elements of creation might be fixed, set and constant, and so that there might arise from them forms that would last and endure. Only in this way is creation securely established.
The terraqueous globe in which, on which and about which these elements and forms exist serves as a base and foundation; for it is the final work in which everything terminates and on which everything rests.
It also serves as a womb from which the effects which are the ends in creation are produced-something we will say more about in subsequent discussions.
166. The Lord created everything by means of the alive sun and nothing by means of the lifeless sun, and this can be seen from the fact that something alive disposes what is lifeless to compliance with itself and forms it to serve the uses which it has as its goals. This does not occur, however, in reverse.
To think that everything is due to nature, and that even life is due to it, is possible only to one bereft of reason. Such a one does not know what life is. Nature cannot impart life to anything, for nature in itself is totally inert. Something lifeless impelling something alive, or a lifeless force impelling a living force, or to say the equivalent, something natural impelling something spiritual, is totally contrary to order, and therefore to entertain the thought is contrary to the sight of sound reason.
It is possible, indeed, for something lifeless or natural to be perverted or altered in many ways by extraneous events, but still it cannot impel life, but is impelled by life in accordance with the induced alteration in form. The case is identical with that of physical influx into the spiritual operations of the soul-something known not to occur because it is not possible.
167. The end in creation finds expression in the lasts of it, which is for everything to return to the Creator and conjunction take place. We must first say something about ends. There are in everything three ingredients which follow in order, called the first end, the intermediate end, and the last end, and called also end, cause, and effect.
These three ingredients must exist concurrently in everything for it to be anything; for a first end without an intermediate end and at the same time a last end does not occur, or to say the same thing, an end without a cause and effect does not occur. By the same token, neither does a cause occur alone without an end producing it and without an effect containing it. So, too, neither does an effect occur alone, or an effect without a cause and its accompanying end.
The fact of this can be comprehended if one considers that an end without an effect or cut off from the effect is not anything having expression, so that it is nothing but a word. For to be an end in actuality, an end must end in something, and it ends in the effect, in which for the first time it is called an end because it is the end.
It appears as though an instrumental or efficient cause occurs by itself, but this is an appearance arising from the fact that it exists in the effect. But if it is cut off from the effect, it instantly disappears.
It is apparent from this that these three ingredients-end, cause and effect-must exist in everything for it to be anything.
168. It must further be known that the end is everything in the cause and also everything in the effect. It is owing to this that end, cause and effect are called the first end, intermediate end, and last end.
However, for the end to be everything in the cause, something must exist from the end for it to dwell in, and for the end to be everything in the effect, something must exist from the end through the cause for it to dwell in. For an end cannot exist in itself alone, but must exist in something arising from it, in which it can be present as its everything and by acting produce effects until it rests. The terminus in which it rests is the last end, which is called the effect.
169. Throughout the created universe, both in its grandest constituents and in its most infinitesimal, we find these three ingredients, namely, end, cause and effect. These three are found in the grandest and most infinitesimal constituents of the universe for the reason that the same three exist in God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity. However, because He is infinite, and because the infinite elements in an infinite being are, in a distinct combination, one (as demonstrated above in nos. 17-22), therefore in Him these three also, and the three in His infinite elements, are, in a distinct combination, one.
It is in consequence of this that the universe-which was created from His being, and which regarded in terms of its functions is an image of Him-acquired these three ingredients in each and all of its constituents.
170. The universal end of creation, or the end in all its constituents, is for an eternal conjunction of the Creator with the created universe to take place, and this is not possible without vessels in which His Divinity can exist as though in itself, thus in which it can dwell and abide. For these vessels to be His dwellings or abodes, they must be recipients of His love and wisdom as though of themselves, thus recipients which will as though of themselves elevate themselves to the Creator and conjoin themselves with Him. Without this reciprocity, conjunction is not possible.
These vessels are human beings, who are able as though of themselves to elevate and conjoin themselves. That human beings are such vessels, and that they are recipients of the Divine as though of themselves-this we have demonstrated several times above.
By that conjunction the Lord is present in every work created by Him. For everything was created ultimately for the sake of mankind. Consequently the uses of all that He created ascend by degrees from the lowest created forms to mankind, and through mankind to God the Creator from whom they originate, as we showed above in nos. 65-68.
171. Creation advances to this ultimate end continually by means of the aforesaid three ingredients, which are end, cause and effect, because the same three exist in the Lord the Creator, as we said just above; and the Divine is present through all space independently of space (nos. 69-72), and in the greatest and least of things is the same (nos. 77-82). It is apparent from this that the created universe in its overall advancement to the ultimate end is, relatively to it, the intermediate end. For the Lord the Creator continually raises up from the earth forms of useful endeavor and activity in succession, culminating in the human being, who in respect to his body is from the same origin. The human being is then raised up by his reception of love and wisdom from the Lord. Moreover, in order that he may receive love and wisdom, all the means have been provided. He has also been formed such that he is capable of receiving them if only he is willing.
From what we have now said it can be seen-even though still only generally-that the end in creation finds expression in the lasts of it, which is for everything to return to the Creator and conjunction take place.
172. The existence of these three-end, cause and effect-in each and all things that have been created can also be seen from the fact that all effects, which are called last ends, become anew first ends in unbroken succession extending from their origin, which is the Lord the Creator, to their last, which is the conjunction of mankind with Him.
That all last ends become anew first ends is apparent from this, that there is nothing so inert and lifeless that it has in it no capability of producing an effect. Even sand emits an exhalation such that it assists in producing something further, thus in producing an effect.
The spiritual world has in it atmospheres, bodies of water and lands, like the natural world; only the first are spiritual, while the latter are natural. The fact that the spiritual world and the natural world are alike, the only difference being that each and every thing in the spiritual world is spiritual, while each and every thing in the natural world is natural-this we have declared in preceding discussions and shown in the book Heaven and Hell.
Since these two worlds are alike, therefore they each have in them atmospheres, bodies of water and lands, which are the general constituents through which and from which each and all things arise with infinite variety.
They are spiritual in the spiritual world because they arise from a sun which is the first emanation of the Lord’s Divine love and wisdom, and they receive into them from Him the Divine fire which is love and the Divine light which is wisdom and convey both down to the heavens where angels dwell. They also bring about the presence of that sun in the greatest and least of things there.
Spiritual atmospheres are the discrete substances or most elemental forms arising from the sun. Moreover, because they each receive the sun singly and separately, therefore the sun’s fire-being apportioned among so many substances or forms and enveloped, so to speak, by them, and by the envelopments tempered-becomes heat, a heat finally suited to the love of angels in heaven and to that of spirits beneath heaven. It is the same with the sun’s light.
Natural atmospheres in this respect are like the spiritual atmospheres. They, too, are discrete substances or elemental forms arising from the sun of the natural world, which likewise receive the sun singly and separately, storing its fire in them and tempering it, and conveying it down to the earth where people dwell. And doing the same with its light.
That this is the difference between spiritual atmospheres and natural atmospheres comes from angelic wisdom.
The same can also be seen from the fact that angels and spirits likewise see as people do in the natural world, and sight is not possible except by means of an atmosphere purer than air.
It can also be seen from the fact that angels and spirits likewise think and have affections as people do in the natural world, and thought and affection are not possible except by means of still purer atmospheres.
And finally it can be seen from the fact that all the constituents of angels’ and spirits’ bodies, both the external ones and the internal ones, are held in connection by atmospheres, the outward constituents by the atmosphere of air, and the internal ones by the atmospheres of the ether. It is plain that without the surrounding pressure and action of these atmospheres, the inner and outer forms of the body would fly apart and be dispersed.
Since angels are spiritual, and each and all of the constituents of their bodies are held in their connection, form and arrangement by atmospheres, it follows that those atmospheres are spiritual; and they are spiritual because they arise from the spiritual sun, which is the first emanation of the Lord’s Divine love and wisdom.
That there are degrees of love and wisdom can be plainly seen from the love and wisdom of the angels of the three heavens. Angels of the third heaven excel angels of the second heaven in their love and wisdom, and these in turn excel angels of the lowest heaven, and this to such an extent that they cannot dwell together. The degrees of their love and wisdom distinguish them and separate them.
So it is that angels of the lower heavens cannot ascend to angels of the higher heavens, and if it is granted them to ascend, they do not then see those higher angels, nor anything of their surroundings. The reason they do not see them is that the love and wisdom of those higher angels is in a higher degree, which transcends their perception. For every angel is an embodiment of his love and wisdom, and love together with wisdom is in its form the human being, because God, who is love itself and wisdom itself, is a human God.
[2] I have been granted several times to see angels of the lowest heaven ascend to angels of the third heaven, and when they had worked their way up there, I heard them complain that they did not see anyone, even though they were surrounded by those higher angels. They were afterward then informed that the higher angels were invisible to them because they were incapable of perceiving those angels’ love and wisdom, and that it is an angel’s love and wisdom that cause him to be seen as a person.
In the heavens the case is as follows. The nature and measure of the love angels possess determines the nature and measure of the warmth they experience. Their light is likewise determined by their wisdom. The reason is that love exists in them in a state of warmth, and wisdom in a state of light, as we have shown before.
It is the same on earth with people, but with the difference that angels feel that warmth and see that light, whereas people do not. The reason is that people are living in a world of natural warmth and light, and as long as they are they do not feel spiritual warmth except as the result of some delighting of their love, and do not see spiritual light except as the result of a perception of truth.
Now because as long as a person is living in a world of natural warmth and light he is not at all aware of the spiritual warmth and light in him, and nothing of these can be known except through experience gained from the spiritual world, therefore we must say something here in particular about the warmth and light possessed by angels and their heavens. From there and nowhere else is enlightenment on this subject possible.
As regards the spiritual light possessed by angels, therefore, this I have been granted to see with my own eyes. The light surrounding angels of the higher heavens is so bright that its brilliance cannot be described, not even in comparison to the brightness of snow, and it is at the same time so glowing that neither can its glow be described, not even in comparison to the radiance of the world’s sun. In short, that light is a thousand times greater than the light at midday on earth.
[2] On the other hand, the light surrounding angels of the lower heavens can to some extent be described by comparison, but still it is greater than the most intense light of our world.
The reason the light of angels in the higher heavens cannot be described is that their light goes hand in hand with their wisdom; and because their wisdom in comparison to the wisdom of people is indescribable, so, too, is their light.
From these few observations it can be seen that there are degrees of light. And because wisdom and love exist in a like degree, it follows as a consequence that there are similar degrees of warmth.
The existence of a number of atmospheres, distinct from each other by degrees, has become apparent to me from a great deal of experience in the spiritual world. It has become apparent especially from the fact that angels of the lower heavens cannot breathe in the region inhabited by higher angels, and that they appear to themselves to gasp for breath, as commonly happens with creatures that are raised from the air into the ether, or with creatures that are raised from bodies of water into the air. Moreover, spirits beneath the heavens appear as if in a mist.
That there exist a number of atmospheres, distinct from each other by degrees, may be seen above in no. 176.
The interior elements which are not apparent can by no means be revealed unless one knows degrees. For outward elements give way to interior ones and through these to inmost ones through degrees-not through continuous degrees, but through discrete degrees.
[2] Continuous degrees is the term we use for diminutions or decreases in a progression from coarser to finer, or from denser to rarer; or rather they are as the increments or increases in a progression from finer to coarser, or from rarer to denser, precisely as is the case in the progression of light to dark or of heat to cold.
Discrete degrees, on the other hand, are completely different. They are like prior, subsequent and last elements, or like end, cause and effect. We call these discrete degrees, because the prior element exists in itself, the subsequent element in itself, and the last element in itself, but yet taken together they form a single entity.
[3] The atmospheres from the highest to the lowest or from the sun to the earth, called ethers and airs, are distinguished into degrees of this kind. They are also comparable to simple substances, aggregates of these, and still further aggregates of these again, which taken together are called a composite.
These latter degrees are discrete, because they are distinctly constituted, and they are what we mean by degrees of height. Those other degrees, however, are continuous, because they grow by continuous increments, and they are what we mean by degrees of breadth.
Without a concept of these degrees, one can know nothing of the difference between the three heavens, nor of the difference between the love and wisdom of the angels in them, nor of the difference between the warmth and light that they possess, nor of the difference between the atmospheres which surround and envelop them.
[2] Furthermore, without a concept of these degrees, one can know nothing of the difference between the interior faculties in people which are those of the mind, thus nothing of their state in regard to reformation and regeneration; nor of the difference between the exterior faculties in both angels and people which are those of the body; and nothing at all of the difference between something spiritual and something natural, and consequently nothing of their correspondence. Indeed, without a concept of these degrees, one can know nothing of any difference between the life of people and that of animals, nor of the differences between higher animals and lower ones; nor of the differences between forms of the plant kingdom, and between the material substances of the mineral kingdom.
[3] It can be seen from this that people who are unaware of these degrees cannot with any judgment discern causes. They see only effects, and judge of causes on the basis of these, which is generally accomplished by a process of continuous induction from the effects. And yet causes do not produce effects through a continuous connection with them, but through a discrete one. For a cause is one thing and the effect another. The difference is like that between something prior and something subsequent, or between a formative force and the thing formed.
At the same time, however, each heaven is in itself distinguished into regions, not by degrees of height but by degrees of breadth. The inhabitants who are in the middle or at the center live in the light of wisdom, while those who are in the peripheral areas extending to the borders live in the shadows of wisdom. Thus wisdom decreases even to the point of ignorance as light fades into dusk, which takes place by a continuous diminution of it.
[2] It is the same with people. Their interior regions, which are those of their mind, are distinguished into as many degrees as the angelic heavens are, and these degrees in them exist one above another. Consequently the interior regions in people, which are those of their mind, are distinguished by discrete degrees or degrees of height. It is possible, therefore, for a person to dwell in the lowest degree, or in the next higher degree, or even in the highest, according to the degree of his wisdom. However, when he dwells only in the lowest degree, the higher degree is closed, and it is opened as he receives wisdom from the Lord.
A person also has in him, like heaven, continuous degrees or degrees of breadth.
A person is like the heavens because in respect to the interior elements of his mind he is-to the extent that he is governed by love and wisdom from the Lord-a heaven in miniature form. (Regarding this point, that a person in respect to the interior elements of his mind is a heaven in miniature form, see in the book Heaven and Hell nos. 51-58.)
I can report the following, that angels sorrow on account of the darkness in this world. They say that scarcely anywhere do they see light; that people seize on fallacious appearances and defend them, and in so doing multiply falsities, one after another; and that in order to support these, they employ reasonings based on false assumptions and falsified truths to find arguments which, owing to the darkness they are in in regard to causes and their ignorance in regard to truths, can never be dispelled.
Especially do angels lament over people’s arguments in support of faith separated from charity and of justification by it, including as well their ideas of God, their ideas of angels and spirits, and their ignorance of what love and wisdom are.
People know, indeed, that end, cause and effect follow in order as prior, subsequent and last elements. They also know that the end produces the cause, and through the cause, the effect, in order that the end may be realized. And they know many other things relating to these three as well. Yet to know these things and not see them in application to actual phenomena is to know only abstractions- abstractions which remain in the thought only as long as one contemplates the analytical speculations of metaphysical philosophy. So it is that although end, cause and effect proceed by discrete degrees, still little if anything is known in the world about these degrees. For a concept only of abstractions is like some airy apparition which flies away; but if abstractions are applied to such phenomena as have actual existence in the world, they are like something visible to the eyes in the world, which stays in the memory.
We know from visual observation that every muscle in the human body consists of minute fibers, that these are composed into fascicles to form larger fibers called motor fibers, and that bundles of these constitute the composite which we call a muscle.
It is the same with nerves. In them minute fibers are woven together to form larger ones, which look like threads. Aggregations of these are woven together to form the nerve.
[2] The same is the case in all the other weavings, bundlings and aggregations which make up the organs and viscera. For these are compositions of fibers and vessels variously formed in accordance with the same degrees.
The same is also the case in each and all constituents of the plant kingdom, and in each and all constituents of the mineral kingdom. In pieces of wood we find combinations of fibers woven together in a threefold arrangement. In metals and stones we find aggregations of their constituents also in a threefold arrangement.
This makes apparent the nature of discrete degrees, namely, that from one arises another, and through this a third, which is called the composite; and that each degree is distinct from any other.
The organic substances which constitute the vessels and seats of thoughts and affections, from their simplest to the aggregated whole which forms the brain, are homogeneous. The atmospheres, from the pure ether to the air, are homogeneous. Degrees of heat and light in their succession according to the degrees of the atmospheres are homogeneous. And so also are degrees of love and wisdom homogeneous.
Things which are not of the same character and nature are heterogeneous, and they do not accord with things that are homogeneous. Thus they cannot form discrete degrees in combination with them, but only in combination with their like, with things that are of the same character and nature with which they are homogeneous.
It is apparent from this that the first degree is the principal and only governing one in those that follow; consequently, that the first degree is the all in all things of the subsequent degrees.
The reality of this is apparent as well from the following considerations of which people are aware, namely, that the end is everything in the cause, and that through the cause it is everything in the effect; and therefore end, cause and effect are called the first end, intermediate end, and last end. People also know that the cause of a cause is also the cause of that which is caused; that the only essential element in causes is the end, and that the only essential element in motion is the endeavor to motion; and that there is only one substance which is substance in itself.
These two kinds of degrees are so different in character that they have nothing in common. Consequently they must be distinctly perceived and not in the least way be confused.
Perfection of life is a perfection of love and wisdom. And because the will and intellect are the recipient vessels of these, perfection of life is also a perfection of the will and intellect, and so a perfection of affections and thoughts. Moreover, because spiritual warmth is the conveyer of love, and spiritual light the conveyer of wisdom, the perfection of these may be included under perfection of life as well.
[2] Perfection of forces is a perfection of all those agencies which are activated and set in motion by life, but which in themselves are devoid of life. Such forces include the atmospheres in the influences they exert. Such forces include as well the inner and outer organic substances in a person, and also in animals of every kind. Such forces include in addition all those phenomena in the natural world which are apportioned activities directly and indirectly by the sun there.
[3] Perfection of forms and the perfection of forces go hand in hand, for the character of the forces determines the character of the forms, the only difference being that forms are substances, while forces are their activities. Consequently the two exhibit the same degrees of perfection. Forms which are not at the same time forces are also perfected in accordance with degrees.
Still, how perfections ascend and descend in accordance with these degrees can be little discerned from visible phenomena in the natural world, but clearly from visible phenomena in the spiritual world. From visible phenomena in the natural world one discovers only that the more interiorly things are viewed, the more marvelous the wonders that occur-as for example, in the eyes, in the ears, in the tongue, in muscles, in the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, and in the rest of the organs. So, too, in seeds, fruits, and flowers. And likewise in metals, ores, and stones. People know that more and more marvelous wonders are found in all of these the more interiorly they are viewed. And yet it has become but little known from them that these wonders are more interiorly perfect in accordance with degrees of height or discrete degrees. Ignorance of these degrees has concealed the fact.
However, because these same degrees are clearly visible in the spiritual world-since that entire world from its highest point to its lowest has been divided discretely into such degrees-therefore a concept of them may be gained from it. From these one may then draw conclusions regarding the perfection of forces and forms which exist in like degrees in the natural world.
The degrees of their perfections are such that angels of the lowest heaven cannot ascend even to the first threshold of the perfections of angels in the intermediate heaven, nor these in turn to the first threshold of the perfections of angels in the highest heaven. This seems contrary to expectation, but still it is the truth. The reason for it is that associations of angels are formed in accordance with discrete degrees, and not in accordance with continuous degrees.
[2] Through personal experience I have learned that such a difference in affections and thoughts, and consequently in speech, exists between angels of higher and lower heavens that they have nothing in common, and that their communication takes place solely by means of correspondences, correspondences which occur as a result of the Lord’s direct influx into all of the heavens, and as a result of His indirect influx through the highest heaven into the lowest.
[3] Because these differences are as stated, they cannot be expressed, nor therefore described, in any natural language; for the thoughts of angels, being spiritual, do not fall within the scope of natural ideas. They can be expressed and described only by angels themselves in their languages, forms of speech and writing, and not in human ones. This is the origin of the saying that in heaven one hears and sees things inexpressible.*
These differences can be comprehended to some extent in light of the following observations, that the thoughts of angels in the highest or third heaven are thoughts of ends, that the thoughts of angels in the intermediate or second heaven are thoughts of causes, and that the thoughts of angels in the lowest or first heaven are thoughts of effects.
[4] It must be noted that it is one thing to think in accord with ends and another to think about ends. So, too, that it is one thing to think in accord with causes and another to think about causes. And so also that it is one thing to think in accord with effects and another to think about effects. Angels in the lower heavens think about causes and ends, while angels in the higher heavens think in accord with causes and ends; and to think in accord with these is the mark of a higher wisdom, whereas to think about them is the mark of a lower wisdom.
To think in accord with ends is the mark of wisdom; in accord with causes, the mark of intelligence; and in accord with effects, the mark of knowledge.
It is apparent from this that every perfection ascends and descends concomitantly with degrees and in accordance with them.
* Cf. 2 Corinthians 12:2-4.
No others, however, ascend and are elevated into these degrees but people who in the world have been governed by truths and have applied them to life.
If prior and simple elements did not have in them such surpassing perfection, no person, and no animal either, could be produced from sperm and afterward continue to survive; nor could the seeds of trees and bushes sprout and reproduce their kind. For the more prior any prior element is, and the more simple any simple element is, the more perfect it is, and therefore the more immune to harm.
In a like sequential order in the heavens are the states of love and wisdom in angels, and likewise their states of warmth and light, and also those of the spiritual atmospheres. In a like order are all perfections of the forms and forces there.
[2] When degrees of height or discrete degrees are in sequential order, they may then be likened to a column or tower divided into three levels through which one may ascend or descend, whose uppermost story contains things most perfect and beautiful, the intermediate story things less perfect and beautiful, and the lowest story things still less perfect and beautiful.
[3] Concurrent order, on the other hand, which consists of like degrees, has a different appearance. In it the highest constituents of sequential order-which, as we said, are the most perfect and beautiful-are at the core, its lower constituents in an interjacent area surrounding that, and its lowest constituents on the periphery. They are like concentric layers in a solid object consisting of three such degrees, whose core or center contains the finest elements, round about which are elements less fine, and in the outmost parts which form the surface, elements composed of these, and thus cruder. It may be likened to the column or tower referred to just above sinking down into a single plane, whose highest level then forms the inmost degree, its intermediate level the interjacent degree round about, and its lowest level the outmost degree.
Degrees of this kind exist in a like order in every seed and every fruit, and also in every metal and stone. Their constituent parts are so composed, of which the whole consists. The inmost, intermediate, and outmost elements of their constituents exist in such degrees, for they are successive compositions or bundlings and conglomerations, arising from simple substances which are their first substances or materials.
The same is the case with degrees of love and wisdom, with degrees of heat and light, and with the organic forms of the affections and thoughts in a person, as will be seen in subsequent discussions.
We have dealt with the succession of these degrees in sequential order and in concurrent order also in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, no. 38 and elsewhere, where we showed that degrees of this kind exist in each and every expression of the Word.
209. The last degree embraces, contains, and is the foundation of the prior degrees. The doctrine of degrees presented in this part of the work has been illustrated so far by various phenomena that occur in one or the other worlds, as by the degrees of the heavens where angels dwell, the degrees of warmth and light in them, and the degrees of their atmospheres, and by various phenomena in the human body, and likewise in the animal and mineral kingdoms.
This doctrine, however, has a wider application. It extends not only to natural phenomena, but also to civil, moral and spiritual matters, and to each and all of their components.
The doctrine of degrees extends to these matters as well for two reasons. The first is that everything of which anything can be predicated has in it a trine called end, cause and effect, and these three are related to each other as degrees of height.
[2] The second reason is that no civil, moral or spiritual matter is something abstracted from substance, but rather they are substances. For as love and wisdom are not abstractions, but are substance (as we demonstrated above in nos. 40-43), so likewise are all matters which we call civil, moral and spiritual. One can indeed think of these abstractly from substances, but still in themselves they are not abstract.
Consider, for example, affection and thought, charity and faith, will and intellect. For the case with these is the same as with love and wisdom, namely, that they do not exist apart from the subjects of which they are predicated-subjects which are substances-but rather they are states of the subjects or substances. In subsequent discussions we will see that it is changes in these states which produce their variations.
By substance we mean also form, for substance does not exist without form.
That such is the case can be seen from what we have said previously in this part of the work, especially from the following, that one element follows after another in a threefold progression, and that effect is nothing but the end in its final form. Moreover, because the final form embraces the rest, it follows that the final form contains them and is also their foundation.
It should be rightly known, however, that it is all homogeneous and accordant qualities of love and wisdom that are present in useful endeavor, in accordance with the observations presented and demonstrated above in the discussion in nos. 189-194.
Charity, faith and good work exist in a succession of like degrees; for charity is a matter of affection, faith a matter of thought, and good work a matter of action.
Will, understanding and practice similarly exist in a succession of like degrees; for will is a matter of love and so of affection, understanding a matter of wisdom and so of faith, and practice a matter of useful endeavor and so of work.
As all the qualities of wisdom and love are present in useful endeavor, therefore, so all the qualities of thought and affection are present in action, all the qualities of faith and charity in good work, and so on. But all of these must be homogeneous, that is to say, accordant.
The prior elements are not apparent because these things are viewed only from without, and viewed from without they are simply activities and motions. The case is as when one moves one’s arms and hands, unconscious of the fact that a thousand motor fibers act together to produce their every motion, and that corresponding to the thousand motor fibers are thousands of things in one’s thought and affection which impel the motor fibers to action. Because these act from within, they are not apparent to any bodily sense.
[2] This much is known, that no action is executed in the body or by means of it unless it springs from the will through the thought; and because it is these two that act, it cannot but be the case that each and every element of the will and thought are present in the action. They cannot be separated. So it is that from seeing a person’s deeds or works others judge of the thought of his will, which they call his intention.
A fact made known to me is that from simply seeing a person’s deed or work, angels perceive and see every quality of the will and thought of the doer-angels of the third heaven perceiving and seeing from his will the end prompting the action, and angels of the second heaven perceiving and seeing the cause through which the end thus acts.
It is because of this that works and deeds are so often commanded in the Word, and that it says a person is known by them.*
* Matthew 7:16,20, 12:33. Luke 6:44.
Such a puff of air or mirage is faith separated from good works, and so, too, are faith and charity without their exercise and practice. The only difference is that people who postulate both faith and charity have the knowledge and ability to will to do good works, while people caught up in faith separated from charity do not.
People know that endeavor accomplishes nothing by itself, but only through forces corresponding to it, and that through these it produces motion. People also know that for that reason endeavor is everything in the forces, and through the forces, in the motion; and that because motion is the final degree of endeavor, it is through motion that endeavor exerts its power.
Endeavor, force and motion operate in conjunction only in accordance with discrete degrees, which are conjoined not through a continuous connection of them, since they are discrete, but through correspondences. For endeavor is not force, and force is not motion. Rather force is produced by endeavor-force being endeavor awakened-and motion is produced by force. Consequently no power exists in endeavor alone, nor in force alone, but in motion, which is their product.
The reality of this appears as yet questionable, because it has not been illustrated by applications to observable and discernible phenomena in nature. Nevertheless, it is still how they progress into a state of power.
[2] These three components do not act through a continuous connection, but through a discrete one, and to act through a discrete connection is to act through correspondences. The interior elements which are properties of the mind correspond to the interior elements of the body, and the interior elements of the body correspond to its outward ones by which actions are produced. Consequently the two prior components have power through the outward constituents of the body.
It may seem as though the endeavors and forces in a person have some power even if no action ensues, as in times of sleep and states of repose, but the endeavors and forces are still then directed into the general motor organs of the body, which are the heart and lungs. If the action of these ceases, however, the forces also cease, and with the forces, the endeavors.
Since the evolution and emergence of degrees into a state of power is as stated, therefore the angels who are present with a person and in correspondence with all his constituents know merely from any action done through the hands what the person is like in regard to his intellect and will, and so in regard to his charity and faith, thus in regard to the inner life which is the life of his mind, and in regard to the outward life which results from that in the body.
[2] Such a recognition gained by angels simply from the action of the body through the hands has often astonished me, but I have nevertheless had it shown me a number of times through personal experience. I have also been told that it is for this reason that inaugurations into the ministry are performed by the laying on of hands, and that to touch with the hand symbolically means to communicate, in addition to many other like things.
I have concluded from this that everything pertaining to charity and faith exists in works, and that charity and faith without works are like halos around the sun which fade or are dispelled by a cloud. That is why the Word so often mentions works and tells us to do them, saying that a person’s salvation depends on them. Moreover, the person who does them is called wise, while the person who does not do them is called foolish.*
[3] One should know, however, that by works here are meant useful services which are actually done. For it is in these and in accordance with these that everything pertaining to charity and faith exists. Charity and faith have this correspondence with useful services, because although their correspondence is a spiritual one, it is effected by means of substances and materials which are its vessels.
* Matthew 7:24-27.
The first secret is that the Word exists in its fullness and power in the sense of the letter. For the Word contains three levels or degrees of meaning: a celestial meaning, a spiritual meaning, and a natural meaning. Since these levels of meaning exist in accordance with three degrees of height, and they are connected by correspondences, it happens therefore not only that the last meaning-which is natural and is called the sense of the letter-embraces, contains, and is the foundation of the interior, corresponding meanings, but also that the Word exists in its fullness and power in its last meaning. (That this is the case we have shown and confirmed many times in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 27-36, 37-49, 50-61, 62-69.)
[2] The second secret is that the Lord came into the world and took on human form in order to put Himself into the power of subjugating the hells and of reducing to order all things both in the heavens and on earth.
This humanity He put on over His prior humanity. The humanity that He put on in the world over His prior humanity was like the humanity of a person in the world, each being, however, Divine and thus infinitely surpassing the finite humanity of angels and people. Moreover, because He fully glorified His natural humanity even to the lasts of it, therefore He rose again with the whole body as no other person does. By assuming this humanity the Lord took on the limitless Divine power not only of subjugating the hells and reducing the heavens to order, but also of keeping the hells subjugated to eternity and saving humankind. This power is meant by His sitting at the right hand of the power and might of God.*
[3] Since by assuming a natural humanity the Lord made Himself Divine truth in the lasts of creation, therefore He is called the Word,** and we are told that the Word became flesh.*** Divine truth in the lasts of creation is the Word in the sense of the letter. The Lord made Himself this Divine truth by fulfilling all the prophecies of the Word concerning Him in the Old Testament. For every person is an embodiment of the good and truth in him. It is this alone that makes a person human. In the Lord’s case, however, by assuming a natural humanity He became the embodiment of Divine good and truth itself, or to say the same thing, the embodiment of Divine love and wisdom itself, both in the firsts of creation and in the lasts of it. Consequently, in the angelic heavens He appears as the sun with a more intense radiance and with greater splendor since His advent into the world than before His advent.
This is a secret which may fall within the scope of the intellect as a result of the doctrine of degrees presented here.
As regards the Lord’s omnipotence before His advent into the world, about this we will say something in subsequent discussions.
* Matthew 26:64. Mark 14:62. Luke 22:69. See also Psalm 110:1. Matthew 22:43, 44. Mark 12:36, 16:19. Luke 20:42, 43. Acts 2:32-35, 5:30, 31, 7:55, 56. Romans 8:34. Ephesians 1:15-23. Colossians 3:1. Hebrews 1:1-3, 13, 8:1, 10:12, 13, 12:1, 2. 1 Peter 3:21, 22.
** John 1:1-18. Revelation 19:13.
*** John 1:14.
[2] I have it from the declarations of angels also that the least element of affection, and the least element of thought-indeed, the least element of any idea in the thought-consists of degrees of both kinds, and that any least element which does not consist of these does not actually exist. For it has no form, thus no quality, neither any state which can be changed and varied and so come into being.
[3] Angels confirm this by the following truth, that the infinite elements in God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, are, in a distinct combination, one; that there are infinite elements in His infinite elements; and that in the infinitely infinite elements are degrees of both kinds, degrees which in Him are also in a distinct combination one. Moreover, because He has these elements in Him, and all things were created by Him, and what He has created exhibits in some image of them the elements that are in Him, it follows that there is not the least finite form which does not have in it such degrees.
These degrees exist alike in the least and greatest of created things for the reason that the Divine in the greatest and least of things is the same.
That the infinite elements in the human God are, in a distinct combination, one, may be seen above in nos. 17-22, and that the Divine in the greatest and least of things is the same, in nos. 77-82, points which were further illustrated in nos. 155, 169, and 171.
These entities include as well ones less general, such as the human being in his entirety, every animal in its entirety, every tree and every bush in its entirety, and every stone and every metal in its entirety.
The forms of these are alike in the fact that they consist of degrees of both kinds. That is because the Divine by whom they were created, in the greatest and least of things is the same, as we demonstrated above in nos. 77-82.
The particular and most elemental constituents of all these entities are like the general and most universal ones in the fact that they are forms composed of degrees of both kinds.
The reason not the least thing in any form or in several forms is the same as another arises from the fact the same degrees exist in the greatest of created things, and the greatest of created things consist of the leasts of them. Since the greatest of created things have in them these same degrees, and perpetual distinctions exist in consequence of them from the highest to the lowest of them, or from the center to the peripheries, it follows that there are no lesser or least constituents of them which, having in them the same degrees, are the same.
The fact is that the very first created substances, which are the least and simplest substances, have in them constituents beyond number, as we will see in subsequent discussions where we take up forms.
These three elements constitute the three degrees of height in living entities. The three are analogous to the first end, the intermediate end, which we call the cause, and the last end, which we call the effect. The fact that end, cause and effect constitute three degrees of height is something we have already shown and confirmed many times.
As for these degrees being in the Lord infinite and uncreated and in people finite and created, this can be seen from points we demonstrated in Part One, as from the following, that the Lord is love and wisdom in Himself, whereas people are recipients of love and wisdom from the Lord; and that nothing can be predicated of the Lord except what is infinite, and nothing of people except what is finite.
We so name these degrees for the reason that the heavens are distinguished into two kingdoms, one kingdom being called celestial and the other spiritual, to which is attached a third kingdom in which people dwell in the world, which is a natural kingdom.
Moreover, the angels of which the celestial kingdom consists are governed by love, and the angels of which the spiritual kingdom consists are governed by wisdom, while people in the world are governed by useful endeavors. So it is, therefore, that these kingdoms are conjoined.
How the statement is to be interpreted that people are governed by useful endeavors will be told in Part Four that follows.
[2] Indeed, the Divine which previously filled every space and interval of space in the universe independently of space (nos. 69-72) did enter into and permeate even the lasts of nature. Before His assuming a human form, however, the Divine influx into the natural degree was conveyed indirectly through the angelic heavens, whereas after His assuming a human form it flowed directly from Him.
It is owing to this that all the churches in the world prior to His advent were representative of spiritual and celestial qualities, whereas after His advent they became spiritually and celestially natural, and representational worship was abolished.
It was owing to this also that the sun of the angelic heaven-which is, as we have already said, the first emanation of His Divine love and wisdom-shone with a greater radiance and splendor after He assumed human form than it did before He assumed it.
[3] This, too, is meant by these words in Isaiah:
(In that day) the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days… (Isaiah 30:26)
This statement is made in reference to the state of heaven and the church after the Lord’s advent into the world.
Again, in the book of Revelation:
The countenance (of the Son of Man was seen) as the sun shines in its strength. (Revelation 1:16)
Also elsewhere, as in Isaiah 60:20, 2 Samuel 23:3, 4, Matthew 17:1, 2.
The enlightenment of people indirectly through the angelic heaven, as was the case before the Lord’s advent, may be likened to the light of the moon, which is the sun’s light conveyed indirectly. And because this light after His advent became one conveyed directly, it is said in Isaiah that “the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun.” So also in the book of Psalms:
In His day the righteous man shall flourish, and abundant peace, until the moon is no more. (Psalm 72:7)
This, too, is said in reference to the Lord.
This is meant by the Lord’s two states in the world, called the state of exinanition* and the state of glorification,** which we took up in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord.
* A term employed in 17th, 18th, and 19th century theology to mean the action or process of emptying out the self, used especially of the Christ, with reference to Philippians 2:7, 8.
** A term employed in 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th century theology to mean the exaltation of the Christ to the glory of God.
It should be known, however, that every person has in him from birth three degrees of height or discrete degrees, one above or within another. Moreover, each degree of height or discrete degree contains as well degrees of breadth or continuous degrees, according to which it grows through a continuous progression. For degrees of both kinds exist in the greatest and least of all things, as we showed above in nos. 222-229. Indeed, a degree of the one kind cannot exist without the other.
When a person is born, he comes first into the natural degree, and this grows in him by a continuous progression according to his accumulations of knowledge and the understanding he acquires by means of them, until it reaches the highest point of understanding called rationality.
But still this does not result in the opening of the second degree, which we call spiritual. This degree is opened by a love of useful endeavors in accord with one’s intellectual attainments-only by a spiritual love of useful endeavors, a love which is love for the neighbor. This degree may likewise grow by a continuous progression of the degree until it reaches its highest point, and it grows by the accumulation of concepts of truth and good, or of spiritual truths.
[2] But even so, these still do not bring about the opening of the third degree, which we call celestial. Rather this degree is opened by a celestial love of useful endeavors, a love which is love toward the Lord; and love toward the Lord is nothing other than to commit the precepts of the Word to life, the sum of which is to refrain from evils because they are hellish and diabolical, and to do good things because they are heavenly and Divine.
These three degrees are thus progressively opened in a person.
On the other hand, when a person puts off the natural degree, which he does when he dies, he then comes into that degree which had been opened in him in the world-into the spiritual degree if that degree had been opened in him, into the celestial degree if that degree had been opened in him. [2] A person who comes into the spiritual degree after death no longer thinks, wills, speaks and acts naturally, but spiritually; and one who comes into the celestial degree thinks, wills, speaks and acts in accordance with his own degree.
Moreover, because the communication of the three degrees takes place only through correspondences, therefore the differences in the love, wisdom and useful application in these degrees are such that they have nothing in common through any continuous connection.
It is apparent from this that a person possesses three degrees of height, and that these can be progressively opened.
[2] In a word, from creation and thus from birth, the human mind, which consists of will and intellect, exists in three degrees, so that a person has a natural mind, a spiritual mind, and a celestial mind. Moreover, a person can in consequence of this be raised into angelic wisdom and possess it while he lives in the world, even though he does not come into it until after death, if he becomes an angel, at which time he then speaks things inexpressible and incomprehensible to a natural person.
[3] I knew a person of average learning in the world, and after his death I saw and spoke with him in heaven. I clearly perceived then that he spoke as an angel, and that the things he said would be unintelligible to a natural person. The reason was that in the world he had applied the precepts of the Word to life and had worshiped the Lord, and so had been raised by the Lord into the third degree of love and wisdom.
It is important that this elevation of the human mind be known, for on it depends an understanding of the discussions that follow.
[2] It is because of these two faculties that a person is human and distinguished from animals.
A person has these two faculties from the Lord, and he has them continually from the Lord. Nor are they taken away, for if they were taken away, his humanity would perish.
The Lord dwells with every person, be he good or evil, in these two faculties. They are the Lord’s abode in the human race. It is because of this that everyone, whether good or evil, lives to eternity.
However, the Lord’s dwelling in a person is nearer as the person uses these faculties to open the higher degrees in him. For by their opening he comes into higher degrees of love and wisdom, thus drawing nearer to the Lord.
It can be seen from this that according as these degrees are opened, so the person is in the Lord, and the Lord in him.
Everyone who consults his reason when it is in a state of light can see that a person’s love is in all things his end, for what he loves he thinks about, resolves, and does. Consequently he has it as his end. A person can also see in the light of his reason that wisdom is the cause, for he, or rather his love, which is his end, seeks out in the intellect the means by which to achieve its end, thus consulting his wisdom, and these means form the cause by which the end is achieved. It is evident without explanation that useful endeavor is the effect.
One person’s love, however, is not the same as another’s. Consequently neither is one person’s wisdom the same as another’s; nor, therefore, his useful endeavor. And because these three are homogeneous, as shown above in nos. 189-194, it follows that whatever the character of the love is in a person, such is the character of the wisdom in him, and such is the character of his useful endeavor.
We say wisdom, but we mean whatever is a matter of his intellect.
From what we have demonstrated previously it follows also that there are three degrees of light and three degrees of warmth, or three degrees of wisdom and three degrees of love, and that these degrees have been formed in people in order that people may be recipients of the Lord’s Divine love and wisdom, thus of the Lord.
The point to be now demonstrated here is that spiritual light flows in through the three degrees in a person, but not spiritual warmth except to the extent that the person refrains from evils as being sins and looks to the Lord. Or in other words, that a person is capable of receiving wisdom even to the third degree, but not love except to the extent that the person refrains from evils as being sins and looks to the Lord. Or to put it in still other words, that a person’s intellect may be elevated into wisdom, but not his will except to the extent he refrains from evils as being sins.
I have often seen simple spirits who knew only that there is a God and that the Lord was born a man, and scarcely anything else, and I have perceived that they fully understood the secrets of angelic wisdom, almost as angels do. And not only they, but also many of the devil’s crew. Yet they understood these things when they heard them, and not when they thought to themselves. For when they heard them, a light entered in from above, but when they thought to themselves, then no other light could enter than such as corresponded to their warmth or love. Consequently, after they heard these secrets and comprehended them, upon turning their attention away they retained nothing. Indeed, those who were of the devil’s crew then rejected these things and utterly denied them. The reason was that the fire of their love and its light, being an illusory fire and light, induced in them a darkness by which the heavenly light entering in from above was extinguished.
It is apparent from this that the intellect can be in spiritual light, even if the will is not in spiritual warmth.
[2] It also follows from this that the intellect does not lead the will, or that wisdom does not produce love, but that the intellect only informs and points the way-informing the person how he should live, and pointing the way he should go.
It follows, too, that the will leads the intellect and causes it to operate in harmony with it, and that the love which resides in the will calls wisdom anything in the intellect which accords with it.
We will see in following discussions that the will does nothing by itself apart from the intellect, but that everything it does, it does in conjunction with the intellect. Still, it is the will that, by flowing into it, takes the intellect into partnership with itself, and not the reverse.
The forms in a person which are receptacles of warmth and light or of love and wisdom, and which, as said, exist in a threefold order or in three degrees, are from birth transparent, transmitting spiritual light as clear glass does natural light. It is because of this that a person can be elevated even into the third degree in respect to wisdom.
Nevertheless, these forms still are not opened unless and until spiritual warmth is added to spiritual light or love to wisdom. By their union these transparent forms are opened, one degree after another.
The case is the same as with the light and warmth of the world’s sun in respect to vegetation on earth. The light in winter, which is just as bright as the light in summer, does not open anything in a seed or a tree, but when the warmth of spring is added to the light, then it does. The case is the same because spiritual light corresponds to natural light, and spiritual warmth corresponds to natural warmth.
Consequently when a person refrains from evils and does so from the Lord, then the love of evil and its warmth are removed, and in their stead are introduced a love of good and its warmth, by which the higher degree is opened. For the Lord flows in from above and opens it, and at the same time joins spiritual love or warmth to spiritual wisdom or light; and as a result of that union the person begins to blossom spiritually, like a tree in springtime.
The faculty of receiving spiritual light is what we mean by rationality, which we remarked on previously, a faculty which every person has from the Lord, and which is not taken from him; for if it were taken from him, he could not be reformed.
It is owing to that faculty called rationality that a person not only can think, but can in accord with his thought also speak, unlike animals. And it is owing to his other faculty called freedom, which we also remarked on previously, that he can then do those things which he with his intellect thinks.
Because we discussed these two faculties, rationality and freedom-faculties which are peculiar to mankind-previously in no. 240, we will therefore say no more about them here.
Since these degrees are progressively opened in accordance with a person’s life, it follows that the two higher degrees may also not be opened, and that the person in that case remains in the natural degree, which is the lowest or outmost one.
People know, moreover, in the world that some people are natural and some spiritual, or some external and some internal. But they have not known that the natural person becomes spiritual by the opening of some higher degree in him; that the opening is occasioned by his living a spiritual life, which is a life in accordance with Divine precepts; and that apart from a life in accordance with these, the person remains natural.
As regards the first class, which consists of people who know nothing of Divine precepts, they cannot help but remain natural, because they cannot learn these precepts on their own. Everyone learns of Divine precepts from others who know them from religion, and not as a result of direct revelations (on which subject see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 114-118).
[2] People of the second class, who know of the existence of Divine precepts but give no thought to living in accordance with them, also remain natural, being concerned only with matters connected with the world and their own person. After death they become menials and servants according to the services they are able to perform for those who are spiritual. For the natural self is a menial and servant, while the spiritual self is master and lord.
[3] People of the third class, who regard Divine precepts with disdain and reject them, not only remain natural, but become also sensual to the extent of their disdain and rejection. Sensual people are the lowest class of natural people, being unable to rise in their thinking above appearances and the misconceptions of their bodily senses. Such people after death are in hell.
(1) What the natural person is, and what the spiritual person.
(2) The nature of the natural person in whom the spiritual degree has been opened.
(3) The nature of the natural person in whom the spiritual degree has not been opened and yet is not closed.
(4) The nature of the natural person in whom the spiritual degree has been completely closed.
(5) Lastly, the nature of the difference between the life of the merely natural person and the life of an animal.
In respect to its intellect and will a person’s natural self resembles the natural world, and can also be called a world or microcosm; and in respect to its intellect and will the spiritual self resembles the spiritual world, and can also be called such a world or heaven.
[2] It is apparent, therefore, that the natural self, being in a kind of image a natural world, loves things connected with the natural world, and that the spiritual self, being in a kind of image a spiritual world, loves things connected with that world or heaven.
The spiritual self, indeed, loves the natural world, too, but only as a master loves his servant, through whom he performs useful services. According to the useful services it performs, the natural self also becomes like the spiritual self, which comes to pass when the natural self feels a delight in useful service from a spiritual origin. Such a natural self may be called spiritually natural.
[3] The spiritual self loves spiritual truths. It not only loves to know and understand them, but also wills them. The natural self, on the other hand, loves to speak about those truths and also to put them into practice. To put truths into practice is to perform useful services.
This subordination of the natural to the spiritual originates from the conjunction of the spiritual world and natural world. For whatever appears or occurs in the natural world takes its cause from the spiritual world.
It can be seen from this that the spiritual self is altogether distinct from the natural self, and that no other communication exists between them than such as exists between cause and effect.
The natural person who has the spiritual degree in him opened does not know that he thinks and acts from his spiritual self; for it appears as though he thinks and acts of himself, when in fact he does so not of himself but from the Lord.
[2] Neither does the natural person whose spiritual degree has been opened know that through his spiritual self he is in heaven, when in fact his spiritual self is surrounded by angels of heaven. Sometimes he even becomes visible to the angels; but because he returns to his natural self, after a short time there he disappears.
The natural person in whom the spiritual degree has been opened also does not know that his spiritual mind is filled by the Lord with a thousand secrets of wisdom and with a thousand delights of love, and that he comes into them after death when he becomes an angel.
The reason the natural person does not know these things is that the communication between his natural self and his spiritual self occurs by means of correspondences, and communication by means of correspondences is not perceived in the intellect other than by his seeing truths in a state of light, and in the will other than by his performing useful services with affection.
The case here is similar to the circumstance in the plant kingdom, that warmth alone does not cause seeds and trees to sprout, but warmth accomplishes it in conjunction with light.
[2] It should be known that all truths are matters of spiritual light, and all goods are matters of spiritual warmth, and that good opens the spiritual degree by means of truths; for good produces a useful effect by means of truths, and useful effects are goods of love, which draw their essence from a conjunction of good and truth.
Regarding the lot after death of people in whom the spiritual degree has not been opened and yet is not closed, they are, because they are still natural and not spiritual, in the lowest regions of heaven, where they sometimes suffer hardships; or they are on the fringes of some higher heaven, where they live as though in the twilight of evening. For, as we said previously, the light in heaven and in each society of it decreases as one goes from the center to the borders, at the center being people who possess more Divine truths than others, and on the borders people who possess few truths. [3] Those who possess few truths are ones who know no more from religion than that there is a God, that the Lord suffered for them, and that charity and faith are the essentials of the church, without taking the trouble to learn what faith and charity are. And yet in fact faith in its essence is truth, and truth is manifold; and charity is all the work that a person does from the Lord in his occupation-work that a person then does from the Lord when he refrains from evils as being sins.
The case is entirely as stated before, that the end is everything in the cause, and that the end through the cause is everything in the effect. The end is charity or good, the cause is faith or truth, and the effects are good works or useful services. From this it is apparent that no more charity can be introduced into works than that measure of charity which has been conjoined with truths that are called truths of faith. Through these truths charity enters into works and gives them their quality.
[2] This degree contracts, and as a result of the contraction is closed, especially in people who in the world from a love of self are caught up in a love of ruling, since this love is opposed to love directed to the Lord. It is closed also, but not as much, in people who from a love of the world are caught up in a mad lust to possess the goods of others. These loves close the spiritual degree for the reason that they are the origins of evils.
The contraction or closing of this degree is like the twisting of a spiral into the opposite direction. So it is that after this degree has been closed, it repels the light of heaven. Instead of the light of heaven, therefore, it has in it darkness. Consequently truth, which exists in the light of heaven, becomes repugnant.
[3] In such people not only is this degree closed, but also the higher region of the natural degree, which we call rational, until at last only the lowest region of the natural degree remains open, which we call sensual. We call it sensual, for this region is closest to the world and to the external senses of the body, and it is in accordance with these that the person afterward thinks, speaks and reasons.
The natural person who has become sensual as a result of evils and consequent falsities does not appear in the spiritual world in the light of heaven as human, but as a monster, and one with a flattened nose. The person appears to have a flattened nose because the nose corresponds to the perception of truth. He also cannot endure a ray of the light of heaven. The only light people of this character have in their caverns is such as is emitted from embers or burning coals.
It is apparent from this who and of what character those people are in whom the spiritual degree has been closed.
Animals, on the other hand, do not have the two higher degrees, but only natural degrees, and without the higher degrees these natural degrees lack the capacity for thinking about any civil, moral or spiritual concern. Moreover, because animals’ natural degrees cannot be opened and so elevated into a higher light, they cannot think in accord with sequential order but only in accord with concurrent order, which is not to think but simply to act from a knowledge corresponding to their love. So, too, because they cannot think analytically and view a lower thought from the perspective of some higher one, therefore they cannot speak, but make sounds in accordance with the knowledge connected with their love.
Despite this distinction, however, the sensual person, who is in the lowest degree natural, differs from the animal only in his ability to fill his memory with facts and to think and speak in accordance with them, an ability he derives from the faculty inherent in every person, which is to be able to understand truth if he wills to. This is the faculty that distinguishes the human being. But still, many by abuse of this faculty have made themselves lower than animals.
[2] But even so, the enlightenment of the natural mind does not ascend by discrete degrees, but increases by a continuous progression. As it increases, then, the mind is accordingly enlightened from within by the light of the two higher degrees.
How this occurs can be comprehended from a conception of degrees of height as being one above another, with the natural or lowest degree serving as a kind of common covering enveloping the two higher degrees. As the natural degree is elevated to a higher degree, then, the higher degree accordingly acts from within upon the outer, natural degree and illumines it.
The illumination, indeed, comes from within from the light of the higher degrees, but the natural degree which envelops and surrounds them receives it through a continuous ascent, thus more clearly and purely in the measure of its ascent. That is to say, the natural degree is enlightened from within by the light of the higher degrees discretely, but in itself is enlightened in a continuous progression.
[3] It is apparent from this that as long as a person lives in the world and is as a result in the natural degree, he cannot be elevated into wisdom itself such as it exists in angels, but can be elevated only into a higher light extending up to that of angels and so receive enlightenment from their light, a light which flows in from within and illumines him.
But this cannot be any more clearly described. It can be better comprehended from its effects; for when the causes to some extent are first known, the effects bring the causes in them to light and so illuminate them.
1. The natural mind can be elevated up to the light of heaven in which angels dwell, and can perceive naturally, thus not so fully, what angels perceive spiritually. But the mind of the natural person still cannot be elevated into angelic light itself.
[2] 2. By elevating his natural mind to the light of heaven a person can think, even speak, with angels, but the angels’ thought and speech then flow into the person’s natural thought and speech, and not the reverse. Consequently angels speak with a person in the natural language which is the person’s native tongue.
[3] 3. This takes place by a spiritual influx into natural light, and not by any natural influx into spiritual light.
[4] 4. Human wisdom, which is natural so long as a person lives in the natural world, can in no measure be elevated into angelic wisdom, but can be elevated only into a kind of image of it. The reason is that the elevation of the natural mind takes place by a continuous ascent, like the progression from dark to light or from cruder to purer. But still the person in whom the spiritual degree has been opened comes into that wisdom when he dies, and he may also come into it as the result of a suspension of his bodily sensations and an influx then from above into the spiritual elements of his mind.
[5] 5. A person’s natural mind consists of spiritual substances and at the same time of natural substances. It is owing to its spiritual substances that thought occurs, and not because of the natural substances. These latter substances are left behind when a person dies, but not the spiritual substances. Consequently, after death, when the person becomes a spirit or angel, that same mind remains, having the same form that it had in the world.
[6] 6. The natural substances of that mind-which, as we said, are by death left behind-form an epidermal envelope encompassing the spiritual body that spirits and angels have. It is in consequence of such an envelope, taken from the natural world, that their spiritual bodies have permanent existence, for the natural element is the outmost containing vessel. That is why there is no spirit or angel who was not first born a person in the world.
We present these secrets of angelic wisdom here in order to make known the nature of the natural mind in a person, a subject that we take up again in further detail in subsequent discussions.
[2] If a person does not become rational to the highest level of which he is capable, it is because the love which resides in his will cannot be elevated in the same way as the wisdom which resides in his intellect. The love which resides in his will can be elevated only by his refraining from evils as being sins, and afterward by his doing goods of charity, or useful services, which the person then does from the Lord. Consequently, if the love residing in his will is not elevated at the same time, then no matter how far the wisdom residing in his intellect may ascend, still it sinks back down again to his love. Therefore if a person’s love is not elevated at the same time into the spiritual degree, he still is rational only in the lowest degree.
It can be seen from this that a person’s rationality is in appearance as though of three degrees-a rationality from the celestial degree, a rationality from the spiritual degree, and a rationality from the natural degree. It can be seen, too, that whether a person’s rationality is elevated or not, still it remains in the person as a faculty that can be elevated.
On the impossibility of rationality in little children and preadolescents, see below at the end of no. 266.
We come now to the point to be demonstrated here, that the natural mind reacts in opposition to the higher or interior minds.
The reason it reacts is that it envelops, encloses and contains them, and this cannot be the case without its reacting to them. For if it did not react, the interior or enclosed elements would break loose and thrust their way out and so drift away.
It would be as if the integuments enveloping the human body were not to react to it. The organs which form the interior elements of the body would burst out and so fall apart. Or it would be as if the membrane enveloping the motor fibers of a muscle were not to react against the forces of those fibers in their actions. Not only would the action cease, but all the interior tissues would come undone.
[2] The same is the case with every lowest degree in degrees of height. Consequently it is the same with the natural mind in relation to its higher degrees. For, as we said, the human mind consists of three degrees-natural, spiritual and celestial-and the natural mind is in the lowest degree.
Another reason the natural mind reacts in opposition to the spiritual mind is that the natural mind consists not only of substances belonging to the spiritual world, but also of substances belonging to the natural world, as we said above in no. 257; and substances of the natural world by their very nature react against substances of the spiritual world. For substances of the natural world are in themselves lifeless, and are acted upon from without by substances of the spiritual world; and things which are lifeless, and are acted upon from without, by their very nature resist and so by their very nature react.
It can be seen from this that the natural self reacts in opposition to the spiritual self, and that the result is combat. (The meaning is the same whether we call them the natural and spiritual self or the natural and spiritual mind.)
Everything that flows in through the spiritual mind comes from heaven, for the spiritual mind is in its form a heaven; and everything that flows into the natural mind comes from the natural world, for the natural mind is in its form such a world. It follows, therefore, that when the spiritual mind has been closed, the natural mind reacts in opposition to all matters connected with heaven, and does not permit them to enter into it except to the extent that they serve it as means to its acquiring and possessing matters connected with the world. And when matters connected with heaven serve the natural mind as means to its own ends, then even though those means appear heavenly, still they become natural. For the end gives them their quality. Indeed, they become like the forms of knowledge proper to the natural self, which have within them no element of life.
Nevertheless, because heavenly matters cannot be joined to natural matters so as to operate in harmony with them, they therefore separate themselves, and heavenly matters in merely natural people place themselves round about in the periphery surrounding the natural matters that lie within. It is owing to this that a merely natural person can speak and preach heavenly things, and also make a pretense of them in his actions, even though he inwardly thinks in opposition to them. He does the latter when he is alone, but the former when he is in the company of others.
But more on this subject in subsequent discussions.
Moreover, it uses its rational faculty to defend all of these things. And once it has formed its arguments in their defense, it either perverts the goods and truths of heaven and the church, or stifles them, or rejects them, and at last it either runs from them, or turns its back on them, or hates them. This it does in spirit, and only in the flesh to the extent that it dares to speak in accord with its spirit in the company of others without fearing the loss of reputation and the consequent loss of honor or gain.
When a person is of such a character, he then causes his spiritual mind to become gradually more and more tightly closed. It is especially his defenses of evil by falsities that close it. This is the reason that confirmed evil and falsity cannot be eradicated after death. They are eradicated only in the world through repentance.
[2] It should be known that in the greatest and least constituents of the universe-both animate and inanimate-one finds the reciprocal relation of action and reaction. It is what holds all things in equilibrium. This equilibrium is suspended when the action is greater than the reaction, and vice versa.
It is the same with the natural and spiritual minds. When the natural mind is prompted by the delights of its love and the gratifications of its thought, which in themselves are evil and false, then the reaction of the natural mind removes those elements which belong to the spiritual mind and bars the door to them to keep them from entering, causing the action to come from such things as accord with its reaction. The result is an action and reaction of the natural mind which is opposed to the action and reaction of the spiritual mind. This in turn causes a closing of the spiritual mind, like the twisting of a spiral into the opposite direction.
[3] On the other hand, if the spiritual mind is opened, then the action and reaction of the natural mind are reversed. For the spiritual mind acts from above or from within and at the same time through those elements in the natural mind which have been disposed from within or from without to obey it, and it twists into the opposite direction the spiral in which the natural mind acts and reacts. That is because the natural mind is from birth in a state of opposition to matters belonging to the spiritual mind, a state it acquires by heredity from parents, as people know.
[4] Of such a nature is the change of state called reformation and regeneration. The state of the natural mind before reformation may be likened to a spiral twisting or curving downward, while after reformation it may be likened to a spiral twisting or curving upward. Consequently a person before reformation looks downward to hell, but after reformation upward to heaven.
It can be seen from preceding discussions, and it will be further seen from subsequent ones, that a person possesses these two faculties from creation and so from birth; that they come from the Lord; that they are not taken away; that they produce the appearance that a person thinks, speaks, wills and acts as though of himself; that the Lord dwells in every person in these faculties; that owing to that conjunction a person lives to eternity; that a person can be reformed and regenerated in consequence of these faculties and not apart from them; and that it is these faculties which distinguish the human being from animals.
(1) An evil person possesses these two faculties just as much as a good one.
(2) An evil person abuses these faculties to defend evils and falsities, whereas a good person uses them to defend goods and truths.
(3) Confirmed evils and falsities remain in a person and become matters of his love and so of his life.
(4) Qualities that have become matters of one’s love and life are passed on hereditarily to offspring.
(5) All evils, both those inborn and those additionally acquired, have their seat in the natural mind.
The fact that an evil person can moreover will and do those truths, even though he does not will and do them, is attested by reason and experience.
Reason sees that anyone can will and do what he thinks. Who cannot? The fact that he does not will and do it is because he has no love to will and do it. This ability to will and do is freedom, which every person has from the Lord. But a person’s not willing and doing good when he can is owing to a love of evil that fights against it-a love which he can nevertheless resist, and which many also do resist.
[2] Experience in the spiritual world has several times confirmed this. I have listened to evil spirits who inwardly were devils, and who in the world had rejected the truths of heaven and the church. When the glory that surrounds their every love like the blaze of a fire stirred their affection to know, an affection which every person has from childhood, they then perceived secrets of angelic wisdom just as well as good spirits did who inwardly were angels. In fact, those diabolical spirits said that they could even will and do in accordance with what they perceived, but that they did not want to. When I told them that they might will those things if they would only refrain from evils as being sins, they said that they could do this, too, but that they did not want to.
It was apparent from this that evil people possess the faculty which is called freedom just as much as good people. Let everyone consider it in his own case, and he will observe that it is so.
A person has the ability to will because the Lord from whom that faculty comes continually gives him the ability to. For, as we said above, the Lord dwells in every person in these two faculties, thus in the faculty or power of being able to will.
As regards the faculty of understanding called rationality, this is not possible in a person before his natural mind reaches maturity. In the meantime it is like a seed in unripe fruit, which cannot open in the earth and grow into a bush. Neither is this faculty possible in the sort of people mentioned above in no. 259.
[2] The fact that a person can affirm whatever he wishes is clearly apparent from the many heresies found in the Christian world, each of which is defended by its adherents.
Who does not know that evils and falsities of every kind can be defended? It can be maintained-and evil people moreover inwardly do maintain-that God does not exist, that nature is everything, and that nature created itself; that religion is only a means by which to hold simple minds in bonds; that human prudence accomplishes all, and Divine providence nothing, except to preserve the universe in the order in which it was created; and furthermore, that murders, adulterous affairs, thefts, fraudulent practices, and acts of vengeance are permissible, as held by Machiavelli* and his disciples.
[3] The natural person can maintain these and other like beliefs; indeed, he can fill books with arguments in their defense. And when he has become convinced of them, these falsities then appear in an illusory light of their own, and truths in such darkness that they cannot be seen except as apparitions in the night.
In a word, take the falsest notion and present it as a proposition, and tell a clever person to defend it, and he will defend it even to the point that the light of truth is completely extinguished. But then set aside his arguments, go back and view the same proposition in the light of your rationality, and you will see the falsity of it in its monstrosity.
It can be seen from this that a person can abuse these two faculties that he has in him from the Lord to defend evils and falsities of every kind.
No animal can do this, because it does not possess these faculties. An animal is consequently born into the whole order of its life and into all the knowledge pertaining to its natural love, unlike the human being.
* Niccol� di Bernardo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, Italian historian, statesman, and political philosopher. His most well-known work, The Prince, written in 1513 and published posthumously in 1532, describes his ideal ruler as a calculating and ruthless tyrant not bound by moral restraints.
Consequently arguments in defense of evil and falsity are also closures of heaven; for every good and truth flows in from the Lord through heaven. And when heaven has been closed, the person is then in hell, and in a society there where a like evil and falsity reign, from which he cannot afterward be withdrawn.
[2] I have been granted to speak with some who centuries ago had confirmed themselves in the falsities of their religion, and I saw that they continued to be caught up in the same falsities in the same way that they had been caught up in them in the world. The reason is that everything a person confirms himself in becomes a matter of his love and life. It becomes a matter of his love because it becomes a matter of his will and intellect, and the will and intellect constitute everyone’s life. And when something becomes a matter of a person’s life, it becomes a matter not only of his whole mind but also of his entire material being.
It is apparent from this that a person who has confirmed himself in evils and falsities is of the same character from head to toe. And when he has become of such character, he cannot by any inversion or reversal of state be forcibly returned into a state contrary to it and so be withdrawn from hell.
It can be seen from these and previous observations in this discussion where the origin of evil lies.
Experience, too, attests to this. For nations exhibit a likeness in their affections to their earliest progenitor, and even more so clans, and still more individual families. Indeed they exhibit such a likeness that succeeding generations are discerned not only from their dispositions but also from their facial features.
[2] On this subject, however, regarding the hereditary transmission of a love of evil from parents into offspring, we will say more in subsequent discussions where we take up the correspondence of the mind or of the will and intellect with the body and its members and organs. We have presented only these few observations here in order to make it known that evils are passed on in succession from parents; that in consequence of the accumulated evils of one generation after another they increase, to the point that a person from birth is nothing but a mass of evil; that the malignity of the evil grows to the degree that the spiritual mind is closed, for the natural mind is then closed above; and that this condition is not restored to its original state in succeeding generations except by their refraining from evils as sins in obedience to the Lord. Thus and no otherwise is the spiritual mind opened and the natural mind thereby brought back into a corresponding form.
[2] The natural mind with all its constituents is coiled into helixes spiraling from right to left, while the spiritual mind is coiled into helixes spiraling from left to right. Thus these minds turn in directions contrary to each other-evidence that evil has its seat in the natural mind, and that the natural mind of itself acts in opposition to the spiritual mind. The spiraling from right to left, moreover, is directed downward, thus toward hell, whereas the spiraling from left to right goes upward, thus toward heaven.
The fact of this has become apparent to me from the following observation, that an evil spirit cannot spin his body around from left to right, but only from right to left, while a good spirit can spin his body around only with difficulty from right to left, but easily from left to right. Their spinning around accords with the flow of the interior elements of their mind.
Take for example the following. A person who abuses his freedom to think and do evil calls that freedom, and calls its opposite, which is to think and do good that is in itself good, enslavement, when in fact to do the latter is to be truly free, while to do the former is to be enslaved. [2] One who loves adulterous affairs calls the commission of adultery freedom, and to be prohibited from committing adultery he calls enslavement, for he finds delight in lasciviousness, and a lack of delight in chastity. One who is caught up in a love of ruling from a love of self feels in that love his life’s delight, surpassing any other kinds of delight. Consequently he calls everything connected with that love good, and declares evil everything that opposes it, when in fact the converse is the case.
It is the same with every other evil. Consequently, even though everyone acknowledges that evil and good are opposites, still people who are caught up in evils harbor a contrary idea of that opposition, and a right idea is held only by people who are prompted by goods.
No one can see good when he is caught up in evil, but a person prompted by good can see evil. Evil lies below as though in a cave. Good sits above as though on a mountain.
(1) The natural mind which is caught up in evils and their resulting falsities is a form of and image of hell.
(2) The natural mind which is a form of and image of hell descends through three degrees.
(3) The three degrees of the natural mind which is a form of and image of hell are opposed to the three degrees of the spiritual mind, which is a form of and image of heaven.
(4) The natural mind which is a hell stands in complete opposition to the spiritual mind, which is a heaven.
Here we will say something about its form only in respect to its states and their changes which produce perceptions, thoughts, intentions, purposes, and other effects connected with them. For it is in respect to these that the natural mind which is caught up in evils and their resulting falsities is a form of and image of hell. This form presupposes a substantial form as the objective reality of which it is predicated, for changes of state are impossible without a substantial form as their subject, just as sight is impossible without an eye, or hearing without an ear.
[2] As regards the form or image, therefore, in which the natural mind resembles hell, that form or image is such that the dominant love with its lusts-which is the universal state of this mind-is as the devil is in hell, and the thoughts of falsity arising from that dominant love are as the devil’s crew. Nor is anything else meant in the Word by the devil and his crew.
The case with each is also the same, for in hell the love of ruling from the love of self is the dominant love. This love is there called the devil, and the affections for falsity arising from that love with their accompanying thoughts are called his crew. It is the same in every society of hell, with diversities like the diversities found in species of the same genus.
In the same form, too, is the natural mind which is caught up in evils and their resulting falsities. Consequently the natural person who is of such a character comes also after death into a society of hell like him, and he then acts in concert with it in each and every thing that he does. For he comes into his own form, that is, into the states of his own mind.
[3] Subordinate to the first love called the devil is another love as well, called Satan. This is a love of possessing the goods of others by any evil art whatever. Clever malicious practices and cunning devices are its crew.
People who are in this latter hell are in general called satanic spirits, while people in the first hell are in general called devils; and those who do not act there in a clandestine manner do not deny their name. It is in consequence of this that the hells collectively are called the devil and Satan.
[4] The hells have been distinguished in general into two in accordance with these two loves for the reason that the heavens have all been distinguished into two kingdoms-the celestial kingdom and spiritual kingdom-in accordance with their two loves. The diabolic hell by opposition corresponds to the celestial kingdom, and the satanic hell by opposition corresponds to the spiritual kingdom. (That the heavens have been distinguished into two kingdoms-the celestial kingdom and spiritual kingdom-may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 20-28.)
The natural mind which is as described is in its form a hell for the reason that every spiritual form in the greatest and least of its occurrences is the same. So it is that every angel is a heaven in smaller form (as we showed also in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 51-58). It follows from this that every person or spirit who is a devil or satan is a hell in smaller form.
Because of its two faculties called rationality and freedom, the state of the natural mind is such that it can ascend through three degrees and descend through three degrees. It ascends when prompted by goods and truths, and descends when prompted by evils and falsities. Moreover, when it ascends, the lower degrees which extend downward to hell are closed, and when it descends, the higher degrees which extend upward to heaven are closed. The reason is that they react in opposition to each other.
[2] These three degrees, both the higher ones and the lower ones, are neither opened nor closed in a person newly born. For the person is then in a state of ignorance, incognizant of good and truth and of evil and falsity. But in the measure that he introduces himself into these, the degrees are either opened on the one side and closed on the other, or closed on the one side and opened on the other.
When the degrees are opened in the direction of hell, then the dominant love belonging to the will is accorded the highest or inmost place, the thought of falsity belonging to the intellect in consequence of that love is accorded the second or intermediate place, and the resolve of the love acting through the thought, or of the will acting through the intellect, is allotted the lowest place.
Moreover, the case here is the same as with the degrees of height discussed previously, that they follow in order like end, cause and effect, or like the first end, intermediate end, and last end.
The descent of these degrees is toward the body. Thus they grow cruder as they descend and become material and carnal.
[3] If truths from the Word are acquired in the second degree so as to form that degree, then those truths are falsified in consequence of the first degree, which is a love of evil, and they become menial hirelings and indentured servants.
It can be seen from this what becomes of truths that the church has from the Word in people who are caught up in a love of evil, or whose natural mind is in its form a hell, namely, that because those truths are used as means to serve the devil, they are profaned. For as said above, the love of evil dominant in the natural mind which is a hell is the devil.
[2] The fact of this has become apparent to me from things I have seen in the spiritual world, namely the following: That there are three heavens, and these distinguished according to three degrees of height. That there are also three hells, with these, too, distinguished according to three degrees of height, or rather of depth. That the hells are opposed to the heavens in each and every particular. Moreover, that the lowest hell is situated opposite to the highest heaven, that the intermediate hell is situated opposite to the intermediate heaven, and that the highest hell is situated opposite to the lowest heaven.
The same is the case with the natural mind that is in the form of hell. For spiritual forms are the same in the greatest and least of their occurrences.
The heavens and hells are situated opposite to each other in the manner described for the reason that their loves stand thus opposed.
[3] Love toward the Lord and a consequent love for the neighbor form the inmost degree in the heavens, while love of self and love of the world form the inmost degree in the hells. Wisdom and intelligence arising from their loves form the intermediate degree in the heavens, while foolishness and irrationality arising from their loves and appearing as wisdom and intelligence form the intermediate degree in the hells. The determinations arising from their two prior degrees, then, being either stored in the memory as knowledge or turned in the body into action, form the outmost degree in the heavens, while determinations arising from their two prior degrees, becoming either matters of knowledge or matters of action, form the outmost degree in the hells.
[4] How the goods and truths of heaven are turned into evils and falsities in the hells, thus into their opposite, can be seen from the following experience. I once heard that a Divine truth flowed down from heaven into hell, and I was told that as it descended, it was changed on the way by degrees into falsity, so that on reaching the lowest hell it was turned into the complete opposite. It was apparent from this that the hells stand in accordance with degrees in opposition to the heavens in respect to all their goods and truths, and that goods and truths become evils and falsities by flowing into forms that have been turned into something contrary to them. For as people know, everything flowing in is perceived and sensed in accordance with its recipient forms and their states.
[5] The fact that these forms have been turned into something opposite became apparent to me also from the following experience. I was given to see the hells in their situation relative to the heavens, and the people there appeared upside-down, with their heads extending down and their feet up. But I was told that still they appear to themselves to stand upright upon their feet, a circumstance that may be compared with that of people on the opposite side of the earth.
From these attestations of experience it can be seen that the three degrees of the natural mind which in its form and image is a hell are opposed to the three degrees of the spiritual mind, which in its form and image is a heaven.
Thus he turns the state of his life upside down so as to assign to the sole of the foot what belongs to the head and to tread upon it, while assigning to the head what belongs to the sole of the foot.
The person is consequently transformed from a living being into a dead one. One is said to be a living being whose mind is a heaven, while one is said to be dead whose mind is a hell.
Consequently, because actions or works have present in them all the components of the mind, they have present in them all the components of the will, or all the affections of the person’s love, which constitute the first degree. They have present in them all the components of the intellect, or all the thoughts of the person’s perception, which form the second degree. And they have present in them all the components of the memory, or all the ideas of the person’s thought drawn from the memory and most immediately present in his speech, which provide the third degree.
When these are channeled into a course of action, they produce works, and although the prior elements are not apparent in the works seen in their external form, still they are actually present in them.
It may be see above in nos. 209-216 that the last degree embraces, contains, and is the foundation of the prior degrees; and in nos. 217-221, that degrees of height exist in their fullness and power in their last degree.
So for example, love belonging to the will, which is the first degree of the mind, is not discerned in the wisdom of the intellect, which is the second degree of the mind, except in consequence of a certain delight in thinking about some matter. The first degree, which is, as said, love belonging to the will, is not discerned in the knowledge of the memory, which is the third degree, except in consequence of a certain gratification in knowing and speaking.
It follows as a consequence from this that any work which is an action of the body contains all those prior elements, even though in outward form it appears so simple as to be a single entity.
It should nevertheless be known that those elements of the mind which are applicable to a subject presented for consideration or under consideration are at the center, while the rest are positioned round about according to their relevance.
Angels say that they perceive a person’s character from a single act, though in a varying likeness of his love according to its determinations into affections and so into thoughts.
In a word, every action or every work of a spiritual person is, in the sight of angels, like a flavorful, useful, and beautiful fruit, which when opened and eaten yields flavor, utility, and delight.
That angels’ perception of a person’s actions and works is as described may also be seen above in no. 220.
I have been told by angels of the third heaven that they perceive from each of a speaker’s words in sequence his general state of mind and at the same time some of his particular states.
Every single expression in the Word contains some spiritual element relating to Divine wisdom and some celestial element relating to Divine love, and these are perceived by angels when a person reads the Word with reverence, as we showed in many places in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture.
It is because of this that we are told in the Word that a person will be judged according to his works,* and that he will give an account of his words.**
* Matthew 16:27; Revelation 20:12, 13. See also Proverbs 24:12; Romans 2:5, 6; 1 Peter 1:17. Cf. Ezekiel 36:19; Hosea 12:2; 2 Timothy 4:14.
** Matthew 12:36.
282. PART FOUR
The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it from Himself and not from nothing. People throughout the world know, and every wise person from an interior perception acknowledges, that there is one God who is the Creator of the universe. People also know from the Word that God, the Creator of the universe, is called Jehovah, so named from the verb to be, because He alone just is.* That the Lord from eternity s that Jehovah-this we demonstrated in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord by citing many proofs from the Word.
Jehovah is called the Lord from eternity because it was Jehovah who assumed a humanity in order to save people from hell. Moreover at that time He commanded His disciples to call Him Lord.** Consequently in the New Testament Jehovah is called the Lord, as can be seen from considering the following statement. [In the Old Testament:]
You shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul… (Deuteronomy 6:5)
And in the New Testament:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul… (Matthew 22:37)
The same substitution is found in other passages taken from the Old Testament and quoted in the Gospels.
* See Exodus 3:13-15. Cf. John 8:58. The name Jehovah in Hebrew (hwhy) is derived from the verb hwh (= hyh) meaning be, and it resembles the third person form hyhy meaning he is. The Hebrew verb form is imperfect in aspect, so that it encompasses also the meanings he will be and he has been. Cf. the phrase who is and who was and who is to come in Revelation 1:4, 8, 11:17.
** John 13:13.
Everyone who thinks in the light of clear reason also sees that all created things have been created from a substance which is substance in itself, for this is being itself, from which can spring all things that are. Consequently, because God alone is substance in itself, and so being itself, it follows that the origin of things is from no other source.
[2] Many people have seen this, because reason grants them to see it. But they have not dared to assert it, fearing that if they did so they might perhaps end up thinking that the created universe, being from God, is God, or that nature exists from itself, and thus that its inmost component is what we call God. As a result, even though many have seen that the origin of all things is from no other source than God and His being, still they have not dared to venture beyond their first thought concerning it, lest they entangle their understanding in a so-called Gordian knot from which they would afterward be unable to extricate it.
They would be unable to extricate their understanding for the reason that they have thought of God and about the creation of the universe by God in terms of time and space, which are properties of nature, and no one can comprehend God and the creation of the universe from the perspective of nature. On the other hand, everyone whose understanding possesses some inner light can comprehend nature and its creation from the perspective of God, because God does not exist in time and space. (That the Divine does not exist in space may be seen in nos. 7-10 above. That the Divine fills every space and interval of space in the universe independently of space, in nos. 69-72. And that the Divine is present through all time independently of time, in nos. 69-72.)
In subsequent discussions we will see that although God created the universe and all its constituents out of Himself, still there is not the least particle in the created universe that is God. We will include as well many other observations which will set this subject in its proper light.
284. In Part One of this work our subject was God, and we said that He is Divine love and wisdom, that He is life, and that He is the substance and form which is the one and only absolute being.
In Part Two we discussed the spiritual sun and its world, and the natural sun and its world; and we said that God created the universe with all of its constituents by means of the two suns.
In Part Three we dealt with the degrees in which each and all created things exist.
Here in Part Four we will now take up God’s creation of the universe.
We are considering all these matters because angels have lamented before the Lord that when they look into the world they see nothing but darkness, and that they find in people no knowledge of God, heaven and the creation of nature on which to rest their wisdom.
Such are the thoughts which enter their ideas when they hear it said that God is human, among people who think of the human God in the way that they do of a person in the world, and who think of God in terms of nature and its properties of time and space. On the other hand, people who think of the human God not in terms of a person in the world, and not in terms of nature and its properties of space and time, clearly perceive that the universe could not have been created without God’s being human.
[2] Direct your thought into an angelic idea of God as being human, and dismiss as far as you can an idea of space, and you will in your thinking approach the truth.
Some of the learned also perceive that spirits and angels do not exist in space, because they perceive anything spiritual as being independent of space. For it is like thought. Although thought exists in a person, still the person can by means of it be as though present elsewhere, in any place whatever, even the most remote.
Such is the state of spirits and angels, who are human, even in respect to their bodies. They appear in the place where their thought conveys them, since intervals of space and distances in the spiritual world are appearances, and these accord with their thought from affection.
[3] It can be seen from this that God, who appears far above the spiritual world as the sun, to whom cannot be attributed any appearance of space, must not be thought of in terms of space. One can then comprehend the fact that He created the universe, not out of nothing, but out of Himself. One can further comprehend that His human body cannot be thought of as great or small, or as having any stature, because this, too, involves space; consequently that in the first and last of things, and in the greatest and least of them, He is the same; and furthermore that His Humanity is inmostly within every created thing, but independently of space.
It may be seen in nos. 77-82 above that the Divine in the greatest and least of things is the same; and in nos. 69-72, that the Divine fills every space and interval of space independently of space. Moreover, because the Divine does not exist in space, neither is it extended in space, as the inmost of nature is.
286. The assertion that God could not have created the universe and all its constituents without His being human may be quite clearly comprehended by any intelligent person from this consideration, that he cannot deny to himself that God encompasses in Him love and wisdom, mercy and clemency, and absolute good and truth, because these originate from Him. And because he cannot deny this, he also cannot deny that God is human. For none of these qualities can exist apart from a human being, since the human being is the underlying vessel of which they are predicated, and to divorce them from that vessel is to say they have no reality.
Think of wisdom and envision it apart from any person. Does it have any reality? Can you conceive of it as something ethereal or as something flame-like? You cannot, unless perhaps you conceive of it in such entities, and if you do, it must be wisdom in a form like that possessed by the human being. It must be altogether in his form. Not one element can be missing for wisdom to exist in it.
In a word, the form of wisdom is human; and because the form of wisdom is human, so, too, is the form of love, of mercy, of clemency, of goodness and of truth, since these go hand in hand with wisdom.
It may be seen in nos. 40-43 above that love and wisdom cannot exist except in some form.
287. That love and wisdom are human can also be seen from the appearance of angels in heaven, who are the more beautifully human the more love and wisdom they possess from the Lord.
The same can be seen from what we are told in the Word about Adam, that he was created into the likeness and image of God (Genesis 1:26), because he was created into the form of love and wisdom.
Every person on earth is born into the human form anatomically. That is because his spirit-which we also call the soul-is human; and it is human because it is capable of receiving love and wisdom from the Lord. Furthermore, the more a person’s spirit or soul does receive these, the more human he becomes after the death of the material body with which he was clothed; and the more it does not receive them, the more of a monster he becomes, though retaining some human quality from his capability of receiving them.
288. Since God is human, therefore the whole angelic heaven in its entirety resembles a single person. It is moreover divided into regions and provinces corresponding to the members, viscera and organs of the human anatomy. For there are societies in heaven which constitute the province of all the components of the brain, societies which constitute the province of all the organs of the face, and societies which constitute the province of all the viscera of the body; and these provinces are differentiated from each other just as the components in the human anatomy are. Angels also know in what province of the human anatomy they are.
The whole of heaven is in this image because God is human. God, moreover, is heaven, because the angels who constitute heaven are recipients of love and wisdom from the Lord, and recipients are images.
We have already shown at the ends of several chapters in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven) that heaven exists in the form of all the constituents of the human anatomy.
289. One can see from this the emptiness of the ideas held by people who think of God other than as human, and of Divine attributes other than as being in God as a person, because when separated from the concept of a person they are purely figments of the imagination.
It may be seen in nos. 11-13 above that God is supremely human; and every person is therefore human in the measure of his reception of love and wisdom. We affirm the same point here for the sake of the ensuing discussions, in order that the reader may comprehend the creation of the universe by God because of His being human.
290. The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, produced from Himself the sun of the spiritual world, and out of it created the universe and all of its constituents. We discussed the sun of the spiritual world in Part Two of this work, and in it we showed the following:
That Divine love and wisdom appear in the spiritual world as the sun (nos. 83-88). That from that sun emanate spiritual heat and light (nos. 89-92). That that sun is not God, but that it is an emanation of the Divine love and wisdom of the human God; so, too, the heat and light from that sun (nos. 93-98). That the sun in the spiritual world is at a middle height and appears as distant from the angels as the sun in the natural world does from people (nos. 103-107). That in the spiritual world, the east is where the Lord appears as the sun, and the other points of the compass are determined in relation to it (nos. 119-123, 124-128). That angels turn their faces continually to the Lord as the sun (nos. 129-134, 135-139). That the Lord created the universe and everything in it by means of that sun, which is the first emanation of His Divine love and wisdom (nos. 151-156). That the sun in the natural world is nothing but fire, and that nature, which takes its origin from that sun, is consequently lifeless; moreover, that the sun in the natural world was created in order that the work of creation might be completed and concluded (nos. 157-162). That without the two suns, one alive and the other lifeless, creation would not exist (nos. 163-166).
However, because human reason is such that it does not assent to something unless it sees it from its cause, thus unless it perceives how it is possible-in the present instance how the sun of the spiritual world, which is not the Lord but an emanation from Him, was produced-therefore we will say something about this, too.
I have had many conversations with angels on this point, and they have said that they perceive it clearly in their spiritual light, but that they can present it only with difficulty to a person in his natural light, there being such a great difference between the one light and the other and consequently between their thoughts.
[2] Nevertheless, they have said that the case is similar to that with the atmosphere of affections and consequent thoughts which encompasses every angel, by which his presence is manifested to others near and far. This encompassing atmosphere is not the angel himself, they have said, but something arising from each and every part of his body, from which substances continually emanate like a stream; and the substances which emanate envelop him. Moreover, being continually activated by the two wellsprings of his life’s operation, the heart and the lungs, these substances immediately enveloping his body stir the surrounding atmospheres into like activities, and in consequence of it produce in others a perception as though of his presence. Thus there is not some other atmosphere of affections and consequent thoughts which emanate and extend from him, even though it is so called, because affections are only states of the forms of the mind within.
Angels have said furthermore that an angel has such an atmosphere about him because the Lord has one about Him, that the atmosphere about the Lord is in like manner from Him, and that that atmosphere is their sun, or the sun of the spiritual world.
292. I have often been given to perceive the existence of such an atmosphere about an angel or spirit, and also the existence of a common atmosphere about many in a society; and I have also been given to see the atmosphere manifested in various guises. In heaven it has looked at times like a slender flame, in hell like a dense fire, and at other times in heaven like a thin white cirrus cloud, and in hell like a dense and dark rain cloud. I have been granted as well to perceive these atmospheres as various kinds of aromas and stenches.
As a result of these experiences I have been convinced that everyone in heaven and everyone in hell is surrounded by an atmosphere consisting of substances released and given off from their bodies.
293. I have perceived, too, that an atmosphere radiates not only from angels and spirits but also from each and every object appearing in their world, as from trees and their fruits there, from bushes and their flowers, from herbs and grasses, even from soils and every one of their constituents. It has been apparent from this that it is a universal phenomenon, both in the case of living things and in that of lifeless ones, that each is enveloped by something like that which exists within, and that this is continually exhaled from it.
The same phenomenon is found in the natural world, as people know from the observations of many learned investigators. They know, for example, that a flood of effluvia constantly flows from every person, likewise from every animal, and also from every tree, fruit, bush, and flower, indeed from every metal and rock.
The natural world draws this characteristic from the spiritual world, and the spiritual world from the Divine.
294. Since the elements which constitute the sun of the spiritual world are from the Lord, and are not the Lord, therefore they do not possess life in itself, but are bereft of life in itself, just as the elements which flow from an angel or person and form the atmospheres about them are not the angel or person, but are from them, bereft of their life. These elements are coupled with the angel or person only in their accordance with them, having originated from the forms of their body, which in them were forms of their life.
This is a secret which angels with their spiritual ideas are able to see in thought and also express in speech, but which people with their natural ideas cannot, since a thousand spiritual ideas constitute a single natural idea, and a person cannot resolve a single natural idea into any spiritual idea, still less into so many. The reason he cannot is that these ideas differ according to degrees of height, as explained in Part Three.
295. The existence of such a difference between the thoughts of angels and those of people has been made known to me by the following experiment:
I have told angels to think about something spiritually and after that to tell me what they thought. When they did so and tried to tell me, they could not, saying that they were unable to put it into words.
The same was the case with their spiritual speech and with their spiritual writing. Not a word of their spiritual speech was the same as a word of natural speech, nor was any part of their spiritual writing the same as natural writing, except for the letters, each one of which contained a complete meaning.
On the other hand-surprisingly-they said that they seem to themselves to think, speak and write in their spiritual state in the same way that a person does in his natural state, when in fact nothing is the same.
It was apparent from this that natural and spiritual things differ in accordance with degrees of height, and that they do not communicate with each other except through correspondences.
296. There are three elements in the Lord which are the Lord-the Divine element of love, the Divine element of wisdom, and the Divine element of useful endeavor-and these three are manifested in appearance outside of the sun of the spiritual world, the Divine element of love by warmth, the Divine element of wisdom by light, and the Divine element of useful endeavor by the atmosphere which is their containing medium. It may be seen in nos. 89-92, 99-102, and 146-150 above that from the sun in the spiritual world emanate heat and light, and that heat emanates from the Lord’s Divine love and light from His Divine wisdom. We must now explain here that the atmosphere which is the containing medium of heat and light is the third element that emanates from the sun there, and that this atmosphere emanates from the Divine element of the Lord which we call useful endeavor.
297. Everyone who thinks with some enlightenment can see that love has as its end and intends some useful endeavor, and that it produces the useful endeavor through wisdom; for love cannot produce any useful endeavor of itself, but only by means of wisdom. Indeed, what is love unless there is something that is loved? This something is useful endeavor. And because useful endeavor is that which is loved, and it is produced through wisdom, it follows that useful endeavor is the containing medium of love and wisdom.
We have already shown in nos. 209-216 and elsewhere that these three-love, wisdom and useful endeavor-follow in sequence in accordance with degrees of height, and that the last degree embraces, contains, and is the foundation of the prior degrees.
It can be seen from this that the aforementioned three elements-the Divine element of love, the Divine element of wisdom, and the Divine element of useful endeavor-are in the Lord, and that in essence they are the Lord.
298. In subsequent discussions we will demonstrate fully that, regarded in respect to his outer and inner constituents, the human being is a form embracing all useful endeavors, and that all other useful endeavors throughout the created universe correspond to those useful endeavors. We need only mention it here in order to make it known that God as a person is the supreme form embracing all useful endeavors, from which all other useful endeavors in the created universe take their origin, and consequently that regarded in terms of its useful endeavors, the created universe is an image of Him.
We call useful endeavors those phenomena which, being from the human God, or the Lord, are from creation in order. However, we do not call useful endeavors those which spring from people’s native character, for their native character is hell, and its endeavors are contrary to order.
299. Now because these three elements-love, wisdom and useful endeavor-are in the Lord and are the Lord, and because the Lord is everywhere, seeing that He is omnipresent, and because He cannot manifest Himself in person to any angel or person as He is in Himself and as He is in His sun, therefore He manifests Himself by such things as can be received, manifesting Himself as to love by warmth, as to wisdom by light, and as to useful endeavor by the atmosphere.
The reason the Lord manifests Himself as to useful endeavor by the atmosphere is that the atmosphere is the containing medium of heat and light, as useful endeavor is the containing medium of love and wisdom. For the light and heat which emanate from the Divine sun cannot emanate in nothing, that is, in a vacuum, but must do so in a containing medium as their vessel; and we call this containing medium the atmosphere which encompasses the sun, which takes that sun in its bosom and conveys it to the heaven where angels dwell and so to the world where people dwell, thus manifesting the Lord’s presence everywhere.
300. We showed in nos. 173-178, 179-183 above that the spiritual world has atmospheres in it just as the natural world does in it, and we said that the atmospheres of the spiritual world are spiritual, while the atmospheres of the natural world are natural. Now, from the origin of the spiritual atmosphere immediately surrounding the spiritual sun, it can be seen that everything in that atmosphere is in its essence of the same nature as the sun in its essence.
The reality of this is something angels with their spiritual ideas, which are independent of space, have declared, saying that there is one single substance from which springs all else, and that the sun of the spiritual world is that substance. Moreover, because the Divine does not exist in space, and in the greatest and least of things is the same, the like is the case, they have said, with that sun which is the first emanation of the human God. They have also said further that this one single substance, which is their sun, emanating by means of the atmospheres in conformity with continuous degrees or degrees of breadth and at the same time in conformity with discrete degrees or degrees of height, produces the varieties of all that exists in the created universe.
Angels have said that these matters cannot be at all comprehended unless one removes notions of space from his ideas, and that if these notions are not removed, it is inevitable that appearances give rise to misconceptions. Such misconceptions cannot occur, however, as long as one holds to the thought that God is being itself, from which springs all else.
301. It is furthermore clearly apparent from angelic ideas, which are independent of space, that nothing in the created universe has life except the human God alone, or the Lord, that nothing moves except as the result of life from Him, and that nothing has existence except through the sun from Him-consequently that it is a truth that in God we live, move, and have our being.*
* Acts 17:28.
302. There are in each world, in the spiritual world and in the natural world, three atmospheres, and these terminate in their final forms in such substances and materials as occur in the earth. We showed in Part Three, nos. 173-176, that there are in each world, in the spiritual world and in the natural world, three atmospheres, which are distinguished from each other in accordance with degrees of height, and which in their descent to lower levels decrease in accordance with degrees of breadth. Now because the atmospheres in their descent to lower levels decrease, it follows that they continually become more compressed and inert, until at last they become so compressed and inert that they are no longer atmospheres, but substances at rest, and in the natural world fixed, such as exist in the earth and are called material substances.
From this origin of substances and materials, it follows, first, that these substances and materials are also of three degrees. Secondly, that they are held in their connection with each other by the surrounding atmospheres. And thirdly, that they have been suitably constituted to produce all useful ends in their forms.
303. Who does not affirm that such substances or materials as occur in the earth have been produced by the sun through its atmospheres? What person does not affirm it who considers that a perpetual series of intermediating agencies extends from the first entity to the last? And that nothing can come into being except from something prior to it, and in the final analysis from a first cause? This first cause is the sun of the spiritual world, and the first cause of that sun is the human God or the Lord.
Now because the atmospheres are those prior agencies by which that sun manifests itself in final forms, and because those prior agencies continually decrease in activity and rarefaction in their descent to final forms, it follows that when their activity and rarefaction terminate in final forms, they become such substances and materials as exist in their earth-substances and materials which, from the atmospheres from which they arose, retain in them an impetus and endeavor to produce useful effects.
People who postulate the creation of the universe and all of its constituents to have arisen not through a continual series of intermediating agencies from their first origin cannot but construct hypotheses severed and divorced from their causes. When examined by a mind that views matters more deeply, their hypotheses look not like a well-constructed house, but like a heap of stuff resembling rubble.
304. From this universal origin of all the constituents in the created universe, they each derive there the same characteristic, that they progress from their first element to their last elements which are relatively in a state of rest so as to terminate in them and abide.
Fibers in the human body thus proceed from their first forms until they become tendons, and likewise fibers with their vessels from their first forms until they become cartilages and bones, so as to rest on them and abide.
Because such is the progression from firsts to lasts of the fibers and vessels in a person, their states therefore follow a similar progression. Their states are sensations, thoughts, and affections. These, too, proceed from their first origins where they are in a state of light to their last forms where they are in a state of comparative darkness, or from their first origins where they are in a state of warmth to their last forms where they are lacking in warmth.
Now because such is the progression of these, such also is the progression of love and all its constituents, and of wisdom and all its constituents. In a word, such is the progression of all the constituents in the created universe.
The point here is the same as that demonstrated in nos. 222-229 above, that degrees of two kinds exist in the greatest and least of all created things.
The reason degrees of both kinds exist in the least of all things is that the spiritual sun is the one single substance from which springs all else, according to the spiritual ideas of angels (no. 300).
305. The substances and materials of which the earth consists have in them nothing of the Divine in itself, but still they originate from that which is Divine in itself. From the origin of the earth, as discussed under the previous heading, it can be seen that its substances and materials have in them nothing of the Divine in itself, but that they are bereft of everything that is Divine in itself. For as we said, they are the final and terminal forms of the atmospheres, whose warmth ends in coldness, whose light ends in darkness, and whose activity ends in inertness. But still, by their evolution from the substance of the spiritual sun, they have retained that which was from the Divine there, which, as we said in nos. 291-293 above, was the atmosphere surrounding the human God or the Lord. From that atmosphere, by their evolution from the sun by means of the succeeding atmospheres, have arisen the substances and materials of which the earth consists.
306. The origin of the earth from the spiritual sun by means of the atmospheres cannot be otherwise described in words springing from natural ideas, but they can be otherwise described in words springing from spiritual ideas, because the latter are independent of space. However, because they are independent of space, they are beyond expression in the words of any natural language.
It may be seen in no. 295 above that spiritual thoughts, speech and writing differ so much from natural thoughts, speech and writing that they have nothing in common, and that they communicate only through correspondences. It is sufficient, therefore, for the origin of the earth to be perceived in some way naturally.
[2] We call these useful ends because they are recipients of Divine love and wisdom, and because they look to God the Creator from whom they originated, thereby uniting Him with His grand work and by that union bringing to pass their continued existence from Him even as they came into existence from Him.
We say that they look to God the Creator from whom they originated, uniting Him with His grand work, but we said this in accordance with the appearance. Rather we mean that God the Creator causes them seemingly of themselves to look to and unite themselves to Him. But how they look to and thereby unite themselves to Him will be explained in subsequent discussions.
[3] We have already said something about these matters in their own places previously. As for instance, that Divine love and wisdom cannot but be and have expression in others created by them (nos. 47-51). That everything in the created universe is a recipient of Divine love and wisdom (nos. 55-60). And that the uses of all things that have been created ascend by degrees to mankind, and through mankind to God the Creator from whom they originate (nos. 65-68).
308. Who does not clearly see that the ends in creation are useful ends when he considers that nothing can come into being from God the Creator and so be created by Him except what is useful, and that to be useful, it must exist for the sake of others? Moreover, that usefulness to oneself is also usefulness to others, for to be of use to oneself is to be in a state to be of use to others?
Anyone who considers this can also consider that any useful endeavor that is truly useful cannot spring from mankind, but exists in mankind from Him from whom all that comes into being is of use, thus from the Lord.
309. But as we are here discussing forms of use, we will say something about them under the following headings:
(1) The earth has in it an endeavor to produce useful ends in forms, or forms of use.
(2) All forms of use have in them some image of the creation of the universe.
(3) All forms of use have in them some image of the human being.
(4) All forms of use have in them some image of the Infinite and Eternal.
310. (1) The earth has in it an endeavor to produce useful ends in forms, or forms of use. That the earth has in it such an endeavor follows from its origin. As may be seen in nos. 305, 306 above, the substances and materials of which the earth consists are the final and terminal forms of the atmospheres, which emanate from the spiritual sun as forms of useful endeavor. Because the substances and materials of which the earth consists are from that origin, then, and because aggregates of these are held in connection by the surrounding pressure of the atmospheres, it follows that they have in them as a consequence an endeavor to produce forms of use. Their very character of being able to produce such forms is something they acquire from their origin, which lies in the fact that they are the final forms of the atmospheres, with which they therefore accord.
We say that this endeavor and this character exist in the earth, but we mean that they exist in the substances and materials of which the earth consists, whether they are in the earth or are emitted from the earth into the atmospheres. People know that the atmospheres are filled with such emissions.
[2] The existence of such an endeavor and such a character in the substances and materials of the earth is clearly apparent from the fact that seeds of every kind, having been opened to their inmost point by means of warmth, are impregnated by the subtlest of substances, substances which cannot but be from a spiritual origin; which in consequence have the power of uniting themselves to a useful end, from which they have their propagative ability; and which by conjunction then with materials of a natural origin are able to produce forms of use, and afterward send them forth as though from a womb, in order that they may come also into light and so sprout and grow.
This endeavor subsequently continues from the earth through the root to the lasts of these forms, and from the lasts to the firsts of them, in which the useful end exists in its origin.
Thus do useful ends pass into forms. And from the end, which is as though their soul, the forms in their progression from their first constituents to their last, and from their last constituents to their first, acquire as a characteristic that each and every part of them is of some use. We say that the useful end is as though the soul, because its form is as though its body.
[3] It also follows that there is a still more interior endeavor, which is an endeavor to produce through the sproutings of plants things of use to the animal kingdom, for animals of every kind are fed by them.
It follows, too, that there are in these substances and materials an endeavor to be of useful service to the human race.
These conclusions follow from the fact, 1) that these substances and materials are final forms, and in final forms are present in succession all prior elements concurrently, as we have shown in previous discussions here and there above. 2) That degrees of both kinds exist in the greatest and least of all things, as we showed in nos. 222-229 above. So, too, in the case of this endeavor. 3) That the Lord produces all useful effects out of final forms, and therefore there must be in final forms an endeavor toward those effects.
311. But even so, these endeavors are all inanimate, for they are endeavors of the lowest forces of life, forces which have present in them from the life from which they originate a striving to return through any available means to their origin.
The atmospheres in their last forms become such forces, by which such substances and materials as occur in the earth are actuated into forms and held in forms, both from within and from without.
We do not have the space to demonstrate these points further, because to do so would require a large volume.
312. The first production from the earth and its substances, when they were still new and in their pristine state, was the production of seeds. The first endeavor in them could not have been any other.
313. (2) All forms of use have in them some image of creation. Forms of use are of three kinds: forms of use belonging to the mineral kingdom, forms of use belonging to the plant kingdom, and forms of use belonging to the animal kingdom.
Forms of use belonging to the mineral kingdom cannot be described, because they are not visible to the sight. Its first forms are the substances and materials of which the earth consists in its least constituents. Its second forms are aggregations of these, which are of infinite variety. Its third forms arise from plants that have decayed into dust, and dead animals, and from the continual evaporations and exhalations of these which combine with the earth and produce its soil.
These forms in three degrees belonging to the mineral kingdom present an image of creation in this respect, that actuated by the sun through the atmospheres and their heat and light, they produce useful ends in forms, ends which were the ends in creation. This image of creation lies concealed within their endeavors, as described above in no. 310.
314. In forms of use belonging to the plant kingdom, an image of creation is visible in this respect, that they progress from their first constituents to their last, and from their last constituents to their first. Their first constituents are seeds, their last constituents are stems covered with bark, and through the bark, which is the final integument of the stems, they progress to seeds, which, as we said, are their first constituents.
The stems covered with bark resemble the earth covered with soil, out of which arises the creation and formation of all useful ends.
It is a fact known to many that plant growth occurs through the bark, cambium and other coverings, by struggling up through the integuments of the roots and through their continuations around the stems and branches into the beginnings of fruits, and in like manner through the fruits into seeds.
An image of creation in these forms of use is apparent in the progression of their formation from their first constituents to their last, and from their last constituents to their first, and from the fact that present throughout their progression is the goal of producing fruits and seeds, which are useful ends.
From the foregoing observations it is apparent that the progression in the creation of the universe went from its first origin, which is the Lord girded with the sun, to last forms, which are the substances of the earth, and from these through useful endeavors to the first origin or the Lord. It is apparent, too, that the ends in the whole of creation were forms of use.
315. It should be known that the heat, light and atmospheres of the natural world contribute nothing at all to this image of creation, but that it is attributable solely to the heat, light and atmospheres of the sun of the spiritual world. These carry that image with them and impart it to forms of use belonging to the plant kingdom.
The heat, light and atmospheres of the natural world only open seeds, keep their productions in a state of expansion, and induce in them material substances which cause them to endure. However, they accomplish these effects, not in consequence of any forces from their own sun, forces which, regarded in themselves, are powerless, but in consequence of forces from the spiritual sun, by which they are perpetually impelled to these actions. Still, the heat, light and atmospheres of the natural world contribute nothing at all to bestowing on these forms an image of creation. For the image of creation is spiritual. But for this image to be visible and serve a useful purpose in the natural world, and for it to remain fixed and endure, it must assume material form, that is to say, it must be infused with the material substances of that world.
This progression is similar to the progression in forms of use belonging to the plant kingdom. Seeds are its beginnings; the womb or egg is comparable to the earth; the state before birth is comparable to the state of a seed in the earth when it is taking root; and the state after birth to the time of reproduction is comparable to the sprouting of a tree to the state of its bearing fruit.
It is apparent from this parallel that as there is a likeness of creation in the forms of plants, so there is a likeness of creation in the forms of animals-namely, that they exhibit a progression from their first constituents to their last, and from their last constituents to their first.
[2] A similar image of creation exists in every particular found in the human being, for there is a similar progression of love through wisdom into useful endeavor, consequently a similar progression of will through the intellect into actions, and a similar progression of charity through faith into works. The will and intellect, or charity and faith, are the first constituents from which actions or works originate. Actions and works are the last constituents. From these last constituents a return is made through the delights of useful endeavors to their first constituents, which as we said are the will and intellect, or charity and faith. That a return is made through the delights of useful endeavors is clearly apparent from the delights perceived in actions and works that are connected with any love, in that they flow back to the first element of love from which they originated and thereby bring about conjunction. Delights perceived in actions and works are the delights that we call delights of useful endeavor.
[3] A similar progression from their first constituents to their last, and from their last constituents to their first, exists in the most purely organic forms of the affections and thoughts in a person. In his brain these forms are starlike, called gray matter. Traveling out from these forms through the medullary substance through the neck into the body are fibers which continue on to the last constituents there, and which from the last constituents return to their first origins. The return of these fibers to their first origins takes place through the blood vessels.
[4] Similar to this progression is the progression of all affections and thoughts, which are changes and variations in the states of these forms and substances. For the fibers traveling out from these forms or substances are comparatively like the atmospheres arising from the spiritual sun, which are the conveyers of heat and light; and actions produced by the body are comparatively like the productions produced through the atmospheres out of the earth, the delights of whose useful endeavors return to the origin from which they arose.
Still, the existence in these forms of such a progression, and the presence in the progression of an image of creation, can with difficulty be comprehended with a full understanding of the matter, because the thousands and tens of thousands of forces operating in any action appear as one, and because the delights of useful endeavors do not produce in the thought any visible images, but only affect it without a clear perception of them.
Concerning this subject, see what we have said and shown previously, as for example, that the uses of all things that have been created ascend by degrees of height to mankind, and through mankind to God the Creator from whom they originate (nos. 65-68); and that the end in creation finds expression in the lasts of it, which is for everything to return to the Creator and conjunction take place (nos. 167-172).
But these matters will appear in a still clearer light in the next part, where we will take up the correspondence of the will and the intellect with the heart and the lungs.
317. (3) All forms of use have in them some image of the human being. This we have already shown in nos. 61-64 above.
We will see in the next discussion below that all forms of use from the first to the last of them, and from the last to the first of them, have some relation to all the constituents of the human being and correspond to them, and consequently that the human being is, in a kind of image, a universe, and that regarded in terms of its uses, the universe is, in an image, a human entity.
318. (4) All forms of use have in them some image of the Infinite and Eternal. An image of the Infinite is visible in these forms from their endeavor and power to fill every interval of space in the entire world and in many other worlds as well to infinity. For a single seed produces a tree, bush, or plant, which occupies its own space. Every tree, bush, or plant then produces more seeds-in some cases several thousand-and when these fall to the ground and sprout, they each occupy their own space. If every one of their seeds, then, were to spawn as many new progeny again and again, within years they would fill the whole world; and if they were to continue still to reproduce, they would fill many more worlds, and this to infinity. Reckon from one seed thousands more, and multiply those thousands by the thousands from them ten times, twenty times, up to a hundred times, and you will see.
An image of the Eternal exists similarly in these forms as well. Seeds are produced anew from year to year, and new productions of them never cease. They have not ceased from the creation of the world to this day, nor will they cease to eternity.
These two characteristics are manifest indications and testifying signs that all constituents of the universe have been created by an infinite and eternal God.
[2] In addition to these images of the Infinite and Eternal, there is a further image of the Infinite and Eternal in the varieties of things and the fact that no substance, state, or object can ever occur in the created universe that is identical to another. Not in the atmospheres, not in the substances of the earth, nor in the forms arising from them, thus not in any of the constituents which fill the universe, can anything identical to another be produced to eternity.
The fact of this is visibly apparent in the variety of facial features among all human beings. No one set of facial features is identical to that of another anywhere in the world, nor can there be to eternity. Consequently neither is any mind the same, of which the face is a reflection.
319. Regarded from the perspective of their uses, all constituents of the created universe resemble in an image the human being, and this attests to the fact that God is human. People in ancient times called the human being a microcosm, because he resembled the macrocosm, which is the universe in its entirety. People today, however, do not know why it is that the ancients called him that, for no more of the universe or macrocosm is apparent in him than the fact that he is nourished and his physical life sustained by its animal kingdom and plant kingdom, and the fact that he is kept in a state of continued life by its warmth, that he sees by means of its light, and that he hears and breathes in consequence of its atmospheres. Yet it is not these which cause the human being to be a microcosm, as the universe with all its constituents is the macrocosm.
Rather the fact that people in ancient times called the human being a microcosm or little universe is something they drew from the knowledge of correspondences which people in most ancient times possessed, and from communication with angels in heaven. For angels in heaven know from the visible phenomena surrounding them that, regarded in terms of their uses, all constituents of the created universe resemble in an image the human being.
320. Still, the notion that the human being is a microcosm or little universe-because regarded in terms of its uses, the created universe is, in an image, a human entity-is not something that can enter anyone’s thinking and consequent knowledge from an idea of the universe as it is viewed in the spiritual world. Neither can it be attested, therefore, except by an angel who lives in the spiritual world, or by one to whom it has been granted to be in that world and to see the phenomena that exist there. Because this has been granted to me, I can reveal this secret from the phenomena I have seen in that world.
321. It should be known that in outward appearance the spiritual world is just like the natural world. One sees there lands, mountains, hills, valleys, plains, fields, lakes, rivers, and springs, just as in the natural world, thus all the phenomena belonging to the mineral kingdom. One sees also parks, gardens, groves, and forests, in which are found trees and bushes of every kind, with fruits and seeds, and plants, flowers, herbs, and grasses, thus all the phenomena belonging to the plant kingdom. One sees animals, birds, and fish of every kind, thus all the phenomena belonging to the animal kingdom. A person there is an angel or spirit.
This much is premised in order to make it known that the universe of the spiritual world is just like the universe of the natural world, the only difference being that the phenomena which exist there are not fixed and set like phenomena in the natural world, because nothing there is natural, but everything spiritual.
[2] These phenomena take form and change as described because they all exist in accordance with the affections and consequent thoughts of the angels. For they are correspondent forms. And because forms that correspond accord with that to which they correspond, therefore they are a representative image of it.
This image is not apparent when any of these phenomena are viewed in terms of their forms, but it is seen when they are viewed in terms of their uses.
I have been given to see that when angels have their eyes opened by the Lord and view these phenomena from the perspective of their corresponding uses, they recognize and see themselves in them.
323. Now, because the phenomena surrounding angels exist in accordance with their affections and thoughts, and because these phenomena resemble a kind of universe in the fact that they include lands, plants and animals, and these constitute a representative image of the angel, it is apparent why people in ancient times called the human being a microcosm.
324. The reality of this is something we have attested in many places in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), and also in the book Heaven and Hell, and now here and there in the preceding pages where we have taken up correspondence. Moreover, we have shown in those places that there is nothing in the created universe that does not have a correspondence to some element in the human being, not only to his affections and consequent thoughts, but also to the organs and viscera of his body-not to them as substances, but to them as forms of useful endeavor.
So it is that when the Word refers to the church and the person of the church, it so often speaks of trees, such as olives, vines, and cedars, and of gardens, groves, and forests, and so, too, of beasts of the earth, birds of the air, and fish of the sea. It speaks of these because they correspond, and, as we said, by correspondence accord. Consequently angels also do not perceive the things named, but instead of these the church or people of the church in their various states.
325. Since all constituents of the universe resemble in an image the human being, Adam is described in respect to his wisdom and intelligence by the garden of Eden, which had in it trees of every kind, and also rivers, precious stones and gold, and moreover animals, to which Adam gave names. By all of these things are meant the qualities which he had in him and which constituted the being that we call man.
Assyria is described in very similar terms in Ezekiel 31:3-9, by which is symbolically meant the church in respect to its intelligence. So, too, Tyre in Ezekiel 28:12, 13, by which is symbolically meant the church in respect to its concepts of goodness and truth.
326. It can now be seen from this that regarded from the perspective of their uses, all constituents of the created universe resemble in an image the human being, and this attests to the fact that God is human. For the phenomena we enumerated above do not spring up around a person or angel from the angel, but from the Lord through the angel. They arise, in fact, from an influx of the Lord’s Divine love and wisdom into the angel, who is their recipient vessel, and are produced before his eyes as a creation of the universe. Therefore they know in their world that God is human, and that the universe, regarded in terms of its uses, is an image of Him.
327. All phenomena created by the Lord are forms of use, and they are forms of use in the order, degree and respect that they have relation to mankind and through mankind to the Lord from whom they originate. Regarding these points we have already said the following: That nothing can come into being from God the Creator except what is useful (no. 308). That the uses of all things that have been created ascend by degrees from the lowest created forms to mankind, and through mankind to God the Creator from whom they originate (nos. 65-68). That the end in creation finds expression in the lasts of it, which is for everything to return to God the Creator and conjunction take place (nos. 167-172). That things are useful in the measure that they look to the Creator (no. 307). That the Divine cannot but be and have expression in others it creates (nos. 47-51). That all constituents of the universe are recipients of the Divine according to the uses they serve, and this in accordance with degrees (no. 58). That the universe, regarded from the perspective of its uses, is an image of God (no. 59). And much else besides.
Apparent from this is the following truth, that all phenomena created by the Lord are forms of use, and that they are forms of use in the order, degree and respect that they have relation to mankind and through mankind to the Lord from whom they originate.
It remains for us to say something in particular here about forms of use.
328. By mankind to whom forms of use have relation we mean not only individuals, but also groups of people and smaller and larger associations of them, such as republics, kingdoms, and empires, as well as the greatest one, which is the entire world; for each of these is a human entity. The case is similar to that in heaven. The entire angelic heaven is in the Lord’s sight as though a single person, and likewise every society of heaven. So it is that every angel is a person. (That such is the case may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 68-102.)
It is apparent from this what we mean by mankind in the following considerations.
329. From the final end in creation it can be seen what a form of use is. The final end in creation is the existence of an angelic heaven. And because the angelic heaven is the final end, so, too, is mankind or the human race, since heaven is formed from it. It follows from this that all other phenomena created are intermediate ends, and that these are forms of use in the order, degree and respect that they have relation to mankind and through mankind to the Lord.
330. Since the final end in creation is an angelic heaven from the human race, and so also the human race, therefore its intermediate ends are all other phenomena that have been created. And because these have relation to mankind, they have regard to these three constituents of a person, namely, his body, his rational faculty, and his spiritual character, for the sake of his conjunction with the Lord. For a person cannot be conjoined with the Lord unless he is spiritual, and he cannot be spiritual without being rational, and he cannot be rational without having a body in sound condition. These three are like a house. The body is like the foundation. The person’s rational faculty is like the superstructure of the house. His spiritual character is like the furnishings in the house. And conjunction with the Lord is like his inhabiting of it.
Apparent from this is the order, degree and respect in which forms of use, the intermediate ends of creation, have relation to mankind, namely, that they are for sustaining a person’s body, for perfecting his rational faculty, and for his receiving a spiritual character from the Lord.
331. Forms of use for sustaining the body relate to its nourishment, clothing, lodging, recreation and enjoyment, and protection, and the preservation of its condition.
Forms of use created for the nourishment of the body are all constituents of the plant kingdom which are serviceable for food and drink, such as fruits, grapes, seeds, vegetables and herbs. So, too, all constituents of the animal kingdom which are eaten, such as steers, cows, calves, deer, sheep, male and female goats, lambs, and the milk obtained from them. And also fowl and fish of many kinds.
Forms of use created for the clothing of the body are likewise many of the constituents of these two kingdoms. So, too, forms of use for its lodging; and also for its recreation, enjoyment, and protection, and the preservation of its condition-instances of which we do not enumerate because they are well known, and listing them, therefore, would only serve to fill pages.
There are, indeed, many of these forms which do not result in anything useful to mankind, but their superfluousness does not take away their usefulness, but ensures that forms of use continue.
Possible also are abuses of forms of use, but the abuse does not take away their usefulness, just as falsifying a truth does not do away with the truth, other than in the people who do it.
332. Forms of use for perfecting the rational faculty are all disciplines which provide instruction in those matters just mentioned, and which are called sciences and fields of study. These relate to natural, economic, civil, and moral concerns, and they are learned either from parents and teachers, or from books, or from dealings with others, or on one’s own through reflections on such concerns.
These disciplines perfect the rational faculty to the extent that they are forms of use in a higher degree, and they remain to the extent that they are applied to life.
We do not have the space to enumerate these forms of use, both because of their multitude, and because of their varying relation to the common good.
333. Forms of use for receiving a spiritual character from the Lord are all matters having to do with religion and so with worship, thus which teach an acknowledgment and knowledge of God, and a knowledge and acknowledgment of goodness and truth, and consequently eternal life. These are similarly learned like other disciplines from parents, teachers, sermons and books, and especially through efforts to pursue a life in accordance with them. In the Christian world they are learned through doctrines and sermons drawn from the Word, and through the Word from the Lord.
These forms of use can be described in their range and scope in the same terms as forms of use to the body, as for example, in terms of nourishment, clothing, lodging, recreation and enjoyment, protection, and the preservation of condition, provided one applies them to the soul-its nourishment to goods of love, its clothing to truths of wisdom, its lodging to heaven, its recreation and enjoyment to felicity of life and heavenly joy, its protection to evils assailing, and the preservation of its condition to eternal life.
All of these boons are bestowed by the Lord according to a person’s acknowledgment that the same boons which are matters of the body are also all from the Lord, and that a person is only as a servant or steward set over the goods of his Lord.*
* Cf. Matthew 24:45-51, 25:14-30; Luke 12:42-48.
334. These gifts have been given to mankind to use and enjoy, and they are free gifts, as is clearly apparent from the state of angels in heaven, who likewise have a body, rational faculty, and spiritual character, as people do on earth. They are nourished without cost, for they are daily given their food. They are clothed without cost, because they are given their clothing. They have their lodging without cost, because they are given their houses. Nor do they worry about any of these things.* Moreover, to the extent that they are spiritually rational, they experience enjoyment, protection, and the preservation of their condition.
The difference is that angels see that these are gifts from the Lord, because things there are created in accordance with the state of their love and wisdom, as we showed in the preceding discussion (no. 322), while people do not see this, because things here recur yearly and exist not in accordance with the state of people’s love and wisdom, but according to the care they expend on them.
* Cf. Matthew 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-32.
The essence of spiritual love is to do good to others, not for one’s own sake, but for their sake. Infinitely more is it the essence of Divine love.
The case is the same as with the love of parents for their children, who do good to them out of love, not for their own sake but for the children’s sake. This is clearly seen in a mother’s love for her little children.
[2] Because the Lord is to be adored, worshiped and glorified, people believe that He loves adoration, worship and glory for His own sake. But in fact He loves these for mankind’s sake, since a person comes thereby into a state such that the Divine can flow in and be perceived, because the person thereby sets aside his native character which inhibits the influx and reception. For his native character, which is love of self, hardens the heart and closes it up. He sets this character aside by acknowledging that of himself he does nothing but evil, and from the Lord only good, thus occasioning a softening and humbling of the heart from which springs adoration and worship.
It follows from this that the uses the Lord performs for Himself through mankind exist to the end that He may do good to people out of love, and because this is His love, their reception of it is His love’s delight.
Let no one suppose, therefore, that the Lord dwells in those who merely adore Him, but that He dwells in those who do His commandments,* thus who do things of use. It is in such people that He has His abode,** and not the first.
(See also what we said on this subject in nos. 47-49 above.)
* See John 14:15, 21, 23, 15:10.
** See John 14:23.
336. Evil forms of use were not created by the Lord, but arose together with hell. We call all good endeavors having actual expression forms of use, and we also call all evil endeavors having actual expression forms of use; but the latter we call evil forms of use, and the first, good forms of use.
Now because all good endeavors come from the Lord, and all evil endeavors from hell, it follows that the Lord created only good forms of use, and that evil forms of use arose from hell.
By the forms of use that we are considering specifically in the present discussion we mean all forms that appear on the earth, such as animals of every kind and plants of every kind. All of these that are useful to mankind come from the Lord, and those which are harmful to mankind come from hell.
By forms of use from the Lord we mean likewise all matters that perfect a person’s rational faculty, and which enable the person to receive a spiritual character from the Lord. Conversely, by evil forms of use we mean all matters that destroy the rational faculty, and which render a person incapable of becoming spiritual.
We call things that are harmful to mankind forms of use because they are of use to evil people in doing evil, and for the reason also that they are helpful for absorbing malignancies, and so also as remedies.
We use the term “use” in both senses, like the term “love,” as referring to a good love or an evil love; and love calls everything that it does useful.
337. We will demonstrate that good forms of use come from the Lord, and that evil forms of use come from hell, according to the following outline:
(1) What we mean by evil forms of use on the earth.
(2) All forms that are evil forms of use are found in hell, and those that are good forms of use in heaven.
(3) There is a continual influx from the spiritual world into the natural world.
(4) Influx from hell produces those forms which are evil forms of use in places where there are corresponding elements.
(5) The lowest spiritual plane separated from its higher one occasions this.
(6) The two kinds of forms into which influx operates are plant forms and animal forms.
(7) Each of these two kinds of forms receives the ability to reproduce its own kind and the means of reproducing it.
338. (1) What we mean by evil forms of use on the earth. By evil forms of use on the earth we mean all harmful forms in each of the animal and plant kingdoms, and also harmful forms in the mineral kingdom.
We do not have the space to enumerate all the harmful forms in these kingdoms, for to do so would be only to amass a list of names, and amassing a list of names without indicating the harm each kind causes would not serve the purpose which this work has as its end. For the sake of clarification, it is sufficient that we name here some of them.
In the animal kingdom, such forms include venomous snakes, scorpions, crocodiles, dragons,* eagle owls, screech owls, mice and rats, locusts, frogs, and spiders. Also flies, wasps, cockroaches, lice, ticks and mites. In a word, creatures that consume grasses, leaves, fruits, seeds, foodstuffs and drinkable liquids, and are harmful to other animals and people.
In the plant kingdom, such forms include malignant, virulent and toxic herbage. Also vegetable matter and shrubbery of the same character.
In the mineral kingdom, such forms include all poisonous substances of the earth.
From these few examples it can be seen what we mean by evil forms of use on the earth. For evil forms of use are all forms that are opposed to the good forms of use described just above in the preceding discussion.**
* A reference perhaps to great nonvenomous constrictor snakes, such as the python. Cf. John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), X:529: “Hee..Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the Sun Ingenderd in the Pythian Vale on slime, Huge Python.”
** Nos. 327-335.
339. (2) All forms that are evil forms of use are found in hell, and those that are good forms of use are found in heaven. Before it can be seen that all evil forms of use that exist on the earth come not from the Lord but from hell, we must preface something about heaven and hell. Unless this is known, a person may attribute to the Lord evil forms of use as well as good ones, and suppose that the two originated together from creation; or he may attribute them to nature, and their origin to its sun. A person cannot be led away from these two errors unless he knows that nothing whatever exists in the natural world that does not take its cause and so its origin from the spiritual world, and unless he knows that good comes from the Lord, and evil from the devil, that is to say, from hell. By the spiritual world we mean both heaven and hell.
[2] Appearing in heaven are all those forms which are good forms of use, as described in the preceding discussion.* Appearing in hell, on the other hand, are all those forms which are evil forms of use, as described just above in no. 338, where we listed them. The latter include wild animals of every kind, such as snakes, scorpions, dragons,** crocodiles, tigers, wolves, foxes, wild boar, eagle owls, barn owls, screech owls, bats, mice and rats, frogs, locusts, spiders, and noxious insects of many kinds. Appearing there also are toxicants and hemlocks of every kind, and deadly poisons in both plants and substances of the earth. In a word, they are all those forms which do harm and kill people. These forms appear just as real in the hells as they do in and on the earth.
We say that these forms appear in the hells, but still they do not exist there in the same way that they do on earth, for they are merely correspondent forms of the lusts which pour from the inhabitants’ evil loves and which become visible in such forms to others.
[3] Because these are the kinds of things found in the hells, therefore the hells are also filled with foul stenches, such as those of dead bodies, excrement, urine, and putrefaction, which diabolical spirits there find delightful, as animals do things which have an offensive odor.
It can be seen from this that forms of a like character in the natural world do not take their origin from the Lord, and were not created from the beginning, and that neither did they arise from nature by means of its sun, but that they originated from hell. That these forms did not arise from nature by means of its sun is clearly apparent from the fact that a spiritual phenomenon flows into the natural one, and not the reverse. And that they do not originate from the Lord is clearly apparent from the fact that hell does not originate from Him, and so neither anything in hell which corresponds to the inhabitants’ evils.
* Nos. 327-335.
** A reference perhaps to great nonvenomous constrictor snakes, such as the python. Cf. John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), X:529: “Hee..Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the Sun Ingenderd in the Pythian Vale on slime, Huge Python.”
340. (3) There is a continual influx from the spiritual world into the natural world. If one is unaware of the existence of the spiritual world, and does not know that it is distinct from the natural world as something prior is from something subsequent, or as a cause is from the effect caused, he cannot know anything about this influx.
It is owing to this that people who have written about the origin of plants and animals have only been able to trace that origin from nature. Or if they have traced it from God, they have supposed that God imparted to nature from the beginning the power to produce such forms.
They have done this in ignorance of the fact that nature has not been endowed with any power; for it is lifeless, and contributes no more to the production of these forms than a tool in the work of a craftsman, which to act must continually be wielded.
It is something spiritual, something which takes its origin from the sun where the Lord is and descends to the outmost elements of nature, which produces the forms of plants and animals and creates the marvels that exist in both, filling them with substances from the earth so that those forms remain fixed and constant.
Because we now know of the existence of the spiritual world, and know that anything spiritual comes from the sun where the Lord is and which emanates from the Lord, and that it is this which impels nature to act, as something living does something lifeless, moreover that forms of a like character exist in that world as in the natural world, it can be seen that plant and animal forms have sprung and continue perpetually to spring from no other origin than the Lord through that world-thus that there is a continual influx from the spiritual world into the natural world.
The reality of this will be attested by a number of evidences of it presented in the next discussion.
The production of harmful forms on the earth by an influx from hell is due to the same law of permission that allows the underlying evils themselves to flow in from there in people (a law that we will speak about in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Providence).
341. (4) Influx from hell produces those forms which are evil forms of use in places where there are corresponding elements. The elements that correspond to evil forms of use, that is, to malignant herbage and harmful animals, are those of carrion, putrefaction, excrement and dung, rot, and urine. In places where these elements exist, therefore, such herbage and vermin spring up, and in tropical zones larger creatures of a like character, such as snakes, basilisks,* crocodiles, scorpions, mice and rats, and others.
Everyone knows that marshes, swamps, dunghills, and rotting compost heaps are filled with such creatures; also that noxious winged insects fill the atmosphere like clouds, and noxious vermin the earth like armies on the march, consuming its herbage even to the roots.
[2] In my garden I once observed that almost all the dust in a three or four foot area turned into tiny winged insects, for when I stirred it with my stick, they rose up like mists.
It is apparent simply from experience that carrion and putrefaction accord with such noxious and useless vermin, and that they are of a like character. This can clearly be seen from the cause, which is that the same foul odors and stenches exist in hells where such vermin also are found. These hells are consequently named accordingly, some being called carrion hells, some dung hells, some urine hells, and so on. They are, however, all covered over, to keep these exhalations from being emitted from them. For when they are opened just a little, which happens when newly arrived devils are entering, these hells induce vomiting and inflict headaches, and those which are at the same time poisonous cause fainting. The very dust there is also of the same character, on which account it is called there accursed dust.
It is apparent from this that wherever such foul odors exist, such noxious creatures are found, because they correspond.
* Legendary serpents or dragons, whose breath and glance were said to be lethal. Formerly identified in English translations of the Latin Vulgate with the cockatrice, and retained as such in the King James Bible.
342. It must now be questioned whether these creatures come from eggs conveyed to such places by the air or by rain or by water percolating up through the soil, or whether they come from the fluids and foul odors themselves there.
The notion that such noxious vermin and insects as those we have mentioned above are hatched from eggs conveyed to these places, or from eggs buried in the ground from the beginning of creation, is one all experience does not support, since larvae are found in tiny seeds, in the kernels of nuts, in pieces of wood, in stones, even emerging from leaves; and on plants and in them we find mites and grubs that accord with them. The notion is also not supported by our observation of flies, which in summer appear to arise in such great abundance in houses, fields and forests from no egg-like substance. It is likewise not supported by those pests which destroy meadows and pastures, and which in some warm areas fill and infest the air, not to mention those which invisibly swim or fly in fetid waters, in wines gone sour, and in pestilential air.
These observations of experience support those people who say that the odors, stenches and exhalations emitted from plants, soils, and stagnant waters are themselves what give to such creatures also their beginnings.
The fact that after these creatures have come into being they are reproduced either by eggs or by live births does not take away their immediate origins, since every animal receives with its little organs also reproductive organs and the means of procreating (a subject we take up below in no. 347).
In support of this conclusion is an observation of experience previously unknown, that the same phenomena exist also in the hells.
343. That the aforementioned hells not only communicate but also are conjoined with such phenomena on earth can be concluded from the fact that the hells are not apart from people but surround them, being indeed in people who are evil, so that they are in contact with the earth. For in respect to his affections and lusts and consequent thoughts, and springing from these his actions, which are good or evil forms of use, a person is either in the midst of angels of heaven or in the midst of spirits of hell. And because the same phenomena found on earth are found also in the heavens and hells, it follows that an influx from there immediately produces these phenomena whenever the conditions are favorable.
Indeed, all phenomena appearing in the spiritual world, either in heaven or in hell, are correspondent forms of affections or lusts, for they exist there in accordance with them. Consequently, when affections or lusts, which in themselves are spiritual, meet homogeneous or corresponding conditions on earth, present is a spiritual component which provides a soul, and a material component which provides a body. Everything spiritual also has in it an endeavor to clothe itself with a body.
The hells surround mankind and so are in contact with the earth for the reason that the spiritual world does not exist in space, but is present wherever there is a corresponding affection.
To settle the argument, a beautiful bird appeared to Sir Hans, and he was told to examine it to see whether it differed in any least particular from a similar bird on earth. Sir Hans held it in his hand, examined it, and said that there was no difference. He was told to do this, because he knew that it was only the affection of some angel in his vicinity represented as a bird, and that it would vanish or cease to exist along with the angel’s affection, as also happened.
[2] As a result of this experiment Sir Hans was convinced that nature contributes nothing whatever to the productions of plants and animals, but that they are attributable solely to that which flows from the spiritual world into the natural one. He said that if that bird had been filled in respect to its least constituents with corresponding substances from the earth and thus given fixed form, it would be an enduring bird, as birds are on earth, and that the same is the case with phenomena arising from hell.
He said in addition that if he had known then what he knows now about the spiritual world, he would have ascribed to nature no more than the fact that it served a spiritual component from God to give fixed form to things continually flowing into nature.
* Sir Hans Sloane, 1660-1753, British physician and naturalist. Elected one of the two secretaries of the Royal Society in 1693. President of the Royal Society, 1727-1741, succeeding Sir Isaac Newton upon the latter’s death. His bequest to the British nation of an extensive library and collection of manuscripts, pictures, coins and curiosities led to the founding of the British Museum, which was opened to the public in 1759.
** Martin Folkes, 1690-1754, British antiquarian. Vice President of the Royal Society, 1722-1741. President of the Royal Society, 1741-1752, succeeding Sir Hans Sloane. No evidence exists of his having had conferred upon him either a baronetcy or knighthood entitling him to be addressed as Sir.
345. (5) The lowest spiritual plane separated from its higher one occasions this. In Part Three we showed the following: That a spiritual component flows down from its sun through three degrees even to the lowest elements of nature, and that these degrees are called celestial, spiritual and natural. That these three degrees exist in people from creation and so from birth, and are opened in accordance with a person’s life. That if the celestial degree is opened, which is the highest or inmost, the person becomes celestial; that if the spiritual degree is opened, which is intermediate, the person becomes spiritual; and that if the natural degree only is opened, which is the lowest or outmost, the person becomes natural. That if a person becomes merely natural, he loves only things connected with his person and the world; and that to the extent he loves these, to the same extent he is averse to celestial and spiritual things, and does not look to God, and to that extent becomes evil.
From the foregoing it is apparent that the lowest spiritual plane, which we call spiritually natural, can be separated from its higher ones, and that it is separated in people of whom hell consists.
The lowest spiritual plane by itself cannot be separated from its higher ones and look in the direction of hell. Nor can it be separated and look in the direction of hell in animals or substances of the earth. It can be so separated only in people.
[2] It follows from this that it is the lowest spiritual plane separated from its higher one, as it is in people who are in hell, which occasions on the earth those evil forms of use discussed above.
That noxious phenomena on the earth take their origin from mankind and so from hell may be concluded from the state of the land of Canaan as described in the Word. When the children of Israel lived in accordance with the commandments, the land yielded its produce, and so did their flocks and herds. But when they lived contrary to the commandments, the land was barren and, as the Word says, cursed. Instead of a harvest it produced thorns and brambles, their flocks and herds miscarried, and wild animals invaded.
The same conclusion may be drawn from the locusts, frogs and lice in Egypt.*
* Exodus 10:3-19; 8:1-14, 16-18.
346. (6) The two kinds of forms into which influx operates are plant forms and animal forms. The earth produces only two universal forms, as people know from their acquaintance with the two kingdoms of nature called the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. They also know that all the constituents of the same one kingdom have much in common. So for example, in constituents of the animal kingdom we find sense organs and motor organs, and members and viscera, which are actuated by brains, hearts and lungs. And in the plant kingdom, its constituents take root in the earth and produce a stem, branches, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds.
The productions of both the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom into their forms take their origin from the spiritual influx and operation of the sun of heaven where the Lord is, and except for the fixing of their forms, as stated above, not from the influx and operation of nature from its sun.
[2] All animals, great and small, take their origin from something spiritual in the lowest degree, which is called natural. The human being alone is a product of all the degrees, of which there are three, called celestial, spiritual and natural.
Because every degree of height or discrete degree ranges from its highest level of perfection to its lowest by a continuous succession, as light fades to dark, so also do animals. Consequently there are higher forms, lower forms, and lowest forms of these. Higher animals include elephants, camels, horses, mules, cattle, sheep, goats, and the rest that are animals either of the herd or the flock. Lower animals are birds. And the lowest ones are fish and shellfish, which, being the lowest forms of this degree, live almost in a state of darkness, while the higher live in the light.
[3] Nevertheless, because animals have life only from the lowest spiritual degree, called natural, they cannot look in any other direction than to the ground and to their food there, and to others of their kind for the sake of their propagation. The soul in all of these is a natural affection or appetite.
It is the same with constituents of the plant kingdom, in which there are higher, lower and lowest forms. The higher forms are fruit trees. Lower forms are grapevines and bushes. And the lowest forms are grasses.
Plants, however, take from the spiritual origin from which they spring the characteristic of being forms of service, while animals take from the spiritual origin from which they spring the characteristic of being forms, as we said, of affections and appetites.
347. (7) Each of these two kinds of forms receives when it comes into existence the means of reproducing. We showed in nos. 313-318 above that all productions from the earth-which, as we said, belong either to the plant kingdom or to the animal kingdom-have in them some image of creation, and also some image of the human being, and moreover some image of the Infinite and Eternal. We also showed there that an image of the Infinite and Eternal is manifest in them from their ability to reproduce to infinity and to eternity. As a consequence they all receive the means of reproducing-constituents of the animal kingdom through seeds planted in an egg or in a womb, or through live births, and constituents of the plant kingdom through seeds in the ground.
It can be seen from this that although the lower and harmful animals and plants arise as a result of an immediate influx from hell, still they reproduce after that by means of seeds, eggs, or offshoot. Consequently the one proposition does not take away the other.
348. All forms of use, both good and evil, come from a spiritual origin, thus from the sun where the Lord is, and this may be clarified by the following experience. I was told that goods and truths were sent down through the heavens by the Lord to the hells, and that on being received through their degrees to the deepest of them there, these same goods and truths were turned into evils and falsities opposite in character to the goods and truths sent down.
This occurred for the reason that everything that flows in is turned by its recipient vessels into such things as accord with their forms, just as the white light of the sun is turned into hideous colors and into blackness in objects whose substances are inwardly in such a form as to snuff out and extinguish the light, and as the sun’s warmth is turned by swamps, excrement and dead bodies into foul odors.
It can be seen from this that even evil forms of use come from the spiritual sun, but that they are good forms of use turned into evil ones in hell.
It is apparent, therefore, that the Lord did not and does not create anything but good forms of use, while hell produces evil ones.
349. Visible phenomena in the created universe attest that nothing has been or is produced by nature, but everything by the Divine from itself, and this through the spiritual world. Most people in the world speak in accordance with the appearance that the sun by its heat and light produces whatever they see in fields, meadows, gardens and forests; that the sun by its warmth hatches grubs from eggs and causes beasts of the earth and birds of the sky to reproduce; indeed, even that it gives life to mankind.
People who only speak in this way because of the appearance can do so even though they do not ascribe these things to nature, because they are not thinking about it. For example, people who speak of the sun as rising and setting and creating days and years, or as being now at this or that height, speak in this way in accordance with the appearance, and can do so, even though they do not ascribe these things to the sun, because they are not thinking about the sun’s stationary position and the revolution of the earth.
On the other hand, people who confirm themselves in the notion that the sun by its heat and light produces the phenomena that appear on the earth, eventually ascribe all things to nature, including as well the creation of the universe, and they become adherents of naturalism and at last atheists. After that they may indeed say that God created nature and endowed it with the power of producing such phenomena, but they say so for fear of losing their reputation. At the same time, however, by God the Creator they mean nature, and some of them the inmost element of nature, and they then regard as of no account any Divine tenets that the church teaches.
[2] The second reason they must be pardoned is that they could not have known how the Divine produces all the phenomena that appear on the earth, where one finds both good things and bad, fearing to confirm the notion in themselves lest they ascribe the bad things as well to God, or lest they form a material concept of God, making God and nature one and so confusing the two.
For these two reasons they must be pardoned who have believed that nature produces the phenomena they see by a power implanted from creation. [3] However, those who by confirmations on the side of nature have made themselves atheists, cannot be pardoned, because they could have confirmed themselves on the side of the Divine. Ignorance, indeed, excuses, but it does not take away falsity that has been confirmed; for such falsity is bound together with evil, thus with hell. Consequently those same people who have confirmed themselves on the side of nature even to the point of separating the Divine from nature, regard nothing as sinful, because everything sinful is a sin against the Divine, which they have separated and so rejected; and people who in spirit regard nothing as sinful, after death, when they become spirits, rush in bondage to hell into heinous evils in accordance with their lusts, to which they have given free rein.
In the propagations of plants, they note how a tiny seed cast into the ground produces a root, by means of the root a stem, and then in succession branches, leaves, flowers and fruits, culminating in new seeds-altogether as though the seed knew the order of progression or the process by which to renew itself. What rational person can suppose that the sun, which is nothing but fire, has this knowledge? Or that it can impart to its heat and its light the power to produce such effects, and in those effects can create marvels and intend a useful result?
Any person having an elevated rational faculty, on seeing and considering these wonders, cannot but think that they issue from one who possesses infinite wisdom, thus from God.
People who acknowledge the Divine also see and think this; but people who do not acknowledge the Divine do not see and think it, because they do not want to. Therefore they allow their rational faculty to descend into their sensual self, which draws all its ideas from the light in which the bodily senses are, and which defends the fallacies of these, saying, “Do you not see the sun accomplishing these effects by its heat and its light? What is something that you do not see? Is it anything?”
[2] People who confirm themselves on the side of the Divine pay heed to the marvels which they see in the propagations of animals-to mention here only those in eggs, as that in them lies the embryo in its seed or inception, with everything it requires to the time it hatches, and moreover with everything that develops after it hatches until it becomes a bird or flying thing in the form of its parent. Also that if one gives attention to the form, it is such that, if one thinks deeply, one cannot help but fall into a state of amazement-seeing, for example, that in the smallest of these creatures as in the largest, indeed in the invisible as in the visible, there are sense organs which serve for sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch; also motor organs, which are muscles, for they fly and walk; as well as viscera surrounding hearts and lungs, which are actuated by brains. That even lowly insects possess such component parts is known from their anatomy as described by certain investigators, most notably by Swammerdam* in his Biblia Naturae.**
[3] People who attribute all things to nature see these wonders, indeed, but they think only that they exist, and say that nature produces them. They say this because they have turned their mind away from thinking about the Divine; and when people who have turned away from thinking about the Divine see wonders in nature, they are unable to think rationally, still less spiritually, but think instead in sensual and material terms. They then think within the confines of nature from the standpoint of nature and not above it, in the way that those do who are in hell. They differ from animals only in their having the power of rationality, that is, in their being able to understand and so think otherwise if they will.
* Jan Swammerdam, 1637-1680, Dutch anatomist and entomologist.
** Published posthumously under Dutch and Latin titles, Bybel der Natuure; of, Historie der insecten… / Biblia Naturae; sive Historia Insectorum… (A Book of Nature; or, History of Insects…), with text in Latin and Dutch in parallel columns, Leyden, 1737 (vol. 1), 1738 (vol. 2).
352. People who have turned away from thinking about the Divine when they see wonders in nature, and as a result become sense-oriented, do not consider that the sight of the eye is so crude that it sees a number of tiny insects as a single, indistinct mass, and yet that each of them is organically formed to be capable of sensation and movement, thus that they have been endowed with fibers and vessels, including little hearts, air passages, viscera and brains; that these have been woven together out of the finest elements in nature; and that these structures correspond to some activity of life, by which even the least of these are individually actuated.
Since the vision of the eye is so crude that a number of such creatures, each with countless components in it, looks to the sight like a small, indistinct mass, and yet people who are sense-oriented think and judge in accordance with that sight, it is apparent how obtuse their minds have become, and thus in what darkness they are regarding spiritual matters.
353. Everyone can, from the visible phenomena in nature, confirm himself on the side of the Divine if he wills; and everyone also does so confirm himself who thinks of God from a consideration of life. As for example, when he observes birds of the air and sees that each species of them knows its own food and where to find it; that each recognizes by sound and appearance its own kind, and which among other species are its friends and which its enemies; that they form nuptial pairs, know how to mate, skillfully build nests, lay their eggs there, brood over them, know how long to incubate them, and at the end of that time hatch out their young, tenderly love them, shelter them under their wings, share their food with them and feed them, and this until they become independent, and can themselves do the like and produce a brood to perpetuate their kind.
Everyone who is willing to think about a Divine influx through the spiritual world into the natural one, can see it in these phenomena, and if he will, can say in his heart, “Such instances of knowledge cannot flow into these creatures from the sun through the rays of its light; for the sun from which nature draws its origin and essence is nothing but fire, and consequently the rays of its light are altogether without life.” Thus these people may also conclude that such phenomena exist from an influx of Divine wisdom into the outmost effects of nature.
354. Everyone can, from the visible phenomena in nature, confirm himself on the side of the Divine when he observes caterpillars, which to gratify some urge, seek and aspire to change the state of their earthly existence into a state more analogous to a heavenly one; which therefore creep into places and wrap themselves as though in a womb in order to be reborn, and there become chrysalises, pupae, instars, nymphs, and finally butterflies; and then, having undergone this metamorphosis and put on beautiful wings in accordance with their species, fly away into the air as though into their heaven, where they play amiably, mate, lay their eggs, and provide themselves a posterity, and meanwhile sustain themselves on pleasant and sweet nourishment from flowers.
What person who, from the visible phenomena of nature, confirms himself on the side of the Divine, does not see a kind of image of people’s earthly state in these creatures as caterpillars, and an image of their heavenly state in them as butterflies? People who confirm themselves on the side of nature, however, see these phenomena indeed, but because they have rejected from their minds any concept of people’s heavenly state, they call them mere instincts of nature.
What person who has his reason intact does not see that such phenomena in these creatures are not owing to the natural world? The sun from which nature springs-what characteristic does it have in common with a government imitative of and analogous to the government of heaven?
[2] From these and other like phenomena in the case of brute animals, the proponent and worshiper of nature confirms himself on the side of nature, while the proponent and worshiper of God, from the same phenomena, confirms himself on the side of the Divine. For a spiritual person sees spiritual effects in them, and the natural person natural ones-thus each such things as accord with his character.
As for myself, to me phenomena of this sort have been evidence of an influx of the spiritual realm into the natural, or of the spiritual world into the natural world, emanating thus from the Lord’s Divine wisdom.
Consider, too, whether you could think in an analytical manner about any form of government, any civil law, any moral virtue, or any spiritual truth, if something Divine did not flow in from His wisdom through the spiritual world. For my part, I could not and cannot. For I have been consciously and sensibly aware of that influx for almost nineteen years now without interruption. Therefore I speak from personal experience.
356. Can anything natural have as an end a useful purpose, and dispose useful endeavors into patterns and forms? No one can do this but one who is wise; and no one can so order and form the universe but God, who has infinite wisdom. Who else, or what else, can foresee and provide all those things which serve mankind for food and clothing-food from the fruits of the earth and from animals, and clothing from the same sources?
Among the wonders we see is that those lowly larvae we call silkworms should clothe and magnificently adorn with their silk both women and men, from queens and kings to maidservants and menservants; and that lowly insects such as bees should supply wax for the lights by which temples and courts are filled with a radiant splendor.
These wonders and more are visible proofs that it is the Lord acting from Himself through the spiritual world who produces all the phenomena which occur in nature.
357. To this I should add the following, that in the spiritual world I have seen people who, from the visible phenomena of the world, confirmed themselves on the side of nature to the point that they became atheists, and in a spiritual light their intellect appeared open below but closed above, for the reason that in thought they had looked downward to the earth, and not upward to heaven. Above the sensory level, which is the lowest level of the intellect, a kind of veil appeared, in some cases flashing with a hellish fire, in some cases as black as soot, and in some cases as pale as a corpse.
Let everyone guard himself, therefore, from confirmations on the side of nature. Let him confirm himself on the side of the Divine. There is no lack of material for it.
358. PART FIVE
The Lord created and formed in mankind two recipient vessels and abodes for Himself, called will and intellect, the will for His Divine love, and the intellect for His Divine wisdom. We have discussed the Divine love and Divine wisdom of God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity. We have discussed as well the creation of the universe. Now we must say something about the creation of mankind.
We read that man was created in the image of God, according to His likeness (Genesis 1:26). By the image of God there is meant His Divine wisdom, and by the likeness of God His Divine love. For wisdom is nothing else than the image of love, since love presents itself to be seen and recognized in wisdom; and because it is seen and recognized in wisdom, wisdom is an image of it. Love is moreover the essence of life, and wisdom the expression of life springing from it.
A likeness and image of God is clearly apparent in angels, for love shines from within in their faces, and wisdom in their beauty, beauty being the outward expression of their love. I have seen it and recognized it.
359. A person cannot be an image of God according to His likeness unless God is in him and inmostly is his life. The fact that God is in people and inmostly is their life follows from the observations demonstrated above in nos. 4-6, that God alone is life, and that people and angels are recipients of life from Him.
It is known from the Word that God is in people and makes His abode in them.* And because this is known from the Word, it is customary for preachers to tell people to prepare themselves to receive God, that He may enter into them and be in their hearts, and that they may be His habitation. The devout speak likewise in their prayers. Some people speak still more openly so of the Holy Spirit, which they believe to be in them when they are in a state of holy zeal and are thinking, speaking and preaching in consequence of it.
We have shown in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, nos. 50-53, that the Holy Spirit is the Lord, and not some God who is a person in Himself. For the Lord says, “On that day you will know that you (are) in Me, and I in you” (John 14:20). (So likewise John 15:4, 5, 17:23.)
* E.g. John 6:56; 14:20, 23; 15:4, 5; 17:20-23, 26.
360. Now because the Lord is Divine love and Divine wisdom, and these two in essence are Him, it must needs be, for Him to dwell in mankind and give mankind life, that He have created and fashioned in mankind recipient vessels and abodes for Himself, one for His love, and the other for His wisdom.
These recipient vessels and abodes in mankind are called will and intellect-the recipient vessel and abode of love being called the will, and the recipient vessel and abode of wisdom the intellect.
We shall see in subsequent discussions that these two are the Lord’s in a person, and that from these two springs all a person’s life.
Who indeed does not know from common perception that the will and intellect are two distinct entities in a person? For everyone perceives this when he is told it, and he may also say to another, “This one means well, but he is not very intelligent. On the other hand, this one is very intelligent, but he does not mean well. I like someone who is intelligent and means well, but I do not like someone who is intelligent and means ill.”
However, when the same person theorizes about the will and intellect, he does not make them two and distinguish them, but confuses them. The reason is that his thinking is then bound up with his physical sight. Still less does he comprehend that the will and intellect are two distinct entities when he is engaged in writing about them. That is because his thinking is then bound up with his sensual nature, which is a person’s native character. (It is because of this that some people can think and speak well, but yet not write well-a characteristic common in the feminine sex.)
[2] The case is the same in many other instances. Who does not know from common perception that a person who leads a good life is saved, and that a person who leads an evil life is condemned? Or that a person who leads a good life enters into the company of angels, and there sees, hears and speaks as a person? Or further, that he has a conscience who acts justly from a just motive, or uprightly from an upright motive?
But if one parts with common perception and submits these matters to theorizing, he then does not know what conscience is, or that the soul can see, hear and speak as a person, or that goodness of life is anything other than giving to the poor. And if from theorizing about them you commit them to writing, you confirm your theories with appearances and misconceptions, and with words having sound but no substance.
For this reason, among the learned who have theorized extensively, and still more who have committed their theories to writing, many have enfeebled and obscured the common perception in them, indeed have destroyed it. And consequently the simple see more clearly what is good and true than those who believe themselves to be wiser than they.
[3] This common perception is due to influx from heaven, and it descends into thought even to the sight. But thought apart from common perception sinks into an imagination arising from the sight and from one’s native character.
You may discover for yourself the reality of this. Tell someone who has common perception some truth, and he will see it. Tell him that we have our being and live and move from God and in God,* and he will see it. Tell him that God dwells in the love and wisdom in a person, and he will see it. Tell him further that the will is the recipient vessel of love, and the intellect the recipient vessel of wisdom, and with a little explanation he will see it. Tell him that God is love itself and wisdom itself, and he will see it. Ask him what conscience is, and he will tell you.
But tell the same things to some learned person who has not thought from common perception, but from principles or ideas seized on by his sight from the world. He will not see.
Consider after that who is the wiser.
* Acts 17:28.
362. The will and intellect, which are the recipient vessels of love and wisdom, exist in the brain, in the whole and in every part of it, and consequently in the body, in the whole and in every part of it. We propose to demonstrate this according to the following outline:
(1) Love and wisdom, and consequently the will and intellect, constitute a person’s very life.
(2) A person’s life exists in its first elements in the brain, and in its derivative elements in the body.
(3) As life is in its first elements, so it is in the whole and in every part.
(4) Life through those first elements is present from every part in the whole, and from the whole in every part.
(5) The character of the love determines the character of the wisdom, and so the character of the person.
363. (1) Love and wisdom, and consequently the will and intellect, constitute a person’s very life. Scarcely anyone knows what life is. When anyone thinks about it, it seems as though it were something vaporous, of which no idea is possible. It seems so because people do not know that God alone is life, and that His life is Divine love and wisdom. Consequently it is apparent that nothing else is the life in a person, and that it is the life in him in the degree that he receives it.
People know that the sun radiates heat and light, of which all things in the universe are recipients, and that in the degree that they receive them they are warmed and illuminated. So it is with the sun where the Lord is, the heat radiating from it being love, and the light radiating from it being wisdom, as we showed in Part Two.
Life therefore comes from these two elements which emanate from the Lord as a sun.
[2] That love and wisdom from the Lord are life can also be seen from the fact that as love wanes in a person he becomes listless, and as wisdom fades, dull-witted; and if these were to vanish altogether, he would cease to live.
There are many properties of love which have been given other names, because they are derivations of it, such as affections, lusts, appetites, and their pleasures and delights. There are also many properties of wisdom, such as perception, reflection, recollection, cogitation, and attention to something. In addition there are many properties of both love and wisdom together, such as consent, resolve, and determination to a course of action, among others. Actually, all of these are properties of both, but they are characterized by the one that is predominant and more immediately present.
[3] Deriving finally from these two are sensations, which are those of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, with their delights and gratifications. The appearance is that the eye sees, but it is the intellect which sees through the eye. Consequently seeing is predicated also of the intellect. The appearance is that the ear hears, but it is the intellect which hears by means of the ear. Consequently hearing is predicated also of paying attention and listening, which is a function of the intellect. The appearance is that the nose smells, and that the tongue tastes, but it is the intellect with its perception which smells, and also tastes. Consequently smelling and tasting are predicated also of perception. And so on.
The founts of all of these phenomena are love and wisdom, from which it can be seen that these two constitute a person’s life.
364. Everyone sees that the intellect is the recipient vessel of wisdom, but few see that the will is the recipient vessel of love. The reason is that the will does nothing by itself, but acts through the intellect. Moreover, when the will’s love crosses over into the wisdom of the intellect, it turns first into an affection and so crosses over, and an affection is not perceived except in consequence of a certain pleasure in thinking, speaking and acting, to which no attention is paid. Nevertheless, that the will is the origin is apparent from the fact that everyone wills what he loves, and does not will what he does not love.
365. (2) A person’s life exists in its first elements in the brain, and in its derivative elements in the body. By first elements we mean its first forms, and by derivative elements we mean the forms produced and formed from the first ones. And by life in its first elements we mean the will and intellect. These two are what exist in their first elements in the brain, and in their derivative elements in the body.
That the first elements or first forms of life exist in the brain is apparent from the following:
1. It is apparent from a person’s very sensation that when he concentrates his mind and thinks, he perceives himself to be thinking in the brain. He draws the sight of his eye seemingly inward, firmly fixes his brow, and perceives his contemplation as being within, especially inside the forehead, and somewhat above.
[2] 2. It is apparent from a person’s formation in the womb, from the fact that the brain or head develops first, and for some time afterward is bigger than the body.
[3] 3. It is apparent from the fact that the head is uppermost and the body below, it being according to order that higher things act upon lower ones, and not the reverse.
[4] 4. It is apparent from the fact that if the brain is injured, whether in the womb, or by a wound or disease, or owing to excessive strain, the person’s thinking is impaired, and sometimes the mind is deranged.
[5] 5. It is apparent from the fact that all the external senses of the body, which are those of sight, hearing, smell, and taste, together with the universal sense which is that of touch, and moreover speech, are located in the front part of the head, called the face, and through fibers communicate directly with the brain, from which they derive their sensory and operative life.
[6] 6. So it is that affections which have to do with love are visible in a kind of image in the face, and that thoughts which have to do with wisdom are visible in a kind of light in the eyes.
[7] 7. We also know from the study of anatomy that all fibers descend from the brain through the neck into the body, and that none ascend from the body through the neck into the brain. And where the fibers exist in their first elements or first forms, there life exists in its first elements or first forms. Who can deny that life originates where the fibers originate?
[8] 8. Ask anyone who has common perception where thought exists, or where he thinks, and he will reply, in the head. But speak after that to someone who has placed the seat of the soul either in some gland or in the heart, or elsewhere, and ask him where affection with its consequent thought exists in its first form, whether it does not exist in the brain, and he will reply that it does not, or that he does not know. (To learn the reason for his not knowing, see no. 361 above.)
366. (3) As life is in its first elements, so it is in the whole and in every part of that whole. For this to be perceived, we must say where in the brain these first elements are, and how their derivative elements are formed.
Where these first elements are in the brain is plain from the study of anatomy. From this study we know that the brain consists of two structures, and that these are continued from the head into the spinal column. We know, too, that these structures consist of two substances, called gray matter and white matter, and that the gray matter consists of countless little gland-like constituents, and the white matter of countless fiber-like ones.
Now because these little glandular constituents form the heads of the fibrous ones, they are also their first elements. For fibers commence from them and then continue on, gradually bundling themselves into nerves, and having been bundled together or formed into nerves, they descend to the sense organs in the face and to the motor organs in the body and form them. Consult any expert in the science of anatomy and you will have it confirmed.
[2] The gray matter or glandular substance forms the outer layer of the cerebrum, and the outer layer of the corpora striata as well, from which the medulla oblongata proceeds, and it forms the core of the cerebellum, and also the core of the spinal cord. The white matter or fibrous substance, on the other hand, everywhere commences and continues on from that, and from it issue the nerves, from which arise all the constituents of the body. Anatomical examination shows this to be the case.
People who are acquainted with these observations, either from their study of anatomy or from the testimony of others who are engaged in that study, can see that the first elements of life lie nowhere else than where the fibers have their beginnings, and that it is not possible for the fibers to issue forth of themselves, but must do so from those first elements.
[3] These first elements or initial forms which look like little glands are almost beyond number. Their multitude may be likened to the multitude of stars in the universe; and the multitude of little fibers issuing from them may be likened to the multitude of rays emanating from the stars and conveying their heat and light to the planets.
The multitude of these little glands may also be likened to the multitude of angelic societies in the heavens, which are also beyond number, and similarly arranged, I have been told; and the multitude of little fibers issuing from those little glands may be likened to the spiritual truths and goods which similarly stream down like rays from those societies.
So it is that the human being is a kind of universe, and a kind of heaven in miniature form, as we have said and shown here and there above.
It can be seen from this that as life is in its first elements, so it is in its derivative elements, or that as life is in its first forms in the brain, so it is in the forms arising from it in the body.
367. (4) Life through those first elements is present from every part in the whole, and from the whole in every part. The reason is that the whole, which includes both the brain and the body, consists initially only of fibers which issue from their first elements in the brain. It has no other beginning, as is apparent from what we have shown just above in no. 366. Consequently the whole arises from every part.
Life through those first elements is present also from the whole in every part for the reason that the whole supplies to every part its portion and requirement, and so makes it to be a part of the whole.
In a word, the whole arises from the parts, and the parts are dependent on the whole.
The existence of such a reciprocal relationship and consequent conjunction is apparent from many illustrations of it in the body. For the case in it is the same as in a city, republic or kingdom, that the whole is formed of the people who are its parts, and the parts or people are dependent on the whole.
It is the same with everything that has some structure; especially so in the human being.
368. (5) The character of the love determines the character of the wisdom, and so the character of the person. The reason is that the character of the love and wisdom determines the character of the will and intellect. For the will is the recipient vessel of love, and the intellect the recipient vessel of wisdom, as we showed above, and these two form the person and his character.
Love is multifarious-so multifarious that its varieties are limitless-as can be seen from the human race on earth and in the heavens. One finds not one person or one angel so like another that there is no distinction between them. It is love that distinguishes them, for everyone is the embodiment of his love.
People suppose that it is wisdom that distinguishes them, but wisdom is the product of love, wisdom being its form. For love is the essence of life, and wisdom the expression of life springing from that essence.
[2] People in the world believe that the intellect forms the person. However, they believe this because, as we have shown above, the intellect can be raised into the light of heaven, thus enabling a person to appear as if wise. But even though that measure of the intellect which transcends love, that is, which is not born of love, appears to be part of the person, thus to determine the person’s character, still it is only an appearance. For that measure of the intellect which transcends love is indeed born of a love of knowing and becoming wise, but it is not born at the same time of a love of applying to life that which it knows and wisely perceives. Consequently in the world this either fades in time or lingers as something transitory round about the contents of the memory in its peripheries. After death, therefore, it is separated, and no more remains than what accords with the spirit’s real love.
[3] Because love forms a person’s life and thus the person himself, all societies of heaven, and all angels in those societies, are arranged according to the affections which are properties of their love, and not any society or any angel in a society according to any property of the intellect apart from that love. So likewise in the hells and their societies, but with the difference that they are arranged according to loves opposite to heavenly loves.
It can be seen from this that the character of the love determines the character of the wisdom, and so the character of the person.
[2] The reason is apparent from what we said above, that the constituents of the body are all derivative forms, that is to say, forms woven by fibers issuing from their first elements, elements which are the recipient vessels of love and wisdom; and when the first elements are of such a character, their derivative ones cannot be of another. Consequently in whatever direction the first elements go, the derivative ones follow. They cannot be separated.
So it is that a person who elevates his mind to the Lord is wholly elevated to the Lord, and that a person who casts his mind down to hell is wholly cast down into it. Consequently the whole person comes either into heaven or into hell in accordance with his life’s love.
It is an observation of angelic wisdom that a person’s mind is the person, because God is a person, and that the body is the mind’s outward constituent which feels and acts, so that they are one, and not two.
370. It should be noted that the forms themselves of a person’s members, organs and viscera are, as to their essential structure, the product of fibers arising from their first elements in the brain, but that they are given fixity by such substances and materials as exist in the earth and from the earth in the air and ether, which is effectuated by means of the blood. Consequently, for all the constituents of the body to remain in their formation and so continue in their functions, a person must be sustained with material food and be continually renewed.
371. There is a correspondence of the will with the heart, and of the intellect with the lungs. We propose to demonstrate this according to the following outline:
(1) All the constituents of the mind are connected with the will and intellect, and all the constituents of the body with the heart and lungs.
(2) There is a correspondence of the will and intellect with the heart and lungs, and consequently a correspondence of all the mind’s constituents with all the body’s constituents.
(3) The will corresponds to the heart.
(4) The intellect corresponds to the lungs.
(5) Through that correspondence one can discover many secrets relating to the will and intellect, and so also to love and wisdom.
(6) A person’s mind is his spirit, and the spirit is the person, the body being the outward instrument by which the mind or spirit senses and acts in the physical world.
(7) The conjunction of a person’s spirit with the body is due to the correspondence of his will and intellect with his heart and lungs, and their disjunction to the absence of that correspondence.
372. (1) All the constituents of the mind are connected with the will and intellect, and all the constituents of the body with the heart and lungs. By the mind we mean nothing else than the will and intellect, which comprise in their entirety all that a person feels and all that a person thinks, thus all elements that pertain to a person’s affection and thought. The things that a person feels are properties of his will, and those that he thinks are properties of his intellect.
People know that all the components of a person’s thought are properties of his intellect, since a person thinks with the intellect. But it is not so well known that all the components of a person’s affection are properties of his will. It is not so well known for the reason that when a person thinks, he does not pay attention to his affection, but only to what he is thinking. Similarly, when he hears someone speaking, he does not pay attention to the intonation but to the utterance itself. And yet the affection in thinking is like the intonation in speech, which is why from the intonation of a speaker one discerns his affection, and from the utterance his thought.
[2] Affection is a property of the will because every affection is a property of love, and the recipient vessel of love is the will, as we showed above.
A person who does not know that affection is a property of the will confuses affection with thought; for he says that it is one with thought. But in fact they are not one, but operate as one. The confusion of the two is apparent from common speech, as in the statement, “My thought is to do this,” meaning, “My will is to do it.” On the other hand, the distinction of the two is also apparent from common speech, as in the statement, “I want to think about this.” And when he does think about it, the affection of the will is present in the thought of the intellect, like the intonation in an utterance, as we said.
People know that all the constituents of the body are connected with the heart and lungs, but they have not known that there is a correspondence of the heart and lungs with the will and intellect. Therefore we will consider this point in the discussions that follow.
It does not matter that their organization is not evident to the eye. It is too deeply hidden for visual sight, even when amplified by the use of microscopes. The tiniest insects are also too small to be seen, and yet they have in them sense organs and motor organs, since they have senses and walk and fly. They also have brains, hearts, pulmonary passages, and viscera, as some keen observers have discovered from their anatomy seen through microscopes. When little insects are themselves not visible to the eye, and still less the little organs of which they are composed, and yet no one denies that they are organized down to the least particulars in them, how then can it be said that the two recipient vessels of love and wisdom called will and intellect are not organic forms? [2] How can love and wisdom which are life from the Lord operate into a nonrecipient, or into something which has no substantial existence? How else can thought be retained, or someone speak from thought if it is not retained? Is not the brain where thought exists full, and everything in it organized? The organic forms themselves there are visible even to the naked eye, and the vessels of the will and intellect in their first elements plainly so in the gray matter, where little gland-like constituents are clearly seen (concerning which, see no. 366 above).
Please do not think of these things as existing in a vacuum. A vacuum is nothingness, and in nothing nothing happens, and from nothing nothing springs. (Regarding the notion of a vacuum, see no. 82 above.)
374. (2) There is a correspondence of the will and intellect with the heart and lungs, and consequently a correspondence of all the mind’s constituents with all the body’s constituents. This is something new, having been previously unknown, because people have not known what the spiritual realm is and how it differs from the natural one. Consequently they have not known what correspondence is, either; for there is a correspondence of spiritual phenomena with natural ones, and through it a conjunction of them.
We say that people have not previously known what the spiritual realm is and the correspondence it has with the natural one, and consequently what correspondence is; and yet both of these could have been known. Who does not know that affection and thought are spiritual, and therefore that all components of affection and thought are spiritual? Who does not know that action and speech are natural, and therefore that all the components of action and speech are natural? Who does not know that it is affection and thought, which are spiritual, that cause a person to act and speak? Who then cannot know what the correspondence of spiritual phenomena with natural ones is? Is it not thought that causes the tongue to speak, and affection in union with thought that causes the body to act? The two planes are distinct. I can think and not speak, and I can will and not act. We also know that the body does not think or will, but that thought descends into speech, and will into action.
[2] Does not affection, moreover, shine from the face and present in it an image of itself? Everyone knows that it does. Is not affection, regarded in itself, spiritual, and are not changes in the face, which we also call its expressions, natural?
Who cannot conclude from this that a correspondence exists, and consequently that there is a correspondence of all the mind’s constituents with all the body’s constituents? And because all the constituents of the mind are connected with affection and thought, or in other words, with the will and intellect, and all the constituents of the body with the heart and lungs, who cannot conclude that there is a correspondence of the will with the heart, and of the intellect with the lungs?
[3] Things of this kind have remained unknown, even though they could have been known, for the reason that people have become so externally oriented that they have been unwilling to acknowledge anything but the natural realm. This has been their love’s delight, and so the delight of their intellect. Consequently to elevate their thought above the natural realm to something spiritual apart from anything natural has been unappealing to them. Owing to their natural love and its delight, therefore, they have been unable to think of a spiritual entity as being anything other than a purer natural one, and of correspondence as being anything other than something flowing in by a continuous means. Indeed, the merely natural person cannot think of anything apart from the natural realm. Anything apart from that to him does not exist.
[4] Another reason these things have not been seen and so have been previously unknown is that all matters of religion that are called spiritual have been removed from people’s contemplation by the dogma accepted throughout the Christian world that theological matters, being spiritual, which councils and some authorities have concluded, are to be believed blindly because, as they say, they transcend the intellect. Therefore some people have supposed something spiritual to be like a bird which flies above the atmosphere in outer space, beyond the range of visual sight, when in fact it is like a bird of paradise which flies within close range of the eye and brushes its pupil with its beautiful wings, wishing to be seen. By the sight of the eye we mean the sight of the intellect.
375. The correspondence of the will and intellect with the heart and lungs cannot be directly confirmed, that is, by rational considerations only, but it can be by its effects. The case here is the same as it is with the causes of things. Although causes can be seen rationally, still they cannot be seen clearly except through their effects; for causes exist in their effects and allow themselves to be seen through them. The mind is not convinced of the causes prior to that. The effects of the correspondence being considered here will be presented in the discussions that follow.
Lest anyone in thinking of this correspondence slip into ideas gained from hypotheses regarding the soul, however, let him first read through the points that we demonstrated in the preceding section, as for instance those in nos. 363, 364, showing that love and wisdom, and consequently the will and intellect, constitute a person’s very life; in no. 365, showing that a person’s life exists in its first elements in the brain, and in its derivative elements in the body; in no. 366, showing that as life is in its first elements, so it is in the whole and in every part of that whole; in no. 367, showing that life through those first elements is present from every part in the whole, and from the whole in every part; and in no. 368, showing that the character of the love determines the character of the wisdom, and so the character of the person.
376. By way of confirmation we may cite here a representation of the correspondence of the will and intellect with the heart and lungs once seen in heaven in the company of angels.
By a marvelous whirling motion which no words can describe, they formed a likeness of the heart and a likeness of the lungs, with all the interior structures that they contain, and these then began to operate in conformity with the flow of heaven. For heaven endeavors to produce such forms owing to the influx of love and wisdom from the Lord. The angels thus represented the union of the heart and lungs, and at the same time their correspondence with the love of the will and with the wisdom of the intellect. They called this correspondence and union the heavenly marriage, saying that a like marriage exists in the whole body and in its individual members, organs and viscera, with those elements which are connected there with the heart and lungs. Moreover, where the heart and lungs do not operate and each maintain their alternations, there no motion of life is possible from any element of the will, and no sensation of life from any element of the intellect.
377. Since we take up in the discussions that follow next a consideration of the correspondence of the heart and lungs with the will and intellect, and on it rests the correspondence of all the body’s constituents, which are called in respect to the whole its members, in respect to the senses its organs, and in respect to the body its viscera; and since the correspondence of natural phenomena with spiritual ones has been previously unknown, and yet has been amply shown in two works, one of them dealing with Heaven and Hell, and the other with the spiritual sense of the Word in Genesis and Exodus, titled Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), I would like to indicate here what we wrote and showed in those two works regarding correspondence.
In the book Heaven and Hell: The correspondence of all the constituents of heaven with all the constituents of the human being, nos. 87-102. The correspondence of all the constituents of heaven with all the constituents of the world, nos. 103-115.
In the work on the spiritual sense of the Word in Genesis and Exodus, titled Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven): The correspondence of the face and its expressions with the affections of the mind, nos. 1568, 2988, 2989, 3631, 4796, 4797, 4880, 5165, 5168, 5695, 9306. The correspondence of the body as regards its gestures and actions with constituents of the intellect and will, nos. 2988, 3632, 4215. The correspondence of the senses in general, nos. 4318-4330. The correspondence of the eyes and their sight, nos. 4403-4420. The correspondence of the nose and smell, nos. 4624-4633. The correspondence of the ears and hearing, nos. 4652-4659. The correspondence of the tongue and taste, nos. 4791-4805. The correspondence of the hands, arms, shoulders, and feet, nos. 4931-4952. The correspondence of the loins and reproductive organs, nos. 5050-5061. The correspondence of the internal organs of the body, in particular of the stomach, thymus, cisterna chyli and chyle ducts, and mesentery, nos. 5171-5181. The correspondence of the spleen, no. 9698. The correspondence of the peritoneum, kidneys and bladder, nos. 5377-5390. The correspondence of the liver and the hepatic, cystic and pancreatic ducts, nos. 5183-5185. The correspondence of the intestines, nos. 5392-5395, 5379. The correspondence of the bones, nos. 5560-5564. The correspondence of the skin, nos. 5552-5559. The correspondence of heaven with the human being, nos. 911, 1900, 1928, 2996, 2998, 3624-3648, 3741-3745, 3884, 4041, 4279, 4523-4525, 6013, 6057, 9279, 9632. That all the phenomena found in the natural world and its three kingdoms correspond to phenomena appearing in the spiritual world, nos. 1632, 1881, 2758, 2760-2763,* 2987-3002, 3213-3226, 3483, 3624-3648, 4044, 4053, 4116,** 4366, 4939, 5116, 5377, 5428, 5477, 8211, 9280. That all the phenomena appearing in the heavens are correspondent forms, nos. 1521, 1532, 1619-1625, 1807, 1808, 1971, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1981, 2299, 2601, 3213-3226, 3348, 3350, 3475, 3485, 3748, 9481, 9570, 9576, 9577.
The latter work deals throughout with the correspondence of the literal meaning of the Word and its spiritual meaning, on which subject see also The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 5-26, 27-69.
* The reading 2760-2763 is uncertain. The first edition reads 2890 to 2893, but in error, it seems. The intended reading may be 2990 to 2993, but in that case the reference ought to be omitted, as it is followed by what is almost certainly a reference to nos. 2987 to 3002, which includes those numbers.
** The reading 4116 is uncertain. The first edition reads 4156, but in error, it seems.
378. (3) The will corresponds to the heart. This cannot be seen as clearly in itself as from examining the will in its effects, as we said above.* In itself it can be seen from the fact that all affections which are matters of one’s love induce in the heart alterations in its motions, as manifested by the throbbing of the arteries, which pulsate synchronously with the heart. The heart’s alterations and motions in accordance with the love’s affections are numberless. Those felt with the finger reveal only that the heart is beating slowly or rapidly, profoundly or shallowly, softly or strongly, evenly or unevenly, and so on, thus differently in a happy state than in a sad one, differently in a tranquil state of mind than in an angry one, differently in a fearless state than in a fearful one, differently in feverish states than in chilled ones, and so on.
[2] Since the motions of the heart, called its systole and diastole, thus alter and vary in accordance with everyone’s love’s affections, therefore many people in ancient times, and following them some people today, have ascribed affections to the heart, and have also assigned to it their abode. It has accordingly come into common speech to speak of a brave heart and a timid one, of a happy heart and a sorrowful one, of a soft heart and a hard one, of a big heart and a petty one, of a whole heart and a broken one, of a heart of flesh and a heart of stone, of someone’s being stout-hearted, soft-hearted, or tender-hearted, of putting one’s heart into accomplishing something, of giving a single-hearted effort, of having a change of heart, of harboring in the heart, of taking to heart, of not treasuring something in one’s heart, of hardening one’s heart, and of having a friend after one’s own heart. So we speak of a unity of hearts, a disunity of hearts, madness of heart, and many other like things which have to do with love and its affections.
The Word employs similar expressions, because the Word was written in terms of things that correspond.
Whether you speak of love or the will, it amounts to the same thing, since the recipient vessel of love is the will, as we have already said above.
* No. 375.
On the other hand, one who knows that there is a correspondence of love and its affections with the heart and its derivatives may also know that love is the origin of the vital warmth. For love emanates from the spiritual sun where the Lord is as warmth, and it is also felt by the angels as warmth. This spiritual warmth, which in its essence is love, is what flows by correspondence into the heart and its blood, imparting to it its warmth and at the same time animating it.
[2] The fact that a person grows warm and, so to speak, catches fire in the measure of his love and its intensity, and that he becomes listless and cools in the measure that it wanes, is something people know, for they feel that warmth and see it. They feel it from the warmth present throughout the body, and see it from the flush of the face. And conversely, they feel its extinction from the coldness of the body, and see it from the pallor of the face.
Because love is a person’s life, therefore the heart is the first and last vessel of that life. Moreover, because love is a person’s life, and the soul maintains its life in the body by means of the blood, therefore blood in the Word is called the soul (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:14).
What is meant by the soul in its various senses will be told in a subsequent discussion.
380. The fact that the blood is red is owing also to the correspondence of the heart and blood with love and its affections. For the spiritual world has in it colors of every kind. The colors red and white are the fundamental ones, and the rest take their variations from them and from their opposites, which are a dark fiery color and black. The color red there corresponds to love, and the color white corresponds to wisdom.
The color red corresponds to love for the reason that it takes its origin from the fire of the sun in the spiritual world; and the color white corresponds to wisdom for the reason that it takes its origin from the light of the sun there. Because, then, there is a correspondence of love with the heart, therefore the blood cannot but be red and attest its origin.
It is in consequence of this that in the heavens where love toward the Lord reigns, the light is a flaming one, and the angels there are clad in purple garments; and in the heavens where wisdom reigns, the light is bright white, and the angels there are clad in garments of white linen.
381. The heavens are divided into two kingdoms, one of which we call celestial, the other spiritual. In the celestial kingdom love toward the Lord reigns, and in the spiritual kingdom wisdom arising from that love reigns. The first kingdom, where love reigns, is called heaven’s kingdom of the heart; and the second kingdom, where wisdom reigns, is called heaven’s kingdom of the lungs.
It must be known that the whole angelic heaven in its entirety resembles a single person, and in the Lord’s sight appears as a single person. Consequently the heart of that person forms one kingdom, and the lungs of that person form another. For present throughout the whole of heaven are general cardiac and pulmonary motions, and on that account particular ones in every angel; and the general cardiac and pulmonary motions come from the Lord alone, because from Him alone come love and wisdom. Indeed, these two motions are present in the sun where the Lord is and which originates from the Lord, and from that are present in the angelic heaven and in the universe. To judge the reality of this, rid yourself of notions of space and think of omnipresence, and you will be convinced.
The fact that the heavens are divided into two kingdom, celestial and spiritual, may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 20-28; and that the whole angelic heaven in its entirety resembles a single person in nos. 59-67 there.
382. (4) The intellect corresponds to the lungs. This follows from what we have said about the correspondence of the will with the heart. For there are two entities which reign in the spiritual self or the mind, namely the will and intellect, and there are two entities which reign in the natural self or the body, namely the heart and lungs; and there is a correspondence of all the mind’s constituents with all the body’s constituents, as we said above.* It follows therefore that as the will corresponds to the heart, the intellect corresponds to the lungs.
Everyone may also observe in himself that the intellect corresponds to the lungs by considering both his thought and his speech.
[2] As regards thought, it is impossible for anyone to think without his pulmonary respiration’s concurring and according. Consequently when someone thinks quietly, he breathes quietly. If he thinks deeply, he breathes deeply. He breathes in and out, contracting and expanding his lungs, in accordance with his thought, thus in accordance with the affection flowing in from his love-slowly, quickly, eagerly, gently, intently. Indeed, if he holds his breath altogether, he cannot think, except in his spirit in consequence of its respiration, something of which he is not consciously aware.
[3] As regards speech, not the least utterance of a word flows from the mouth without the ancillary aid of the lungs. For sound which is articulated into words issues wholly from the lungs through the trachea and epiglottis. Consequently, speech is raised even to a shout in the measure that those bellows are inflated and that passage opened, and lowered in the measure that they are contracted. And if the passage is blocked, speech ceases, along with thought.
* No. 374.
[2] In The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, nos. 50, 51, it may be seen that by the spirit of God, called also the Holy Spirit, is meant Divine wisdom, and so Divine truth, through which a person has enlightenment. That is why the Lord breathed on His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). That is why it is also said that Jehovah God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). That, too, is why He said to the prophet,
Prophesy upon the spirit?, and say to the wind?: ‘Come from the four winds, O spirit, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’ (Ezekiel 37:9)
So similarly elsewhere. So it is that the Lord is called the breath of the nostrils*** and also the breath of life.
[3] Because breath passes through the nostrils, therefore the nose symbolizes perception; and an intelligent person is said to have a keen nose, and an unintelligent one not a keen nose.
It is owing to this, too, that the word for spirit and wind in Hebrew and in some other languages is the same. For the word “spirit” is derived from a word meaning “to breathe.” Consequently when a person dies he is also said to breathe his last and yield up the spirit.
It is owing to this as well that people believe the spirit to be a gust of wind or some airy entity, like a puff of breath exhaled from the lungs, and the soul likewise.
[4] It can be seen from this that to love God with all one’s heart and all one’s soul means to do so with all one’s love and all one’s intellect, and that giving a new heart and a new spirit means giving a new will and a new intellect.
Because the word “spirit” symbolically means the intellect, therefore it is said of Bezalel that he was filled with the spirit of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (Exodus 31:3); of Joshua that he was full of the spirit of wisdom (Deuteronomy 34:9); by Nebuchadnezzar of Daniel that he had an excellent spirit in him, of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom (Daniel 5:11,12); and in Isaiah, “Those who err in spirit will know understanding” (Isaiah 29:24). So likewise in many other places.
* The words for “soul” and “spirit” in the original Greek and Hebrew, as also in Latin, have as their fundamental meaning wind or breath.
** No. 378.
*** Lamentations 4:20.
384. Since all the mind’s constituents are connected with the will and intellect, and all the body’s constituents with the heart and lungs, therefore in the head the brain is divided into two structures, and these are as distinct from each other as the will and intellect from each other. The cerebellum serves primarily the will, and the cerebrum primarily the intellect.
In the body, the heart and lungs are likewise separated from the rest of the organs there. They are separated by the diaphragm and enveloped in their own covering, called the pleura, and they form that part of the body called the chest.
In the remaining constituents of the body, called its members, organs and viscera, these two elements are conjoined. Consequently the parts exist in pairs, such as the arms and hands, loins and feet, eyes and nostrils, and, inside the body, the kidneys, ureters, and testes. Even organs that do not exist in pairs are divided into a right and left side-including the cerebrum itself into two hemispheres, the heart itself into two ventricles, and the lungs themselves into two lobes. Moreover, the right side of these relates to the goodness of truth, and the left side to the truth of good. Or to say the same thing, the right side relates to the goodness of love from which arises the truth of wisdom, and the left side to the truth of wisdom arising from the goodness of love. Consequently, because the conjunction of goodness and truth is a reciprocal one, and by that conjunction they become as though one, therefore these pairs in the human being, too, operate together and conjointly in their functions, movements, and perceptions.
385. (5) Through that correspondence one can discover many secrets relating to the will and intellect, and so also to love and wisdom. People in the world scarcely know what the will is and what love is, since a person cannot of himself love and from loving will in the manner that he can seemingly of himself understand and think-just as he cannot of himself compel the heart to pump in the manner that he can of himself compel the lungs to breathe.
Now because people in the world scarcely know what the love and will are, and yet know what the heart and lungs are-for the latter two are visible to the eyes and can be examined, and by anatomists also have been examined and described, whereas the will and intellect are not visible to the eyes and cannot be examined-therefore when it is known that they correspond and by correspondence operate in union, many secrets can be discovered relating to the will and intellect which could not otherwise be discovered. As for example, secrets relating to the conjunction of the will with the intellect, and to the reciprocal conjunction of the intellect with the will, or secrets relating to the conjunction of love with wisdom, and to the reciprocal conjunction of wisdom with love. Also secrets relating to the ramification of love into affections, to the affiliations of affections, and to the influx of these into perceptions and thoughts, descending finally according to their correspondence into actions and sensations of the body.
These and many other secrets can be both discovered and demonstrated from the conjunction of the heart and lungs, and from the influx of blood from the heart into the lungs and the reciprocal influx of it from the lungs into the heart, and its influx from there through the arteries into all the body’s members, organs and viscera.
386. (6) A person’s mind is his spirit, and the spirit is the person, the body being the outward instrument by which the mind or spirit senses and acts in the physical world. The fact that a person’s mind is his spirit, and that the spirit is the person, is something that can hardly be accepted and believed by people who have thought of the spirit as a gust of wind, or of the soul as something ethereal, like a puff of breath exhaled from the lungs. For they ask how the spirit can be a person when it is a spirit, and how the soul can be a person when it is a soul, thinking in the same way as they do of God because He is called a spirit.*
They have acquired this idea of the spirit and soul from the fact that the word for spirit and wind in some languages is the same; and also from the fact that when a person dies he is said to breathe his last and yield up the spirit or soul, while life is said to return to people suffocated or fallen into a faint when they recover their breath or the respiration of their lungs. Consequently, because people apprehend by this then nothing but wind and air, they have judged on the evidence of the eye and bodily senses that a person’s spirit or soul after death is not a person.
From this physical judgment regarding the spirit and soul various theories have arisen, and out of these has grown the belief that a person does not become a person again until the day of the Last Judgment, and that in the meantime he tarries somewhere, awaiting reunion with his body, in accordance with what we said in A Continuation Concerning the Last Judgment, nos. 32-38.
Since a person’s mind is his spirit, therefore angels, who likewise are spirits, are called intelligences.
* John 4:24. Cf. 2 Corinthians 3:17.
387. A person’s mind is his spirit, and the spirit is the person, for the reason that by the mind are meant all the constituents of a person’s will and intellect, and these exist in their first elements in the brain and in their derivative elements in the body. Thus they are all the constituents of the person as regards their forms. And because this is the case, therefore the mind-or will and intellect-impels the body and all its constituents to do its bidding.
Does the body not do whatever the mind thinks and wills? Does the mind not prick up the ear to listen, and strain the eye to see? Does the mind not move the tongue and lips to speak, the hands and fingers to do whatever it pleases, and the feet to walk wherever it wishes? Is the body anything else then but the obedient instrument of its mind? Could the body be such an instrument without the mind’s being present in its derivative elements in the body? Is it reasonable to suppose that the body obeys simply because the mind so wills? In that case they would be two beings, one above and the other below, with the one giving orders and the other heeding.
Because this is incongruous with any degree of reason, it follows in accordance with what we said in no. 365 above that a person’s life exists in its first elements in the brain, and in its derivative elements in the body; furthermore, that as life is in its first elements, so it is in the whole and in every part, no. 366; and that life through those first elements is present from every part in the whole, and from the whole in every part, no. 367.
We have already shown in previous discussions that all the constituents of the mind are connected with the will and intellect, that the will and intellect are the recipient vessels of love and wisdom from the Lord, and that these two constitute a person’s life.
388. From what we have now said it can also be seen that a person’s mind is the person himself. For the first framework of the human form, or the human form itself, with each and every one of its constituents, comes from its first elements continued from the brain through the nerves, in accordance with what we have also already shown above.
This is the form into which a person comes after death, who is then called a spirit or angel, and who is in every measure of perfection a human being, only a spiritual one. The material form which is added and superimposed in the world is not the human form per se, but is its product, being added and superimposed to enable the person to perform useful services in the natural world, and also to take with him from the purer substances of the world some fixed containing vessel for his spiritual constituents and so continue and perpetuate his life.
I have it from angelic wisdom that a person’s mind possesses, not only in general but also in every particular, a constant effort toward the human form, because God is human.
389. For a person to be human, no component can be missing, either in the head or in the body, that is found in the complete human being, for nothing exists in them that does not enter into that form and constitute it. Indeed, it is the form of love and wisdom, which regarded in itself is Divine. All determinations of love and wisdom are contained in it, determinations which are infinite in the human God, but finite in His image, which is what a person, angel and spirit are. If any component that is found in the human being were to be missing, some element would be missing of the determination from love and wisdom corresponding to it by which the Lord is able to be present in the person from the firsts to the lasts of him and from His Divine love by means of His Divine wisdom provide useful services in the created world.
390. (7) The conjunction of a person’s spirit with the body is due to the correspondence of his will and intellect with his heart and lungs, and their disjunction to the absence of that correspondence. Since it has not been known before that a person’s mind-by which is meant the will and intellect-is his spirit, and that the spirit is the person, and since it has not been known that a person’s spirit has a pulse and respiration just as the body does, it could not be known that the pulse and respiration of the spirit in a person flow into the pulse and respiration of his body and produce them.
Since a person’s spirit possesses a pulse and respiration just as the body does, it follows therefore that there is a like correspondence of the pulse and respiration of a person’s spirit with the pulse and respiration of his body, for the mind, as we said, is his spirit. Consequently, when the correspondence of these two motions ceases, a separation takes place, which is death.
[2] The separation or death occurs when the body, owing to some illness or accident, comes into such a condition that it cannot operate in union with the person’s spirit, for thus the correspondence perishes, and with the correspondence, conjunction. This eventuates not when the respiration alone ceases, but when the beating of the heart ceases; for as long as the heart beats, love with its vital warmth remains and maintains the body’s life, as is apparent from cases of fainting and suffocation, and from the state of life of a fetus in the womb.
In short, the life of a person’s body depends on the correspondence of its pulse and respiration with the pulse and respiration of his spirit, and when that correspondence ceases, the life of the body ceases, and his spirit departs and continues its life in the spiritual world, a life which is so like his life in the natural world that he does not know he has died.
Most people enter the spiritual world two days after leaving the body. Indeed, I have spoken two days afterward with some.
[2] I have been granted to know from personal experience that a person’s spirit breathes while in his body. Angels were once given an opportunity to control my respiration and to lessen it as they chose, and finally to take it away, until only the respiration of my spirit remained, and I then perceptibly felt it. The same thing happened to me when I was granted to experience the state of people dying, as may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, no. 449.
[3] Several other times, too, I have been reduced to the respiration of my spirit only, and I then perceptibly felt it to be concordant with the general respiration of heaven.
On many occasions as well I have been in the same state as angels, and have also been raised up to them into heaven, and being then out of the body in the spirit, I have spoken with them with an exhalation of the breath, in the same way as in the world.
[4] From these and other personally experienced proofs it has become apparent to me not only that a person’s spirit breathes while in his body, but that it does so also after it has left the body; that the respiration of the spirit is so subtle as not to be perceived by the person; and that it flows into the manifest respiration of the body, much as a cause does into an effect, or thought into the lungs and through the lungs into speech.
It is apparent from this also that the conjunction of the spirit and body in a person is due to the correspondence of their two cardiac motions and pulmonary motions.
392. The reason these two motions, the cardiac and the pulmonary, occur and continue is that the entire angelic heaven, both in general and in particular, possesses these two motions of life. The entire angelic heaven possesses them because the Lord infuses them from the sun where He is and which emanates from Him. For that sun engenders these two motions from the Lord. Moreover, because all the constituents of heaven and the world descend in succession from the Lord through that sun in such a nexus and form, like the links of a chain from the first to the lasts of them, and because the life of love and wisdom originates from Him, and all the forces of the universe spring from life, it is apparent that the origin of these motions lies nowhere else.
It follows that the varying of these motions occurs in accordance with the reception of love and wisdom.
393. In the discussions that follow we will say more about the correspondence of these motions, such as what the nature of that correspondence is in people who breathe in harmony with heaven, and in those who do so in harmony with hell, and what the nature of it is in people who speak in harmony with heaven but think in harmony with hell, thus what its nature is in hypocrites, flatterers, fakes, and others.
[2] Now because they have had this conception of the soul, and yet have known that the soul operates in the body and produces all its effects relating to its sensation and movement, therefore they have toiled, as we said, in an inquiry into the operation of the soul in the body, which some have said is accomplished by influx, and some by a harmony of the two.
However, because by this effort nothing has been discovered that can put to rest the mind which wishes to see whether a thing is so, therefore I have been granted to speak with angels and to be enlightened regarding this matter by their wisdom. I have from their wisdom the following: that the human soul which lives after death is a person’s spirit; that this spirit is in complete form human; that its soul is the will and intellect, and that the soul of these is love and wisdom from the Lord; that these two are what constitute a person’s life, which comes from the Lord alone; and that for Him to be received by the person, the Lord causes the life to appear as though it were the person’s. Nevertheless, to keep people from attributing life to themselves as theirs and so turning away from a reception of Him, the Lord also taught that every element of love that is called good, and every element of wisdom that is called truth, comes from Him, and nothing of them from any person, and that because these two are life, every element of life that is life comes from Him.
Now because love and wisdom in the Lord are, in a distinct combination, one (see nos. 17-22 above), Divine love being a property of His Divine wisdom, and Divine wisdom being a property of His Divine love (nos. 34-39), and because these emanate from the human God, that is, from the Lord, in such a combination, therefore the two recipient vessels and abodes in the human being called the will and intellect were so created by the Lord as to be distinctly two, and yet to function as one in every operation and in every sensation. For in these functions the will and intellect cannot be separated.
[2] Nevertheless, to make it possible for a person to become a recipient vessel and abode, of necessity to that end it has come about that a person’s intellect can be raised above his inherent love into some light of wisdom for which he has no love, and see and be taught by it how he should live in order to come also into that love and so enjoy bliss to eternity.
Now, however, because people have abused their ability to raise the intellect above their inherent love, they have therefore destroyed in themselves that element which could have been a recipient vessel and abode of the Lord, that is to say, of love and wisdom from the Lord, by making the will the abode of a love of self and a love of the world, and the intellect the abode of justifications of those loves.
This is the origin of the circumstance that these two abodes, the will and intellect, have become the abodes of hellish loves and, by arguments in favor of them, of hellish thinking, which people in hell regard as wisdom.
396. As for the love of self and love of the world being hellish loves, and why people could come into them and so destroy in themselves the will and intellect, the reason is that the love of self and love of the world are from creation heavenly loves, being loves of the natural self serving spiritual loves, as foundations serve for the building of houses. For it is owing to his love of self and the world that a person is concerned for his physical well-being and that he endeavors to be properly nourished, clothed and housed, to take care of his household, to seek employments in order to be useful, indeed to be held in honor in accordance with the status of the business that he administers for the sake of being obeyed, and also to be entertained and recreated by delights of the world-yet all of these for the sake of an end, which ought to be useful service. For through these endeavors he is in a state to serve the Lord and to serve the neighbor. However, when he has no love of serving the Lord and serving the neighbor, and only a love of serving himself for the sake of the world, then that love from being heavenly becomes hellish; for it causes the person to immerse his mind and his heart in his own native self, which in itself is completely evil.
397. So then, to keep a person from being through his intellect in heaven-as is possible-and through his will in hell, and to keep him from having consequently a divided mind, therefore after death everything of the intellect that is above his inherent love is taken away. As a result, the will and intellect in everyone are finally united. In the case of people in heaven, the will loves good and the intellect thinks truth, whereas in the case of people in hell, the will loves evil and the intellect thinks falsity.
A person does the like in the world when he thinks from his spirit, which is the case when he is alone, even though many do otherwise when they are present in the body, which is the case when they are not alone. They do otherwise then because they raise their intellect above the inherent love of their will or spirit.
This much has been said to make it known that the will and intellect are two distinct entities, and that they nevertheless have been created to be united, and are impelled into union, if not before, still after death.
398. Now, because love and wisdom, and consequently the will and intellect, are what are termed the soul, and because we need to say next how the soul operates in the body and governs all its functions, and this can be known from the correspondence of the heart with the will, and of the lungs with the intellect, therefore we have had disclosed as a result of that correspondence the observations that follow:
(1) Love or the will is a person’s very life.
(2) Love or the will continually strives toward the human form and toward all the elements that make up the human form.
(3) Love or the will cannot do anything through its human form without a marriage with wisdom or the intellect.
(4) Love or the will prepares a home or bridal chamber for its future spouse, which is wisdom or the intellect.
(5) Love or the will also prepares all else in its human form in order to be able to operate conjointly with wisdom or the intellect.
(6) When the wedding has taken place, the first conjunction occurs through an affection for knowing, from which springs an affection for truth.
(7) The second conjunction occurs through an affection for understanding, from which springs a perception of truth.
(8) The third conjunction occurs through an affection for seeing that truth, from which springs thought.
(9) Through these three conjunctions love or the will is in the enjoyment of its sensory life and its active life.
(10) Love or the will introduces wisdom or the intellect into all the constituents of its home.
(11) Love or the will does nothing except in conjunction with wisdom or the intellect.
(12) Love or the will joins itself to wisdom or the intellect, and causes wisdom or the intellect to be joined to it in return.
(13) By a power imparted to it by love or the will, wisdom or the intellect can be elevated so as to admit from heaven such matters as are matters of light and perceive them.
(14) Love or the will can be similarly elevated and admit from heaven such matters as are matters of warmth if it loves its partner in the same degree.
(15) Otherwise love or the will draws wisdom or the intellect back from its elevated state into union with itself.
(16) If they are elevated together, love or the will is purified by wisdom in the intellect.
(17) If they are not elevated together, love or the will is defiled in and by the intellect.
(18) Love purified by wisdom in the intellect becomes spiritual and celestial.
(19) Love defiled in and by the intellect becomes natural and sensual.
(20) Still there remains the faculty of understanding called rationality, and the faculty of acting called freedom.
(21) Spiritual and celestial love is love for the neighbor and love toward the Lord, while natural and sensual love is love of the world and love of self.
(22) The case is the same with charity and faith and their conjunction as with the will and intellect and their conjunction.
399. (1) Love or the will is a person’s very life. This follows from the correspondence of the heart with the will, as discussed in nos. 378-381 above; for as the heart functions in the body, so the will does in the mind. Moreover, as all the constituents of the body depend for their existence and motion on the heart, so all the constituents of the mind depend for their existence and life on the will. We say on the will, but we mean on love, because the will is the recipient vessel of love, and love is life itself (see nos. 1-3 above), and love which is life itself comes from the Lord alone.
It can be known from the heart and its extension throughout the body by means of the arteries and veins that love or the will is a person’s life, because things that correspond to each other function similarly, with the difference that one is natural and the other spiritual.
[2] How the heart functions in the body is apparent from the study of anatomy, as for example, that everything is alive or is responsive to life where the heart operates through vessels issuing from it, and that everything is lifeless where the heart does not operate through its vessels. Moreover, the heart is also the first and last organ to function in the body. Its being the first is clear from fetuses, and its being the last is clear from people dying; and that it functions without the concomitant operation of the lungs is clear from cases of suffocation and fainting.
It can be seen from this that as the subsidiary life of the body depends on the heart alone, so likewise does the life of the mind depend on the will alone, and that the will likewise continues to live if thought ceases, as the heart does if respiration ceases-as is also apparent from fetuses, from people dying, and from cases of suffocation and fainting.
It follows from this that love or the will is a person’s very life.
400. (2) Love or the will continually strives toward the human form and toward all the elements that make up the human form. This is apparent from the correspondence of the heart with the will, for we know that all the constituents of the body are formed in the womb, that they are formed by fibers from the brain and by blood vessels from the heart, and that the structures of all the organs and viscera are composed from these two elements. It is apparent therefore that all the constituents of the human being arise from the life of the will, which is love, from its first elements in the brain through fibers, and that all the constituents of his body arise from the heart through the arteries and veins.
It is clearly apparent from this that life-which is love and consequently the will-continually strives toward the human form. And because the human form consists of all the elements found in the human being, it follows that love or the will is engaged in a continual endeavor and effort to form all those elements.
Its endeavor and effort is toward the human form for the reason that God is human, and Divine love and wisdom constitute His life, from which comes everything connected with life.
Everyone can see that unless life which is supremely human operated in that which in itself is without life, nothing found in the human being could have been formed as it is in him, in whom there are millions of components which function as a unit and which conspire with one accord to produce an image of the life from which they spring, in order that the person may become its recipient vessel and abode.
It can be seen from this that love, and in consequence of love, the will, and in consequence of the will, the heart, continually strive toward the human form.
401. (3) Love or the will cannot do anything through its human form without a marriage with wisdom or the intellect. This, too, is apparent from the correspondence of the heart with the will. The human fetus lives because of its heart, but not because of its lungs; for blood does not flow then from the heart into the lungs and grant them the power of respiration, but flows instead through an opening [from the right atrium into the left atrium and so] into the left ventricle of the heart.* Consequently during that time the fetus cannot move any part of its body, but lies bound, nor is it capable of any sensation, its sensory organs being closed.
The case is the same with love or the will, which causes the fetus nevertheless to live, but dimly so, that is, without sensation or activity. As soon as the lungs open, however, which happens after birth, it then begins to experience sensation and to act, and likewise to will and think.
It can be seen from this that love or the will cannot do anything through its human form without a marriage with wisdom or the intellect.
* In the mature heart, blood from the veins enters from the right atrium into the right ventricle, is pumped to the lungs, and returning from there to the left atrium, enters the left ventricle and is pumped through the aorta into the body. In the fetal heart, the venous blood passes from the right atrium through an opening called the foramen ovale into the left atrium and so into the left ventricle, bypassing the right ventricle.
402. (4) Love or the will prepares a home or bridal chamber for its future spouse, which is wisdom or the intellect. Present in the created universe and in each of its constituents is a marriage of goodness and truth, and this for the reason that goodness is a property of love, and truth a property of wisdom, and these two are in the Lord, from whom come all created things.
How this marriage is formed in the human being can be seen mirrored in the conjunction of the heart with the lungs, for the heart corresponds to love or good, and the lungs to wisdom or truth, as stated above in nos. 378-381, 382-384.
From that conjunction it can be seen how love or the will betroths to itself wisdom or the intellect, and afterward marries it or enters as though into a marriage with it. Love betroths wisdom to itself by preparing a home or bridal chamber for it, and it marries it by joining it to itself through affections and then living wisely with it in that home.
[2] The reality of this can be fully described only in spiritual language, because love and wisdom, and consequently the will and intellect, are spiritual. They can indeed be presented in natural language, but only to a hazy perception of them owing to people’s not knowing what love is, what wisdom is, and so what affections for good are, and what affections for wisdom, or affections for truth, are.
Nevertheless, the nature of the betrothal and marriage of love with wisdom or of the will with the intellect can still be seen by the parallel afforded by their correspondence with the heart and lungs. For the case with the latter is the same as with the former, so much the same that there is no difference whatever, except that one is spiritual and the other natural.
From the heart and the lungs, therefore, it is clear that the heart first forms the lungs, and afterward conjoins itself with them. It forms the lungs in the fetus, and conjoins itself with them after birth. This the heart does in its home, called the breast, where the two have their joint abode, separated from the rest of the body’s organs by a membranous partition called the diaphragm and by a covering called the pleura.
The same is the case with love and wisdom or with the will and intellect.
403. (5) Love or the will prepares all else in its human form in order to be able to operate conjointly with wisdom or the intellect. We say, the will and intellect, but it should be rightly known that the will is the totality of a person, for the will exists with the intellect in its first elements in the brain, and in its derivative elements in the body, and so is present in the whole and in every part, as we showed above in nos. 365-367. It can be seen from this that the will is the totality of a person as regards his essential form, both as regards his general form and as regards the particular form of all his constituents, and that the intellect is its companion, as the lungs are of the heart.
Let everyone take care not to harbor an idea of the will as something separate from the human form, for it is that very form.
It can be seen from this, not only how the will prepares a bridal chamber for the intellect, but also how it prepares all else in its home, which is the entire body, in order to be able to operate conjointly with the intellect. It prepares it in such a manner that each and every constituent of the body is joined to the intellect as it is joined to the will, or so that each and every constituent of the body is responsive to the intellect as it is responsive to the will.
[2] How each and every constituent of the body is prepared for conjunction with the intellect as with the will cannot be seen except as in a mirror or image in the body through the study of anatomy. Through that study we know how all the components in the body are connected, so that when the lungs breathe, each and every constituent throughout the entire body is actuated at the same time as by the beating of the heart.
From the study of anatomy we know that the heart is joined to the lungs through the atria [and right ventricle],* and that continuations of these extend into the inner constituents of the lungs. We know, too, that the viscera of the entire body are all connected with the chest cavity by ligaments, and so connected that when the lungs breathe, each and every one, as a whole and individually, have transmitted to them some measure of the respiratory motion. For when the lungs inflate, the ribs then expand the chest, the pleura broadens, and the diaphragm is distended, and at the same time all the lower organs of the body, which are connected by ligaments extending from them, have transmitted to them by the action of the lungs some measure of the action-not to mention many other occurrences, lest readers who do not possess a knowledge of anatomy, owing to their unfamiliarity with the terminology of that science, come into a state of confusion regarding this subject. Simply consult people knowledgeable and expert in anatomy as to whether all the constituents in the entire body are not so connected from the breast on down that when the lungs inflate during respiration, each and every one is stirred into a motion synchronous with that of the lungs.
[3] This now makes apparent the nature of the conjunction of the intellect prepared by the will with each and every constituent of the human form. Simply investigate the connections and examine them with an anatomist’s eye, and following the connections observe then their concomitant operation with the breathing of the lungs and with the heart, and afterward substitute in thought the intellect for the lungs, and the will for the heart, and you will see.
* In the mature heart, blood from the veins enters from the right atrium into the right ventricle, is pumped to the lungs, and returning from there to the left atrium, enters the left ventricle and is pumped through the aorta into the body. In the fetal heart, the venous blood passes from the right atrium through an opening called the foramen ovale into the left atrium and so into the left ventricle, bypassing the right ventricle.
404. (6) When the wedding has taken place, the first conjunction occurs through an affection for knowing, from which springs an affection for truth. By the wedding we mean the state of a person after birth following his state of ignorance and continuing to a state of intelligence, and from this to a state of wisdom. We do not by the wedding mean here the first state, which is one of sheer ignorance, because there is then no thought in the intellect, but only a vague affection belonging to love or the will. This state is a prelude to the wedding.
Present in the second state, which is a person’s state in childhood, is, as is recognized, an affection for knowing. It is in consequence of this affection that a young child learns to speak, learns to read, and afterward progressively learns such things as are matters of the intellect.
That it is love residing in the will which occasions this cannot be called into question; for unless love or the will prompted it, it would not come about.
The fact that every person after birth has an affection for knowing, and that it is in consequence of this affection that he learns those things by which the intellect is gradually formed, grows, and is perfected, everyone acknowledges when he considers in the light of reason the evidence of experience.
It is also apparent that from this affection springs an affection for truth. For when a person from an affection for knowing has become intelligent, he is motivated not so much by an affection for knowing as by an affection for reasoning and for reaching conclusions regarding such concerns as are matters of his love, whether these concerns be economic, civil, or moral. When this affection is elevated to encompass spiritual concerns, it becomes an affection for spiritual truth.
The fact that the first or initial form of this last love was an affection for knowing can be seen from considering that an affection for truth is an elevated affection for knowing. For to be affected by truths is to have in consequence of the affection a wish to know them, and when one discovers them, to be moved by the delight of the affection to take them in.
[2] (7) The second conjunction occurs through an affection for understanding, from which springs a perception of truth. This is apparent to everyone who is willing to rationally consider and examine it. It is apparent from a rational consideration that an affection for truth and a perception of truth are both faculties of the intellect, which in some people come together into a union of the two, and in others do not. They come together into a union of the two in people who wish to employ their intellect to perceive truths, and not in those who wish only to know truths.
It is apparent also that everyone possesses a perception of truth to the degree of his affection for understanding it. For take away any affection for understanding truth, and no perception of truth will exist. Conversely, grant an affection for understanding truth, and there will be a perception of it to the degree of the affection for it. For no one who has his reason intact ever lacks a perception of truth as long as he has an affection for understanding truth. As we showed above, everyone possesses the faculty for understanding truth called rationality.
[3] (8) The third conjunction occurs through an affection for seeing that truth, from which springs thought. An affection for knowing truth is one thing, an affection for understanding it another, and an affection for seeing it still another. So likewise, an affection for truth is one thing, a perception of truth another, and thought still another. Neither of these observations is but vaguely apparent to people who do not perceive the processes of the mind distinctly, but they are clearly apparent to people who do perceive them distinctly.
The distinctions are but vaguely apparent to people who do not perceive the processes of the mind distinctly, because the processes occur simultaneously in the thought in people who have an affection for truth and a perception of truth; and when they are simultaneous, they cannot be distinguished.
A person is engaged in obvious thought when his spirit thinks in the body, which is especially the case when he is in the company of others. But when he is moved by an affection for understanding, and in consequence of it comes into a perception of truth, he is then engaged in the thought of his spirit, which is meditation. This descends, indeed, into the thought of the body, but tacitly so, for it exists above the thought of the body and views as below it the elements of thought that are drawn from the memory, using them either to form conclusions or to provide confirmations. Still, the affection for truth is itself not apprehended except as an impetus of the will from some feeling of pleasure which exists within the meditation as its life, to which little attention is paid.
[4] It can now be seen from this that these three elements-an affection for truth, a perception of truth, and thought-follow in succession from love, and that they take form nowhere else than in the intellect. For when love enters the intellect, which happens when a conjunction of the two has taken place, it then produces first an affection for truth, then an affection for understanding what it knows, and finally an affection for seeing what in the thought of the body it understands-thought being nothing other than an internal sight.
Thought, indeed, occurs first, because it is a faculty of the natural mind. But thought from a perception of truth springing from an affection for truth occurs last. This latter thought is the thought of wisdom, while the first is a thought from memory formed in consequence of the sight of the natural mind.
All operations of love or the will apart from the intellect have to do not with affections for truth but with affections for good.
Now because love residing in the will operates by correspondence in union with the heart, and wisdom residing in the intellect in union with the lungs, as we have shown above, therefore what we have just said in no. 404 above regarding an affection for truth, a perception of truth, and thought, can nowhere be more clearly seen and confirmed than in the lungs and their design. Consequently these must be briefly described.
[2] The heart after birth transmits blood from its right ventricle into the lungs, and following its passage through them, discharges it [from the left atrium] into its left ventricle, thus opening the lungs.* The heart accomplishes this through the pulmonary arteries and veins.
The lungs have bronchial tubes which branch out and finally end in tiny sacs, into which the lungs admit air and so breathe.
Surrounding the bronchial tubes and their ramifications are also arteries and veins called the bronchial arteries and veins, arising from the azygos vein or the vena cava and from the aorta.
These arteries and veins are separate from the pulmonary arteries and veins.
It is apparent from this that blood flows into the lungs by two routes, and flows from them by two routes. That is why the lungs can breathe in a rhythm different from that of the heart. The fact that the alternate motions of the heart and the alternate motions of the lungs do not coincide is something people know.
[3] Now because there is a correspondence of the heart and lungs with the will and intellect, as we have shown, and their conjunction by correspondence is such that one functions as the other, it can be seen from the flow of blood from the heart into the lungs how the will flows into the intellect and accomplishes what we have just stated in no. 404 above regarding an affection for and perception of truth, and thought. Their correspondence has disclosed this to me, and many other things as well which cannot be briefly described.
[4] Since love or the will corresponds to the heart, and wisdom or the intellect to the lungs, it follows that the heart’s blood vessels in the lungs correspond to affections for truth, and that the ramifications of the lungs’ bronchial tubes correspond to perceptions and thoughts springing from those affections.
Anyone who explores all the tissues of the lungs from their origins and draws a parallel with love in the will and wisdom in the intellect can see, as though in a kind of reflected image, the things described in no. 404 above and be so convinced as to believe them.
However, because the particulars belonging to the science of anatomy regarding the heart and lungs are known to few, and to confirm something by means of things unknown induces unintelligibility, therefore I forgo demonstrating the parallelism further.
* In the mature heart, blood from the veins enters from the right atrium into the right ventricle, is pumped to the lungs, and returning from there to the left atrium, enters the left ventricle and is pumped through the aorta into the body. In the fetal heart, the venous blood passes from the right atrium through an opening called the foramen ovale into the left atrium and so into the left ventricle, bypassing the right ventricle.
406. (9) Through these three conjunctions love or the will is in the enjoyment of its sensory life and its active life. Love without the intellect, or an affection of love without the thought of the intellect, is incapable of any sensation or action in the body, and this because love without the intellect is as though blind, or because affection without thought is as though in thick darkness. For the light of the intellect is the light by which love sees. The wisdom of the intellect also springs from the light which emanates from the Lord as a sun.
Consequently, since the will’s love without the light of the intellect sees nothing and is blind, it follows that without the light of the intellect, the bodily senses, too, would be in a state of blindness and insensibility-not only the senses of sight and hearing, but the rest of the senses as well. Such would be the case with the rest of the senses as well because every perception of truth is owing to love in the intellect, as we showed above, and the bodily senses all have their perception from their mind’s perception.
[2] The like is the case with every bodily action. For an action springing from love apart from the intellect is like the action of a person done in the darkness of night, the person then not knowing what he is doing. The action would consequently have in it no element of intelligence or wisdom, and such an action cannot be called a living act. An action also takes its being from love and its character from intelligence.
Good, furthermore, has all its power through truth. Consequently good acts in truth and so by means of it; and good is a matter of love, while truth is a matter of the intellect.
It can be seen from this that through these three conjunctions discussed in no. 404 above, love or the will is in the enjoyment of its sensory life and its active life.
The fact that a person is not in the enjoyment of any sensory life or any active life as long as the heart and the lungs do not operate together is evident from the state of a fetus or baby in the womb and its state after birth. As long as the person is a fetus or in the womb, the lungs are closed. Therefore he is without any sensation and incapable of any action. His sensory organs are closed, his hands are held bound, and so also his feet. But after birth the lungs are opened, and as these are opened the person begins to feel sensation and to act. The lungs are opened by blood transmitted from the heart.
[2] The fact that a person is not in the enjoyment of any sensory life or any active life without the joint operation of the heart and the lungs is apparent also from cases of fainting. During periods of fainting the heart alone acts, and not the lungs, for the respiration is then stopped. People know that during these periods a person is without any sensation and incapable of any action.
The case is the same with a person being suffocated, whether by water or by something that obstructs the air passage and closes the way for the lungs’ respiration. People know that the person then appears as though dead, without sensation and incapable of action, and yet as regards the heart is still alive. For he returns into both his sensory life and his active life as soon the obstructions of the lungs are removed.
The blood, indeed, does meanwhile circulate through the lungs, but through the pulmonary arteries and veins, and not through the bronchial arteries and veins; and it is the latter which give a person the ability to breathe.
The case is the same with the influx of love into the intellect.
408. (10) Love or the will introduces wisdom or the intellect into all the constituents of its home. By the home of love or the will we mean the whole person in respect to all the constituents of his mind; and because these correspond to all the constituents of the body, as we showed above, by the home we mean the whole person also in respect to all the constituents of his body, called members, organs and viscera. The fact that the lungs are introduced into all the latter constituents in the same way that the intellect is into all the constituents of the mind can be seen from what we have shown above, as for instance, that love or the will prepares a home or bridal chamber for its future spouse, which is wisdom or the intellect (no. 402), and that love or the will prepares all else in its human form-or in its home-in order to be able to operate conjointly with wisdom or the intellect (no. 403).
From what we said there it is apparent that through ligaments extending from the ribs, vertebrae, sternum, diaphragm, and peritoneum which is suspended from them, each and all constituents in the entire body are so connected that they are drawn and borne by the breathing of the lungs into similarly alternating movements.
[2] The fact that the alternate motions of the lungs enter also into the very inmost recesses of the viscera can be seen from the study of anatomy; for the aforementioned ligaments are attached to the integuments enveloping the viscera, and these integuments enter through continuations of them even into the inmost elements of the viscera, as do the arteries and veins also through their ramifications. It can be seen from this that the respiration of the lungs enjoys a full conjunction with the heart in each and every constituent of the body. And in order for the conjunction to be complete, the heart is itself caught up in the motion of the lungs; for it lies in the cavity of the lungs, and is connected with them through the atria [and right ventricle],* and it rests on the diaphragm, so that its arteries also partake of the pulmonary motion.
Furthermore, the stomach has a similar connection with the lungs through the connection of its esophagus with the trachea.
We have cited these anatomical facts in order that the reader may see the nature of the conjunction of love or the will with wisdom or the intellect, and of the two together with all the constituents of the mind. For the conjunction is similar.
* In the mature heart, blood from the veins enters from the right atrium into the right ventricle, is pumped to the lungs, and returning from there to the left atrium, enters the left ventricle and is pumped through the aorta into the body. In the fetal heart, the venous blood passes from the right atrium through an opening called the foramen ovale into the left atrium and so into the left ventricle, bypassing the right ventricle.
409. (11) Love or the will does nothing except in conjunction with wisdom or the intellect. Since love has no sensory life and no active life apart from the intellect, and since love introduces the intellect into all the constituents of the mind, as we showed in nos. 407 and 408 above, it follows that love or the will does nothing except in conjunction with wisdom or the intellect. For what is it to act from love apart from the intellect? It can only be called irrational, for it is the intellect that teaches what ought to be done and how it ought to be done. Love without the intellect does not know this. Therefore such a marriage exists between love and the intellect that although they are two distinct entities, they nevertheless operate as one.
A like marriage exists between good and truth, for goodness is a property of love, and truth a matter of the intellect.
Such a marriage exists in every single constituent of the universe that has been created by the Lord. Their usefulness has relation to good, and the form of their usefulness to truth.
[2] It is owing to this marriage that every single constituent of the body has a right and left side, the right side having relation to good from which springs truth, and the left side to truth springing from good, thus [the two together] to their conjunction.
It is because of this that we find paired organs in the human being. The brain has two component structures,* the cerebrum two hemispheres, the heart two ventricles, the lungs two lobes. There are two eyes, ears, nostrils, arms, hands, loins, feet, kidneys, and testicles, among others. And where the organs are not paired, there is a right and left side.
These pairs exist because good looks to truth for its expression, and truth looks to good for its being.
The same is the case in the angelic heavens and in each of their societies.
For more on this subject, see no. 401 above, where we showed that love or the will cannot do anything through its human form without a marriage with wisdom or the intellect.
As for the conjunction of evil and falsity, which is the opposite of the conjunction of good and truth, this we will speak of elsewhere.
* I.e., the cerebrum and cerebellum.
410. (12) Love or the will joins itself to wisdom or the intellect, and causes wisdom or the intellect to be joined to it in return. The fact that love or the will joins itself to wisdom or the intellect is apparent from their correspondence with the heart and lungs.
Anatomical observation shows that the heart is engaged in its life’s motion when the lungs are no longer or not yet engaged in theirs. Observation shows this from the empirical evidence of people who suffer loss of consciousness and those who are suffocated, and from that of fetuses in the womb and chicks in the egg.
Anatomical observation also shows that during the time the heart alone is functioning, it forms the lungs and so equips them that it may be able to breathe there, and that it forms all the rest of the organs as well in order to be able to carry on various useful activities in them-the organs of the face in order to be able to feel sensation, the organs of motion in order to be able to act, and the rest of the organs in the body in order to be able to accomplish useful ends corresponding to the affections of love.
[2] It follows from this, first, that as the heart produces such effects for the sake of the various functions it is going to carry on in the body, so love in its recipient vessel called the will produces like effects for the sake of the various affections which compose its form-that form being the human form, as we have shown above.
Now because the first and most immediate affections of love are an affection for knowing, an affection for understanding, and an affection for seeing that which it knows and understands, it follows that love forms for them the intellect, and that it enters into these affections actually when it begins to feel sensation and to act, and when it begins to think.
That the intellect contributes nothing to this effort follows from the parallel with the heart and lungs, as discussed above.
[3] It can be seen from this that love or the will joins itself to wisdom or the intellect, and not wisdom or the intellect to love or the will. And it follows from this as well that the knowledge which love acquires for itself from an affection for knowing, and the perception of truth which it acquires from an affection for understanding, and the thought that it acquires from an affection for seeing that which it knows and understands, are not properties of the intellect, but are the properties of love.
[4] Thoughts, perceptions, and consequently knowledge do indeed flow in from the spiritual world. But still they are received not by the intellect, but by love in accordance with its affections in the intellect. It appears as though the intellect receives them, and not love or the will, but that is a fallacious appearance.
It also appears as though the intellect joins itself to love or the will, but that, too, is a fallacious appearance. Love or the will joins itself to the intellect and causes the intellect to be joined to it in return. That the intellect is joined to it in return is owing to the marriage of love with it. Because of that marriage a seemingly reciprocal conjunction is formed by the life and consequent power of love.
[5] The like is the case with the marriage of good and truth, for goodness is a property of love, and truth a matter of the intellect. Goodness initiates everything, and it receives truth into its home and unites itself with it in the measure that it accords. Goodness can also admit truths that do not accord, but it does so because of its affection for knowing, understanding and thinking, when it has not yet determined itself to useful applications which are its ends and which it calls its goods.
A reciprocal conjunction, or one of truth with good, does not occur at all. That truth is joined to good in return is owing to the life belonging to good.
[6] It is because of this that every person, and every spirit and angel, is regarded by the Lord in accordance with his love or goodness, and no one in accordance with his intellect or truth apart from his love or goodness. For a person’s life is his love, as we have shown above, and his life is what it is according as he has elevated his affections by truths, that is, according as he has perfected his affections in accord with wisdom. For love’s affections are elevated and perfected by truths, thus by wisdom; and love then acts in conjunction with wisdom, as though prompted by it, but doing so of itself through wisdom, as through a form its own, which takes nothing whatever of its quality from the intellect, but everything from some determination of love, called affection.
411. Love calls everything that favors it its goods, and everything that leads as means to goods it calls its truths. And because these truths serve as means, it loves them, and they become matters of its affection, and so become affections in form. Truth, therefore, is nothing else than the form of some affection belonging to love. The human form is nothing else than the form of all the affections of love. Its beauty is its intelligence, which it acquires for itself through the truths that it receives by the external and internal senses of either sight or hearing.
These truths are what love disposes into the forms of its affections, forms which exist in great variety, but all of which derive a similarity from their general form, which is the human one. All of these forms are beautiful to the love and attractive, while all others are not beautiful to it and are unattractive.
It follows from this as well that love joins itself to the intellect and not the reverse, and that any reciprocal conjunction is attributable also to love. That is what we mean by the statement that love or the will causes wisdom or the intellect to be joined to it in return.
[2] It should be rightly known that the arteries and veins in the lungs are not affections, and that the processes of respiration are not perceptions and thoughts, but that they are correspondent forms, for they function corresponsively or synchronously. It is the same as with the heart and lungs, which are not love and the intellect, but are correspondent forms. And since they are correspondent forms, one can be seen in the other.
[3] One who from the study of anatomy is familiar with the whole structure of the lungs, if he compares it with the intellect, can clearly see that the intellect does not function on its own, does not perceive or think on its own, but does so wholly from affections belonging to love, which in the intellect are called an affection for knowing, for understanding, and for seeing a thing, as discussed above. For the states of the lungs all depend on blood from the heart, and from the vena cava and aorta; and the processes of respiration which take place in the bronchial ramifications occur in accordance with their state. For if the flow of blood ceases, respiration ceases.
[4] Many more particulars could be disclosed from a comparison of the structure of the lungs with the intellect, to which they correspond. But because the science of anatomy is known to few, and to demonstrate or confirm something by means of things unknown puts the matter into a state of unintelligibility, therefore I am prevented from saying any more on this subject.
From what I know of the structure of the lungs, I have been fully convinced that love through its affections joins itself to the intellect, and that the intellect does not join itself to any affection of love, but that it is joined to it in return by love, in order that the love may have a sensory life and an active life.
[5] It must altogether be known, however, that a person possesses a double respiration, one of his spirit and the other of his body, and that the respiration of the spirit depends on fibers from the brain, and the respiration of the body on blood vessels from the heart, and on the vena cava and aorta.
It is evident, furthermore, that thought produces respiration, and it is also evident that an affection belonging to love produces thought; for thought without an affection would be altogether like respiration without the heart, which is not possible.
It is apparent therefore that an affection belonging to love joins itself to the thought belonging to the intellect, as we have said above. It is the same as with the heart in respect to the lungs.
413. (13) By a power imparted to it by love or the will, wisdom or the intellect can be elevated so as to admit from heaven such matters as are matters of light and perceive them. We have already shown here and there above that a person can perceive the secrets of wisdom when he hears them. This faculty of the human being is the faculty called rationality, which everyone has from creation. It is the ability to understand matters interiorly and to draw conclusions regarding what is just and equitable and what is good and true, and it is this faculty that distinguishes the human being from animals. This, therefore, is what we mean by the statement that the intellect can be elevated and admit from heaven such matters as are matters of light and perceive them.
[2] The fact of this can also be seen in a kind of reflected image in the lungs, because the lungs correspond to the intellect. It can be seen in the lungs from their porous substance, which consists of bronchial tubules terminating in tiny cavities that are the recipient vessels of air during respiration. These are the elements with which thoughts are united by correspondence. This spongy substance is such that it can be caused to expand and contract in a twofold mode, in one mode together with the heart, and in the other almost separate from the heart. It is caused to expand and contract in a mode synchronous with heart by the pulmonary arteries and veins, which extend only from the heart, and it is caused to expand and contract in a mode almost separate from the heart by the bronchial arteries and veins, which extend from the vena cava and aorta. These latter vessels lie outside the heart.
[3] This is the case in the lungs because the intellect can be elevated above the native love which corresponds to the heart and admit light from heaven. But even when the intellect is elevated above the native love, it does not separate from it, but takes from it that element called an affection for knowing and understanding for the sake of some measure of honor, glory or material gain in the world. This objective in some measure clings to every love as an outer layer, from which love shines on the surface, but through which it shines in the wise.
We have cited these particulars regarding the lungs in order to corroborate the fact that the intellect can be elevated so as to admit and perceive such matters as are matters of the light of heaven, for there is between them a complete correspondence. To see them from the perspective of their correspondence is to see the lungs from the perspective of the intellect, and the intellect from the perspective of the lungs, and so to see from the two together a corroboration.
414. (14) Love or the will can be similarly elevated and admit from heaven such matters as are matters of warmth if it loves its partner in the same degree. We have already shown in the preceding discussion and here and there above that the intellect can be elevated into the light of heaven and draw from it wisdom. Moreover, we have also shown here and there that love or the will can be equally elevated, if it loves such matters as are matters of the light of heaven, or matters of wisdom. However, love or the will cannot be elevated by any measure of honor, glory or material gain as its end, but by a love of useful service, not so much for its own sake, but for the sake of the neighbor. And because this love is bestowed only from heaven by the Lord, and is bestowed by the Lord when a person refrains from evils as being sins, therefore it is by these means that love or the will can be elevated also, and apart from these means it cannot be.
The will’s love, however, is elevated into the warmth of heaven, whereas the intellect is elevated into the light of heaven, and if both are elevated, a marriage of the two takes place there, which we call the heavenly marriage, because it is a marriage of heavenly love and wisdom. That is why we say that love is elevated also if it loves its partner wisdom in the same degree. Love for the neighbor from the Lord is the love proper to wisdom, or the genuine love proper to the human intellect.
The case is the same as with light and warmth in the world. Light is possible without warmth, and possible in conjunction with warmth. It is without warmth in wintertime, and accompanied by warmth in summertime; and when warmth exists in conjunction with light, then all things flourish. The light in a person corresponding to the light of winter is wisdom without its love, while the light in a person corresponding to the light of summer is wisdom accompanied by its love.
415. This conjunction and disjunction of wisdom and love can be seen as though imaged in the conjunction of the lungs with the heart. For the heart can be joined to the clustered air sacs of the bronchia in consequence of the blood transmitted from it directly, and it can be joined to them in consequence of the blood transmitted not from it directly but from the vena cava and aorta. This makes it possible for the respiration of the body to be separated from the respiration of the spirit. But when only the blood from the heart impels, then the two respirations cannot be separated.
Now because thoughts are united by correspondence with the processes of respiration, it is apparent also from the twofold mode of the lungs in breathing that a person can think and in accordance with the thought speak and act in one way when in company with others, and think and in accordance with the thought speak and act in another way when he is not in their company, namely, when he does not fear any loss of reputation. For he can then think and speak in opposition to God, to the neighbor, to the spiritual concerns of the church, and to moral and civil concerns, and can also act in opposition to them by stealing, taking revenge, blaspheming, and committing adultery. On the other hand, in gatherings where he fears a loss of reputation, he can speak, preach and act altogether like a spiritual, moral and law-abiding person.
It can be seen from this that love or the will can, similarly to the intellect, be elevated, and can admit such matters as are matters of the warmth or love of heaven, provided it loves wisdom in the same degree; and that if it does not love it, it can be as though separated.
416. (15) Otherwise love or the will draws wisdom or the intellect back from its elevated state into union with itself. Love may be natural, and love may be spiritual. A person who is prompted by a natural love and at the same time a spiritual love is a rational person. However, one who is prompted by a natural love only, although he is able to think rationally just as well as a spiritual person, still is not a rational person. For even if he elevates his intellect into the light of heaven, thus to wisdom, still such matters as are matters of wisdom or of the light of heaven are not ones of his love. It is his love, indeed, that prompts the elevation, but from an affection for honor, glory and material gain. But when he perceives that he does not receive anything of the kind from that elevation, which is the case when he thinks to himself in accord with his natural love, he then does not love those matters that are matters of the light of heaven or of wisdom, and he therefore draws his intellect back from its elevated state into union with itself.
[2] So for example, when the intellect from being elevated is in a state of wisdom, love then sees what justice is, what honesty is, what chastity is, indeed what genuine love is. A natural love is capable of seeing this as a result of its ability to understand and view matters in the light of heaven. Indeed, it can speak, preach and describe them as moral and at the same time spiritual virtues. However, when the intellect is not in an elevated state, then, if the love is merely natural, it does not see those virtues, but sees, instead of justice, injustice; instead of honesty, deceit and deception; instead of chastity, lasciviousness; and so on. If it then thinks about the matters it spoke of when its intellect was in an elevated state, it may laugh at them and think of them only as means that serve it for captivating minds.
It can be seen from this how the statement is to be interpreted that unless love loves its partner wisdom in the same degree, it draws it back from its elevated state into union with itself. (The fact that love can be elevated if it loves its partner in the same degree may be seen in no. 414 above.)
417. Now because love corresponds to the heart, and the intellect to the lungs, the foregoing observations can be confirmed by their correspondence-thus how the intellect can be elevated above the native love even into a state of wisdom, and how the intellect is drawn back from its elevated state by that love if the love is merely natural.
A person possesses a double respiration, one of the body and the other of the spirit. These two respirations can be separated, and they can also be conjoined. In merely natural people, in hypocrites especially, they are separated, but in spiritual and sincere people rarely. Consequently the merely natural person and hypocrite in whom the intellect has been elevated, and who retains in memory therefore many matters that are matters of wisdom, can in the company of others speak wisely from thought based on memory; but when he is not in the company of others, he thinks not in accord with his memory but in accord with his spirit, thus in accord with his love. He also breathes in a like manner, since thought and respiration function correspondingly.
We have already shown above that the structure of the lungs is such that they can breathe in consequence of blood from the heart, and in consequence of blood from outside the heart.
418. The common opinion is that wisdom makes the person. Consequently when people hear someone speaking or teaching wisely, they believe that it reflects his character. Indeed, that is how the person thinks of himself at the time, because when he speaks and teaches in the presence of others, he thinks on the basis of his memory, and if he is merely natural, in accord with the outer layer of his love, which is an affection for honor, glory and material gain. However, when the same person is alone, he thinks in accord with the interior love of his spirit, and he thinks then not wisely but sometimes insanely.
It can be seen from this that no one should be judged by the wisdom of his speech, but by his life, that is, not by the wisdom of his speech apart from his life, but by the wisdom of his speech in conjunction with his life. By life we mean love. Love is a person’s life, as we have shown above.
419. (16) If they are elevated together, love or the will is purified in the intellect. A person from birth loves only himself and the world, for nothing else appears before his eyes, and therefore he considers nothing else in his heart; and this love is carnally natural, and can be called materialistic. Moreover, this love has also become impure owing to the separation of heavenly love from it in parents.
[2] This love cannot be separated from its impurity unless the person has the ability to elevate his intellect into the light of heaven and to see how he should live in order that his love may be elevated together with his intellect into wisdom. Through the intellect love, which is to say, the person, sees what evils there are that defile and pollute the love, and sees, too, that if he refrains from those evils and turns away from them as sins, he loves such things as are opposed to those evils, all of which are heavenly. He also sees as well the means which enable him to refrain from those evils and turn away from them as sins. Love, which is to say, the person, sees this through use of his ability to elevate his intellect into the light of heaven and gain from it wisdom. Then in the measure that love puts heaven in first place and the world second, and in the measure that it at the same time puts the Lord in first place and self second, in the same measure the love is purged of its pollutions and purified. That is to say, in the same measure it is elevated into the warmth of heaven and united with the light of heaven in which the intellect is. A marriage is then formed, the marriage we call the marriage of goodness and truth, or of love and wisdom.
[3] Everyone can intellectually comprehend and rationally see that to the extent someone refrains from practices of theft and fraud and turns away from them, to the same extent he loves honesty, integrity and justice. So, too, that to the extent someone refrains from acts of vengeance and hatred and turns away from them, to the same extent he loves his neighbor. Likewise, that to the extent someone refrains from adulterous affairs, to the same extent he loves chastity. And so on.
[4] Indeed, scarcely anyone realizes what measure of heaven and of the Lord is present in honesty, integrity, justice, love for the neighbor, chastity, and other affections of heavenly love before he has put away their opposites. It is when he has put away their opposites that he then comes into these affections, and from the experience of them recognizes and sees them.
In the meantime a kind of veil lies interposed, and although it does allow the light of heaven to shine through to the love, still, because the love does not love its partner wisdom in the same degree, it does not admit the light. Indeed it may reproach and scold its partner when it returns from its elevated state, but yet be soothed by the thought that the wisdom of its intellect may be made to serve it as a means to honor, glory and material gain. However, it then puts self and the world in first place, and the Lord and heaven second. And what it puts in second place it loves only in the measure that it serves; and if it does not serve, it disowns it and rejects it, after death if not before.
From this it now follows as a truth that love or the will is purified in the intellect if they are elevated together.
It is clear from a good deal of empirical observation that the heart’s blood purifies itself of unassimilated elements in the lungs, and that it also nourishes itself with beneficial elements from the air inhaled.
That the blood purifies itself of unassimilated elements in the lungs is clear not only from the nature of the blood flowing in, which is venous and therefore filled with chyle extracted from ingested foodstuffs and alcoholic spirits, but also from the moisture of their exhalations and the perceptible odor of those foodstuffs and spirits to the nostrils of others, and likewise from the diminished amount of blood flowing back [through the left atrium] into the left ventricle of the heart.
[2] That the blood nourishes itself with beneficial elements from the air inhaled is clear from the immense amount of odors and exhalations continually emanating from fields, gardens and woodlands; from the immense amount of various kinds of salts contained in the moisture evaporating from the ground, streams and ponds; and from the immense amount of exhalations and effluvia arising from people and animals, with which the air is permeated. It cannot be denied that these elements flow into the lungs with the inhaled air, and because this cannot be denied, neither can it be denied that the blood draws from them such elements as are beneficial to it; and those elements are beneficial to it which correspond to the affections of its love.
We accordingly find in the tiny sacs or inmost constituents of the lungs an abundance of capillaries with orifices that absorb such elements. We find, too, that the blood flowing back [through the left atrium] into the left ventricle of the heart has been transformed into arterial blood and become brighter.
These observations confirm that the blood purifies itself of heterogeneous elements in the lungs, and that it nourishes itself with homogeneous ones.
[3] The fact that the blood purifies and nourishes itself in the lungs in a manner corresponding to that of the affections of the mind is as yet unknown, but it is well known in the spiritual world. For the angels who dwell in the heavens take delight only in odors that correspond to their love of wisdom, whereas spirits in hell take delight only in odors that correspond to love opposed to wisdom. The latter odors are stenches, while the former are fragrances.
It follows therefore that people in the world permeate their blood with similar elements according to the correspondence of these with the affections of their love. For what a person’s spirit loves, the blood correspondingly hungers for and by the process of respiration takes in.
It flows from this correspondence that a person is purified in respect to his love if he loves wisdom, and that he becomes polluted if he does not love it.
A person’s purification is accomplished, moreover, wholly through truths that are matters of wisdom. And a person’s pollution is brought about wholly through falsities that are opposed to truths of wisdom.
421. (17) If they are not elevated together, love or the will is defiled in and by the intellect. This follows, since if love is not elevated, it remains impure, as we said in nos. 419, 420 above. And as long as it remains impure, it loves things that are impure, such as the practices of vengeance, hatred, deceit, blasphemy, and adultery. For these are then its affections, which we call lusts, and it rejects things having to do with charity, justice, honesty, truthfulness, and chastity.
As for the statement that love is defiled in and by the intellect, it is defiled in the intellect when love is affected by those impure practices, and it is defiled by the intellect when love causes matters of wisdom to become its servants, and still more when it perverts, falsifies and adulterates them.
Concerning the circumstance of the heart or its blood that corresponds to this in the lungs, we need say no more than what we have already said in no. 420 above-only that instead of a purification of the blood, a pollution of it takes place, and that instead of a nourishment of the blood with fragrances, a nourishment of it with stenches occurs, just as is the case in heaven and in hell.
422. (18) Love purified by wisdom in the intellect becomes spiritual and celestial. A person is born natural, but as his intellect is elevated into the light of heaven, and his love is elevated together with it into the warmth of heaven, he becomes spiritual and celestial. He then becomes as though a garden of Eden, in the enjoyment of a springlike light and at the same time a springlike warmth.
The intellect does not become spiritual and celestial, but the love does, and when the love does, it makes the intellect, its partner, spiritual and celestial also.
Love becomes spiritual and celestial by a life in accordance with the truths of wisdom that the intellect teaches and shows it. Love learns these through its intellect, and not on its own. The fact is that love cannot elevate itself unless it knows truths, and it can know these only through an intellect that has been elevated and enlightened. In the measure that it then comes to love truths by putting them into practice, in the same measure the love, too, is elevated. For it is one thing to understand and another to will, or one thing to speak and another to do. There are people who understand and utter truths of wisdom, and yet do not will them and put them into practice. It is consequently when love puts into practice the truths of light which it understands and utters that it is then elevated.
[2] One can see the reality of this in the light of reason alone. For what is a person who understands and utters truths of wisdom while living contrary to them, that is, while willing and behaving contrary to them?
Love purified by wisdom becomes spiritual and celestial for the reason that a person has in him three degrees of life, called natural, spiritual and celestial (as discussed in Part Three of this work), and a person can be elevated from one degree into another. Yet he is not elevated by wisdom alone, but by a life in accordance with it, for a person’s life is his love. Consequently, to the extent that a person lives in accordance with wisdom, to the same extent he loves it; and he lives in accordance with wisdom to the extent that he purifies himself of pollutions, which are sins. To the extent, then, that he does this, to the same extent he loves wisdom.
Yet the two are nevertheless clearly distinguishable in heaven, for everyone has a respiration there that accords with his marriage of love and wisdom. Consequently, as angels are known by that marriage, so they are known also by their respiration.
It is because of this that when anyone comes into heaven who does not possess that marriage, he suffers chest pain and struggles for breath like people in the agony of death. Therefore people in such a case also cast themselves down headlong from there, and do not rest until they are with people who possess a similar respiration, for these then possess by correspondence a like affection and consequent thought.
[2] It can be seen from this that in one who is spiritual, it is his purer blood that is purified, which some people call the animal spirit,* and that it is purified to the extent that the person possesses a marriage of love and wisdom. It is this purer blood which corresponds most closely to that marriage. And because it flows into the body’s blood, it follows that the latter blood, too, is purified by it. The contrary is the case in people in whom love has been defiled in the intellect.
However, as we said, no one can investigate this by any empirical examination of the blood. But one can do so by an examination of the love’s affections, since these correspond to the blood.
* A supposed animating essence, purer than lymph, originating in the brain and pervading the fibers of the body.
424. (19) Love defiled in and by the intellect becomes natural, sensual and carnal. Natural love separated from spiritual love is opposed to spiritual love. The reason is that natural love is a love of self and love of the world, while spiritual love is a love of the Lord and love of the neighbor; and a love of self and the world looks downward and outward, while a love of the Lord looks upward and inward. Consequently when natural love has been separated from spiritual love, it cannot be elevated from a person’s native character, but remains immersed in it, and to the extent that it loves it, mired in it. If the intellect then ascends and sees by the light of heaven such matters as are those of wisdom, the natural love draws it back and unites it with itself in its native character, and there either rejects those matters belonging to wisdom, or falsifies them, or places them round about it in order to give voice to them for the sake of its reputation.
[2] As natural love can by degrees ascend and become spiritual and celestial, so it can also by degrees descend and become sensual and carnal. And it does descend to the extent that it loves dominion, not from any love of useful service, but solely from a love of self. This is the love we call the devil.
People who are caught up in this love can speak and act in the same way as people who are prompted by spiritual love. But they do so then either from memory, or from an intellect elevated by itself into the light of heaven. Still, however, the things they say and do are comparatively like fruits that appear on the surface beautiful, but which inside are completely rotten. Or they are like almonds that appear from their shells to be without blemish, but which inside are completely eaten away by worms.
People in the spiritual world term such words and actions beguilements, which licentious women, called sirens in that world, use to put on the appearance of beauty and to array themselves in seemly garments, but yet who, when the beguilement is dispelled, appear as specters. Such people are also like devils who feign themselves angels of light. For when that carnal love draws its intellect back from its elevated state, which happens when the person is alone, and the person then thinks in accordance with his love, he then thinks in opposition to God on the side of nature, in opposition to heaven on the side of the world, and in opposition to the truths and goods of the church on the side of the falsities and evils of hell-thus in opposition to wisdom.
[3] One can see from this the character of people whom we call carnal. For they are not carnal in respect to their intellect, but are carnal in respect to their love. That is to say, they are not carnal in respect to their intellect when they speak in the company of others, but are when they speak to themselves in the spirit. And because they are of such a character in the spirit, therefore after death they become in respect to both, both their love and their intellect, spirits who are called carnal spirits. Those who possessed in the world a supreme love of ruling from a love of self, and had enjoyed at the same time an elevation of the intellect beyond that of others, then appear in body like Egyptian mummies, and in mind gross and foolish.
Who knows in the world today that this love is, in itself, of such a character?
But still there exists a love of ruling from a love of useful service, not from a love of useful service for the sake of self, but from a love of useful service for the sake of the common good. A person can hardly distinguish the one from the other, yet the difference between them is as that between heaven and hell. (The differences between these two distinct loves of ruling may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 551-565.)
425. (20) Still there remains the faculty of understanding called rationality, and the faculty of acting called freedom. We have discussed these two faculties that a person has in nos. 264-267 above.
A person has these two faculties in order that from being natural he may become spiritual, which is to be regenerated. For, as we said above, it is a person’s love that becomes spiritual and is regenerated, and it cannot become spiritual or be regenerated unless it knows through its intellect what is evil and what is good, and consequently what is true and what is false. When it knows this it can choose the one or the other; and if it chooses good, it can through its intellect be informed of the means by which it can arrive at good. The means by which a person can arrive at good have all been provided. To know and understand these means is the function of rationality, and to will and do them is the function of freedom. It is freedom also to will to know, understand and think about them.
[2] Of these faculties called rationality and freedom, those people know nothing who believe in accordance with the doctrine of their church that spiritual and theological matters transcend the intellect, and that such matters are to be believed, therefore, without being understood. Those people cannot but deny the existence of the faculty called rationality.
Moreover, those who believe in accordance with the doctrine of their church that no one can do good of himself, and that therefore no good springing from any will is to be done for the sake of salvation-those people cannot but deny, from a principle of religion, the existence of either of these faculties that a person has.
Therefore people who have confirmed themselves in these opinions are also after death, in accordance with their belief, divested of these two faculties; and instead of being able to enjoy the freedom of heaven, they live in the freedom of hell, and instead of being able to enjoy by virtue of rationality the wisdom of angels, they are caught up in the insanity of hell.
Surprisingly, moreover, they profess these two faculties to exist in doing evils and in thinking falsities-not knowing that the exercise of freedom to do evils is slavery,* and that the exercise of rationality to think falsities is irrational.
[3] Still, it should rightly be known that these two faculties of freedom and rationality are not a person’s own, but are the Lord’s in a person; that they cannot be assigned to a person as his own, nor given to a person as his own, but are continually the Lord’s in him; and yet that a person never has them taken away. The reason they are not taken away is that a person cannot be saved without them, for without them he cannot be regenerated, as we said above. It is because of this that the church teaches a person that he cannot think truth of himself, nor do good of himself.
Yet because a person has no other perception than that he thinks truth of himself and does good of himself, it is clearly apparent that he ought to believe that he thinks truth as though of himself and does good as though of himself. For if he does not believe this, then either he is not thinking truth and not doing good, and so is without religion, or he is thinking truth and doing good on his own, in which case he attributes to himself that which is Divine.
That a person ought to think truth and do good as though of himself may be seen from beginning to end in The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem.
* Cf. John 8:34.
426. (21) Spiritual and celestial love is love for the neighbor and love toward the Lord, while natural and sensual love is love of the world and love of self. By love for the neighbor we mean a love of useful services, and by love toward the Lord we mean a love of performing useful services, as we have previously shown.
These loves are spiritual and celestial for the reason that to love useful services and to perform them from a love of them is divorced from a person’s love of his own self-interest. For one who loves useful services spiritually regards not himself but others apart from himself, being affected by a concern for their welfare.
Opposed to these loves are loves of self and the world, for loves of self and the world have regard for useful services not for the sake of others but for the sake of self; and people who do this invert Divine order, putting themselves in place of the Lord, and the world in place of heaven. Consequently they look away from the Lord and heaven, and to look away from them is to look in the direction of hell. But for more on the subject of these loves, see no. 424 above.
[2] Still, a person is not as sensible and cognizant of a love of performing useful services for the sake of those useful services as he is of a love of performing useful services for the sake of himself. Therefore he also does not know, when performing useful services, whether he is doing them for the sake of the useful services or for the sake of self. Let him know, however, that he performs useful services for the sake of the useful services to the extent that he refrains from evils. For to the extent that he refrains from these, to the same extent he performs useful services, not from himself, but from the Lord. Evil and good, indeed, are opposites, and consequently to the extent that someone is not engaged in evil, to the same extent he is engaged in good. No one can be engaged in evil and in good at the same time, because no one can simultaneously serve two masters.*
We have said this much to make it known that even though a person does not sensibly perceive whether the useful services he performs are for the sake of the useful services or whether they are for the sake of himself, or in other words, whether the useful services are spiritual or whether they are merely natural, still he can know it from considering whether he thinks evils are sins or not. If he thinks they are sins, and on that account does not do them, then the useful services he performs are spiritual. And when the same person refrains from sins from an aversion to them, he also begins to perceive sensibly in himself then a love of useful services for the sake of the useful services, and this because of the spiritual delight he finds in them.
* See Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13.
427. (22) The case is the same with charity and faith and their conjunction as with the will and intellect and their conjunction. The heavens have been distinguished in accordance with two loves-celestial love and spiritual love. Celestial love is love toward the Lord, and spiritual love is love for the neighbor.
These loves are differentiated by the fact that celestial love is a love of good, while spiritual love is a love of truth; for people who are motivated by celestial love perform useful services from a love of good, whereas those who are motivated by spiritual love perform useful services from a love of truth. Celestial love’s marriage is with wisdom, while spiritual love’s marriage is with intelligence; for it is the mark of wisdom to do good in accord with good, and the mark of intelligence to do good in accord with truth. Consequently celestial love does what is good, and spiritual love does what is true.
[2] The difference between these two loves cannot be described other than by the following observations. People who are motivated by celestial love have wisdom engraved on their life and not on their memory, and for this reason they do not talk about Divine truths but practice them. In contrast, people who are motivated by spiritual love have wisdom engraved on their memory, and consequently they talk about Divine truths and practice them in accordance with principles retained in the memory.
Because people who are motivated by celestial love have wisdom engraved on their life, therefore whenever they are told something, they instantly perceive whether it is true or not, and when they are asked whether it is true, they reply only either that it is or that it is not. These are the people meant by the Lord’s words, “Your speech shall be ‘Yes, yes,’ or ‘No, no’ ” (Matthew 5:37). Moreover, because they are of such a character, they do not wish to hear anything about faith, saying, “What is faith? Is it not wisdom? And what is charity? Is it not to practice?” And when they are told that faith is to believe something without understanding it, they turn away, saying, “The fellow is demented.”
[3] People of this character are those who live in the third heaven and who are the wisest of all.
Those became of such a character in that world who immediately applied to life the Divine verities that they heard by turning away from evils as infernal and adoring the Lord alone.
Because they are in a state of innocence, they appear to others like little children. And because they do not talk about truths of wisdom and have not a bit of conceit in their speech, they appear also simple. But yet when they hear someone speak, they perceive from his tone the whole nature of his love, and from his words the whole nature of his intelligence.
People of this character are those who possess a marriage of love and wisdom from the Lord, and who have relation to heaven’s kingdom of the heart, which we discussed previously.
428. In contrast, people who are motivated by spiritual love, which is love for the neighbor, do not have wisdom engraved on their life, but intelligence, for it is the mark of wisdom to do good from an affection for good, but the mark of intelligence to do good from an affection for truth, as we said above.
People of this character do not know what faith is, either. If faith is mentioned, they understand it to mean truth, and when charity is mentioned, they understand it to mean practicing the truth.
Moreover, when they are told that truth must be believed, they call it an empty expression and say, “Who does not believe the truth?” They say this because they see truth in the light of their heaven. Consequently to believe what they do not see they call either simpleminded or foolish.
People of this character are those who constitute heaven’s kingdom of the lungs, which we also discussed above.
Because people of this character do not know what charity is, or whether their faith is the truth, they cannot dwell among those in the heavens who possess wisdom and intelligence, but dwell among those who possess only knowledge.
Still, those who have refrained from evils as sins are in the lowest heaven, and dwell there in a light like the light of the moon at night.
[2] Those, however, who have not confirmed themselves in a faith in the unknown, and at the same time have had some affection for truth, on being instructed by angels are, in accordance with their reception of truths and life according to them, elevated into the societies of people who possess a spiritual love and so intelligence. They become spiritual, while the rest remain naturally spiritual.
Conversely, those who have lived in a state of faith separated from charity are removed and sent off into deserts, because they are not impelled by any goodness, thus not by any marriage of goodness and truth, as are all those who are in the heavens.
430. Everything we have said about love and wisdom in this part of the work can be said of charity and faith, provided one understands charity to mean spiritual love, and faith to mean truth that is the means to intelligence.
The same is the case if one substitutes the terms will and intellect or love and intelligence, since the will is the recipient vessel of love, and the intellect the recipient vessel of intelligence.
Now because some people in the world are of a temperament to direct their minds even to an investigation of the elemental form of the human being or paternal seed that occasions conception, and because many of them have fallen into the error of thinking that the human being exists in its complete form from its first origin or commencement, and is afterward perfected by growing, I have had disclosed to me the nature of that commencement or first origin in its true form.
This was disclosed to me by angels who had it revealed to them by the Lord; and because they incorporated it into their wisdom, and it is the delight of their wisdom to communicate to others what they know, therefore they were given permission to present before my eyes in the light of heaven a model of the human being’s initial form, the nature of which was as follows.
[2] I saw what looked like the tiny image of a brain, having the faint outline of an undefined face in front, without any appendage. The upper, convex part of this rudimentary form had a structure composed of contiguous little globular or spherical masses, and each little spherical mass was composed of ones still more minute, and each of these in like manner of ones the most minute of all. Thus it consisted of three degrees. It was in the concave part of this toward the front that I saw the undefined outline of a face.
The convex part was covered with a very thin membrane or meninx, which was transparent.
The convex part, which was the model of a cerebrum in miniature, was also divided into two, shall I say, prominences, as the cerebrum in its larger form is divided into two hemispheres. And I was told that the right prominence was a recipient vessel of love, and the left prominence a recipient vessel of wisdom, and that through marvelous interconnections they were as though consorts and domestic partners.
[3] Furthermore I was shown in the light of heaven that shone upon it that the structure of the image’s little cerebellum was, in respect to its inner orientation and continuous motion, in the order and form of heaven, and that its outer structure was in conflict with it in opposition to that order and form.
[4] After I had seen and been shown the foregoing, the angels told me that the two inner degrees, which were in the order and form of heaven, were recipient vessels of love and wisdom from the Lord, and that the outer degree, which was in conflict with them in opposition to the order and form of heaven, was the recipient vessel of hellish love and insanity-the reason being that a person is born by a hereditary defect into evils of every kind, and that these evils are seated in the outermost constituents there. Moreover, they said that this defect is not removed unless the higher degrees are opened, which, as we said, are recipient vessels of love and wisdom from the Lord.
So then, because love and wisdom are the essence of what it is to be human-since love and wisdom in their essence are the Lord, and this initial form of a person is their recipient vessel-it follows that this initial form has within it a continual effort toward the human form, which it also gradually assumes.