Dreams of a Spirit-Seer/Appendix 1
APPENDIX I.
EXTRACTS FROM SWEDENBORG.
(Referred to by figures in Text).
1 (p. 38).—"That the spirit of man after being loosed from the body is a man, and, in a similar form, has been proved to me by the daily experience of several years; for I have seen and heard them a thousand times, and I have spoken with them also on this subject, that men in the world do not believe them to be men, and that those who do believe, are reputed by the learned as simple. The spirits are grieved at heart that such ignorance should still continue in the world, and chiefly within the church. But this faith, they said, emanated first from the learned, who thought concerning the soul from things of corporeal sense, from which they conceived no other idea respecting it than as of thought alone, which, when without any subject in which and from which it is viewed, is as something volatile, of pure ether, which cannot but be dissipated when the body dies. But because the church, from the Word, believes in the immortality of the soul, they could not but ascribe to it something vital, such as is of thought, but still not any thing with sensation, such as man has, until it is again conjoined to the body. On this opinion is founded the doctrine in regard to the resurrection, and the faith that there is to be a conjunction when the last judgment comes. Hence it is, that when any one thinks about the soul from doctrine and at the same time from hypothesis, he does not at all comprehend that it is a spirit, and that in a human form. To this is added, that scarcely any one at this day knows what the spiritual is, and still less that those who are spiritual, as all spirits and angels are, have any human form. Hence it is, that almost all who come from the world wonder very much that they are alive, and that they are men equally as before, that they sec, hear, and speak, and that their body has the sense of touch as before, and there is no difference at all. But when they cease to wonder at themselves, they then wonder that the church should know nothing about such a state of men after death, nor about heaven and hell, when yet all who have ever lived in the world, are in another life, and live as men.—De Cælo et ejus mirabilibus et de inferno ex auditis et visis (Swedenborg). Heaven and its wonders and Hell: from Things heard and seen. No. 456.
2 (p. 46).—"Without a knowledge of discrete degrees nothing whatever can be known of the distinction between spiritual and natural, thus nothing of correspondence. Nor, indeed, can anything be known of any difference between the life of men and that of beasts, or between the more perfect and the less perfect animals: neither of the differences among the forms of the vegetable kingdom, nor among the matters of the mineral kingdom. From which it can be seen that they who are ignorant of these degrees are unable by any judgment to see causes; they see only effects, and from these judge of causes, which is done for the most part by an induction that is continuous with effects. But causes do not produce effects by continuous but by discrete modes; for cause is one thing, and effect is another. The difference between the two is like the difference between prior and subsequent, or between that which forms and that which is formed.
"I am not aware that anything has been known hitherto about discrete degrees, yet nothing of the real truth about cause can become known without a knowledge of degrees of both kinds. These degrees therefore shall be treated of throughout this Part (III. ), for it is the object of this little work to uncover causes, that effects may be seen from them, and thus the darkness may be dispelled in which the man of the church is in respect to God and the Lord, and in respect to Divine things in general which are called spiritual things. This I may mention, that the angels are in grief for the darkness on the earth; saying that they see light hardly anywhere, and that men eagerly lay hold of fallacies and confirm them, thereby multiplying falsities upon falsities; and to confirm fallacies men search out, by means of reasonings from falsities and from truths falsified, such things as cannot be overturned, owing to the darkness in respect to causes and the ignorance respecting truths."—Swedenborg: Sapientia angelica de divino amore et de divino sapientia. Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and Wisdom. Nos. 185, 188.
3 (p. 47).—"There are in the natural world spaces and times, but these are in the spiritual world appearances.
"The reason of this is, that all things which appear in the spiritual world exist immediately from the sun of heaven, which is the divine love of the Lord; whereas all things which appear in the natural world exist from the same source, but by means of the sun of this world, which is pure fire. Pure love, from which all things exist immediately from the Lord, is immaterial; but pure fire, through which all things exist mediately in the natural world, is material. Hence it is that all things which exist in the spiritual world are, from their origin, spiritual; and that all things which exist in the natural world, are, from their secondary origin, material. Material things are also in themselves fixed, stated, and measurable. They are fixed, because, however the states of men change, they continue permanent, as the earth, mountains, and seas. They are stated, because they constantly recur in their turns, as seasons, generations, and germinations. They are measurable, because all things may be defined; as spaces, by means of miles and furlongs, and these by means of paces and yards; times again, by means of days, weeks, months, and years. But in the spiritual world all things are as if they were fixed, stated, and measurable, but still they are not so in reality; for they exist and continue according to the states of the angels, so that with these very states they make one; they therefore vary also, as these states vary.
"I can positively affirm that the objects which exist in the spiritual world are even more real than those in the natural; for that which is in nature added to the spiritual principle is dead, and does not produce reality, but diminishes it. That there is this diminution arising from this cause is plainly evident from the state of the angels of heaven compared with that of men on earth, and from all the objects existing in heaven compared with all those existing in the world.
"Since there are in heaven objects similar to those which exist in our world, there are therefore spaces and times there also; but the spaces, like the earth itself there and the objects upon it, are appearances. For they appear according to the states of the angels; and the extensions of spaces, or the distances, are according to the similarities and dissimilarities of these states."—Swedenborg: De Symbolo Athatiasiano. On the Athanasian Creed. Nos. 105, 106.
4 (p. 47).—"That this is so can hardly be comprehended by a natural idea, because in such there is space; but by a spiritual idea, such as angels have, it can be comprehended, because in such there is no space. But even by a natural idea this much can be comprehended, that love and wisdom (or what is the same, the Lord, who is divine Love and divine Wisdom) cannot advance through spaces, but is present with each one according to reception."—D. L. and W., 111.
It is to be constantly borne in mind that with Swedenborg the divine Love and Wisdom are not only substantial entities, but they are the very substance itself; the divine Love being the Substance itself, and the divine Wisdom the Form itself, from which proceed all substances and all forms. On this profoundest of all metaphysical subjects Swedenborg says:—
"The idea of men in general about love and about wisdom is like something hovering and floating in thin air or ether; or like what exhales from something of this kind. Scarcely any one believes that they are really and actually substance and form. Even those who recognise that they are substance and form still think of the love and the wisdom outside the subject and as issuing from it. For they call substance and form that which they think of outside the subject and as issuing from it, even though it be something hovering and floating; not knowing that love and wisdom are the subject itself, and that what is perceived outside of it and as hovering and floating is nothing but an appearance of the state of the subject in itself. There are several reasons why this has not hitherto been seen, one of which is, that appearances are the first things out of which the human mind forms its understanding, and these appearances the mind can shake off only by the exploration of causes; and if the cause lies deeply hidden, the mind can explore it only by keeping the understanding for a long time in spiritual light; and this it cannot do by reason of the natural light which continually withdraws it. The truth is, however, that love and wisdom are the real and actual substance and form that constitute the subject itself."—D. L. W., 40.
5 (p. 49).—"The reason that there is life in all the several and most minute parts of man is, that the various and diverse things existing in him, which are called members, organs, and viscera, numerous as they are, so make one that he has no other knowledge than that he is a simple, rather than a compound being. That there is life in his most minute parts is evident from the following facts: that from his own life he sees, hears, smells, and tastes, which would not be the case unless the organs of those senses also lived from the life of his soul; that the whole surface of his body is endued with the sense of touch, since it is the life, and not the skin without it, which produces this sense. The reason that there is life in all the several and most minute parts of man is, that the animal form, of which we have treated above, is the essential form of life."—Athan. Cr., 109.
6 (p. 53)—"Love or the will is man's very life. … As all things of the body depend for existence and motion upon the heart, so do all things of the mind depend for existence and life upon the will. It is said, upon the will, but this means upon the love, because the will is the receptacle of love, and love is life itself (see above, n. 1–3), and love, which is life itself, is from the Lord alone.
"And as the human form is made up of all the things there are in man, it follows that love or the will is in a continual conatus and effort to form all these. There is a conatus and effort towards the human form, because God is a Man, and Divine Love and Divine Wisdom is His life, and from His life is everything of life. Any one can sec that unless Life which is very man acted into that which in itself is not life, the formation of anything such as exists in man would be impossible, in whom are thousands of thousands of things that make one thing, and that unanimously aspire to an image of the Life from which they spring, that man may become a receptacle and abode of that Life. From all this it can be seen that love, and out of the love the will, and out of the will the heart, strives unceasingly towards the human form."—D. L. W., 399–400.
7 (p. 53)—"Man from his spirit, and not from his body; and that the corporeal form is added to the spirit according to its form, and not the reverse, for the spirit is clothed with a body according to its own form. For this reason the spirit of man acts into every part, yea, into the minutest particulars of the body, insomuch that the part which is not actuated by the spirit, or in which the spirit is not acting, docs not live. That this is so, may be known to every one from this fact alone, that thought and will actuate each and all things of the body with such entire command that every thing concurs, and whatever does not concur is not a part of the body, and is also cast out as something in which is no life. Thought and will are of the spirit of man, and not of the body. That the spirit does not appear to man in a human form, after it is loosed from the body, nor in another man, is because the body's organ of sight, or its eye, so far as it sees in the world, is material, and what is material sees what is material only.
"…… A deed or work, therefore, viewed in itself, is only an effect, which derives its soul and life from the will and thought, insomuch that it is will and thought in effect, consequently it is will and thought in an external form. Hence it follows that such as the will and thought are which produce a deed or work, such likewise is the deed and work: if the thought and will be good, then the deeds and works are good; but if the thought and will be evil, then the deeds and works are evil, though in the external form they may appear the same."—H. and H., 453, 472.
"The mind (that is, the will and understanding) impels the body and all its belongings at will. Does not the body do whatever the mind thinks and determines? Does not the mind incite the ear to hear, and direct the eye to see, move the tongue and the lips to speak, impel the hands and fingers to do whatever it pleases, and the feet to walk whither it will? Is the body, then, anything but obedience to its mind: and can the body be this unless the mind is in its derivatives in the body? Is it consistent with reason to think that the body acts from obedience simply because the mind so determines? in which case there would be two, the one above and the other below, one commanding, the other obeying. As this is in no way consistent with reason, it follows that man's life is in its first principles in the brains, and in its derivatives in the body (according to what has been said above, n. 365); also that such as life is in first principles, such it is in the whole and in every part (n. 366); and that by means of these first principles life is in the whole from every part, and in every part from the whole (n. 367); and that all things of the mind have relation to the will and understanding, and that the will and understanding are the receptacles of love and wisdom from the Lord, and that these two make the life of man."—D. L. W., 387.
8 (p. 53).—"Influx is effected by correspondences; it cannot be effected by continuity."—D. L. W., 88.
"Respecting the life which proceeds from the Lord, respecting also the existence of all things in the universe derived from it, every man who is wise in heart may see that nature does not produce anything from itself, but that, for the purpose of producing, it merely ministers to the spiritual principle proceeding from the sun of heaven, which is the Lord; as the instrumental cause ministers to its principal cause, or a dead force to its living force. From this it is evident how much men are in error, who ascribe to nature the generations of animals and productions of vegetables; for they are like those who ascribe magnificent and splendid works to the tool rather than to the artist, or who worship a sculptured image in preference to God. The fallacies, which are innumerable in all reasoning on spiritual, moral, and civil subjects, originate in this source; for a fallacy is the inversion of order; it is the judgment of the eye, rather than of the mind, the conclusion drawn from the appearance of a thing, rather than from its essence. To reason therefore from fallacies about the world and the existence of the things contained in it is to confirm, as it were, by argument that darkness is light, that that which is dead is alive, and that the body enters by influx into the soul, rather than the contrary. It is, however, an eternal truth that influx is spiritual, and not physical; that is, it is from the soul, which is spiritual, into the body which is natural, and from the spiritual world into the natural; and further that it is the Divine Being proceeding from Himself, and as He created all things by that which proceeds from Himself, so also He sustains all things by it; and lastly, that sustentation is perpetual creation, as subsistence is perpetual existence."—Athan. Cr., 102.
9 (p. 54).—"The end is the all of the cause, and through the cause is the all of the effect; and thus end, cause, and effect are called first, middle, and last end; further the cause of the cause is also the cause of the thing caused; and there is nothing essential in causes except the end, and nothing essential in motion except conatus; also, the substance that is substance in itself is the sole substance.
"From all this it can clearly be seen that the Divine, which is substance in itself, that is, the one only and sole substance, is the substance from which is each and every thing that has been created; thus that God is the All in all things of the universe."—D. L. W., 197, 198.
"The principal end is the love of man's will, the intermediate ends are subordinate loves, and the ultimate end is the will's love existing as it were in its own effigy. Since the principal end is the will's love, it follows that the intermediate ends, because they are subordinate loves, arc foreseen, provided, and produced, through the understanding; and that the ultimate end is the use foreseen, provided, and produced by the will's love, through the understanding; for everything that love produces is use."—Athan. Cr., 77.
10 (p. 54).—"The conjunction of man's spirit with his body is by means of the correspondence of his will and understanding with his heart and lungs, and their separation is from non-correspondence.—As it has heretofore been unknown that man's mind, by which is meant the will and understanding, is his spirit, and that the spirit is a man; and as it has been unknown that man's spirit, as well as his body, has a pulse and respiration, it could not be known that the pulse and respiration of the spirit in man flow into the pulse and respiration of his body and produce them. Since, then, man's spirit, as well as his body, enjoys a pulse and respiration, it follows that there is a like correspondence of the pulse and respiration of man's spirit with the pulse and respiration of his body,—for, as was said, his mind is his spirit, consequently, when the two pairs of motions cease to correspond, separation takes place, which is death. Separation or death ensues when from any kind of disease or accident the body comes into such a state as to be unable to act in unison with its spirit, for thus correspondence perishes, and with it conjunction; not, however, when respiration alone ceases, but when the heart's pulsation ceases. For so long as the heart is moved, love with its vital heat remains and preserves life, as is evident in cases of swoon and suffocation, and the condition of fetal life in the womb. In a word, man's bodily life depends on the correspondence of its pulse and respiration with the pulse and respiration of his spirit; and when that correspondence ceases, the bodily life ceases, and his spirit departs and continues its life in the spiritual world, which is so similar to his life in the natural world that he does not know that he has died."—D. L. W., 390.
11 (p. 57).—"The two worlds, the spiritual and the natural, are so distinct as to have nothing in common with each other; yet so created as to have communication, yea, conjunction, by means of correspondences.
"The universe in general is divided into two worlds, the spiritual and the natural. In the spiritual world are angels and spirits, in the natural world men. In external appearance these two worlds are entirely alike, so alike that they cannot be distinguished; but in internal appearance they are entirely unlike. The men themselves in the spiritual world, who are called angels and spirits, are spiritual, and, being spiritual, they think spiritually and speak spiritually. But the men of the natural world are natural, and therefore think naturally and speak naturally; and spiritual thought and speech have nothing in common with natural thought and speech. From this it is plain that these two worlds, the spiritual and the natural, are entirely distinct from each other, so that they can in no respect be together."—D. L. W., 83, 163.
12 (p. 57).—"Man enjoys this privilege which the angels do not, that he is not only in the spiritual world as to his interiors, but also at the same time in the natural world as to exteriors. His exteriors which are in the natural world, are all things of his natural or external memory, and of thought and imagination therefrom; in general, knowledges and sciences, with their delights and gratifications, so far as they savour of the world, and also many pleasures belonging to the sensuals of the body, together with his senses themselves, his speech, and actions. All these also are the ultimate things into which the divine influx of the Lord closes; for it does not stop in the midst, but proceeds to its ultimates. From these things it may be manifest that in man is the ultimate of divine order, and because it is the ultimate, that it is also the basis and foundation. Because the divine influx of the Lord does not stop in the midst, but proceeds to its ultimates, as was said, and because the medium through which it passes is the angelic heaven, and the ultimate is with man, and because there is nothing given which is unconnected, it follows that such is the connection and conjunction of heaven with the human race, that the one subsists from the other, and that the human race without heaven would be as a chain when the hook is removed, and heaven without the human race would be as a house without a foundation."—H. H., 304.
13 (p. 57).—"That nothing in nature exists or subsists, but from a spiritual origin, and by means of it.
"The reason of this is that nothing can exist except from something else, and this lastly from Him, who is and who exists in Himself, and He is God; therefore also God is called esse and existere. The reason that nothing in nature exists but from a spiritual origin is, that there cannot be anything in existence unless it has a soul, all that which is essence being called soul; for that which has not in itself an essence, docs not exist—it is a nonentity; because there is no esse from which it can derive existence. Such is the case with nature; its essence, from which it exists, being the spiritual origin or principle, because this possesses in itself the divine esse, and also the divine force—active, creative, and formative. This essence may also be called soul, because all that is spiritual lives; and when that which is alive acts upon that which is not so, upon that, for instance, which is natural, it causes it either to live as if from itself, or to derive from it something of the appearance of life; the former is the case with animals, the latter with vegetables. The reason that nothing in nature exists but from a spiritual origin or principle is, that no effect is produced without a cause. Such is the case with nature; all the several and most minute objects belonging to it are effects produced from a cause, which is prior, interior, and superior to it, and proceeding immediately from God. For since there exists a spiritual world, which is prior, interior, and superior, to the natural world, therefore all that belongs to the spiritual world is cause, and all that belongs to the natural world is effect."—Ath. Cr., 94.
14 (p. 57).—"That nature serves as a covering for that which is spiritual, is evident from the souls of beasts, which are spiritual affections, being clothed from materials in the world, it being well known that their bodies are material; so also the bodies of men. The reason that the spiritual can be clothed from the material is, that all the objects which exist in nature, whether they belong to atmosphere, to water, or to earth, are, as to every individual of them, effects produced from the spiritual as a cause. The effects again act as one with the cause, and are in complete agreement with it, according to the axiom, that nothing exists in the effect that is not in the cause. But the difference is, that the cause is a living force, because it is spiritual, while the effect derived from it is a dead force, because it is natural. From this it is, that there are in the natural world such objects as are in complete agreement with those which exist in the spiritual world, and that the former can be suitably conjoined with the latter. Hence then it is, that it is said that nature was created that the spiritual may be clothed from it with forms to serve for use. That nature was created that the spiritual may be terminated in it, follows from what has been already said, that the objects in the spiritual world are causes, while those in the natural world are effects, and effects are limits."—Ath. Cr., 95.
15 (p. 59).—"Effects teach nothing but effects; when effects alone are considered no cause is brought to light; but causes reveal effects. To know effects from causes is to be wise; but to search for causes from effects is not to be wise, because fallacies then present themselves, which the investigator calls causes, and this is to turn wisdom into foolishness. Causes are things prior, and effects are things posterior; and things prior cannot be seen from things posterior, but things posterior can be seen from things prior. This is order."—D. L. W., 119.
16 (p. 59).—"Those who are in the one world cannot see those who are in the other world. For the eyes of man, who sees from natural light, are of the substance of his world, and the eyes of an angel are of the substance of his world ; thus in both cases they are formed for the proper reception of their own light. From all this it can be seen how much ignorance there is in the thoughts of those who, because they cannot see angels and spirits with their eyes, are unwilling to believe them to be men.
"Hitherto it has not been known that angels and spirits are in a totally different light and different heat from men. It has not been known even that another light and another heat are possible. For man in his thought has not penetrated beyond the interior or purer things of nature. And for this reason many have placed the abodes of angels and spirits in the ether, and some in the stars—thus within nature, and not above or out of it. But, in truth, angels and spirits are entirely above or out of nature, and in their own world, which is under another sun. And since in that world spaces are appearances (as was shown above), angels and spirits cannot be said to be in the ether or in the stars; in fact, they are present with man, conjoined to the affection and thought of his spirit;—for man, in that he thinks and wills, is a spirit; consequently the spiritual world is where man is, and in no wise away from him. In a word, every man as regards the interiors of his mind is in that world, in the midst of spirits and angels there; and he thinks from its light, and loves from its heat."—D. L. W., 91, 92.
17 (p. 60).—"As heaven is a man in greatest form, and a society of heaven, in less form, so is an angel, in least form; for in the most perfect form, such as the form of heaven is, there is a likeness of the whole in a part, and of a part in the whole. The cause that it is so is, that heaven is a communion; for it communicates all its own to every one, and every one receives all that is his from that communion: an angel is a receptacle, and thence a heaven in the least form; as also was shown above in its proper article. Man also, as far as he receives heaven, is likewise so far a receptacle, is a heaven, and is an angel."—H. H., 73.
18 (p. 60).—"An idea of anything without origin cannot exist with the natural man, thus neither can the idea of God from eternity; but it exists with the spiritual man. The thought of the natural man cannot be separated and withdrawn from the idea of time, for this idea is inherent in it from nature, in which it is; so neither can it be separated and withdrawn from the idea of origin, because origin is to it a beginning in time; the appearance of the sun's progress has impressed on the natural man this idea. But the thought of the spiritual man, because it is elevated above nature, is withdrawn from the idea of time, and instead of this idea there is the idea of a state of life, and instead of duration of time, there is a state of thought derived from affection which constitutes life." (See also Note 21.)—Ath. Cr., 32.
19 (p. 60).—"All men, as to the interiors which belong to their minds, are spirits, clothed in the world with a material body, which is, in each case, subject to the control of the spirit's thought, and to the decision of its affection; for the mind, which is spirit, acts, and the body, which is matter, is acted upon. Every spirit also, after the rejection of the material body, is a man, in form similar to that which he had when he was a man in the world."—Ath. Cr., 41.
20 (p. 60).—"What is material sees only what is material, but what is spiritual sees what is spiritual. On this account when the material of the eye is veiled and deprived of its cc-operation with the spiritual, spirits appear in their own form, which is human; not only spirits who are in the spiritual world, but also the spirit which is in another man, while he is yet in his body." —H. H., 453.
"When the body is no longer able to perform its functions in the natural world, corresponding to the thoughts and affections of its spirit, which it has from the spiritual world, then man is said to die. This takes place when the respiratory motions of the lungs and the systolic motions of the heart cease; but still man does not die, but is only separated from the corporeal part which was of use to him in the world; for man himself lives. It is said that man himself lives, because man is not man from the body, but from the spirit, since the spirit thinks in man, and thought with affection makes man. Hence it is evident, that man, when he dies, only passes from one world into another."
21 (p. 60).—"The worldly and corporeal man does not see God except from space, he thus regards God as the whole inmost principle in the universe, consequently as something extended. But God is not to be seen from space; for there is no space in the spiritual world, space there being only an appearance derived from that which resembles it."—Ath. Cr., 19.
22 (p. 60).—"It can in no case be said that heaven is without, but that it is within man; for every angel receives the heaven which is without him according to the heaven that is within him. This plainly shows how much he is deceived who believes that to go to heaven is merely to be taken up among the angels without regard to the quality of one's interior life: that is, that heaven may be given to every one from immediate mercy: when yet, unless heaven is within a person, nothing of the heaven which is without him flows in and is received."—H. H., 54.
"The angelic societies in the heavens are distant from each other according to the general and specific differences of their goods. For distances in the spiritual world are from no other origin than from a difference in the states of the interior life: consequently in the heavens, from a difference in the states of love."—H. H., 41, 42.
23 (p. 61).—"So long as man lives in the world he knows nothing of the opening of these degrees within him, because he is then in the natural degree, which is the outmost, and from this he thinks, wills, speaks, and acts; and the spiritual degree, which is interior, communicates with the natural degree, not by continuity but by correspondences, and communication by correspondences is not sensibly felt."—D. L. W., 238.
24 (p. 61).—"Man whilst he lives in the world, is in conjunction with heaven, and also in consociation with the angels, although both men and angels arc ignorant of it. The cause of their ignorance is, that the thought of man is natural, and the thought of an angel spiritual, and these make one only by correspondences. Since man, by the thoughts of his love, is inaugurated into the societies either of heaven or of hell, therefore, when he comes into the spiritual world, as is the case immediately after death, his quality is known by the mere extension of his thoughts into the societies, and thus every one is explored; he is also reformed by admissions of his thoughts into the societies of heaven, and he is condemned by immersions of his thoughts into the societies of hell."—Ath. Cr., 3.
"To the above it is proper to add that every man, even while he lives in the body, is as to his spirit in society with spirits, although he docs not know it; a good man is through them in an angelic society, and an evil man in an infernal society; and he comes also into the same society after death. This has been frequently said and shown to those who after death have come among spirits. A man does not indeed appear in that society as a spirit, when he lives in the world, because he then thinks naturally; but those who think abstractly from the body, because then in the spirit, sometimes appear in their own society ; and when they appear, they are easily distinguished from the spirits who are there, for they go about meditating, are silent, and do not look at others; they are as if they did not see them, and as soon as any spirit speaks to them, they vanish."—H. H., 438.
25 (p. 62)—"There is a love of rule springing from a love of performing uses, which is a spiritual love, because it makes one with love towards the neighbour. Still this cannot be called a love of rule, but a love of performing uses.
"There are two loves which are the head of all the rest, that is, to which all other loves are referable; the love which is the head of all heavenly loves or to which they all relate, is love to the Lord: and the love which is the head of all infernal loves, or to which they all relate, is the love of rule springing from the love of self. These two loves are diametrically opposed to each other."—D. L, W., 141.
26 (p. 64).—"The affections of man, from which his thoughts proceed, extend into the societies [of the spiritual world] in every direction, into more or fewer of them, according to the extent and the quality of his affection. Within these societies is man as to his spirit, attached to them as it were with extended cords circumscribing the space in which he walks. As he proceeds from one affection to another, so he proceeds from one society to another, and the part of the society in which he is, is the centre from which issue his affection and the thought originating in it to all the other societies as circumferences. These societies are thus in unbroken connection with the affections of the centre, from which he at the time thinks and speaks. He acquires for himself this sphere—which is the sphere of his affections and their thoughts—whilst he is in the world; if he is evil, in hell; but if he is good, in heaven. He is not aware that such is the case, because he is not aware that such things exist. Through these societies the man, that is, his mind, walks free, although bound, led by the Lord, nor does he take a step into which and from which he is not so led. It is moreover, continually provided that he should have no other knowledge than that he proceeds of himself in perfect liberty."—Ath. Cr., 68.
27 (p. 64).—"The life which is from the Lord is attractive, because it is from love: for all love possesses in itself a force of attraction, because it wills to be conjoined even unto one." —Arcana Cælestia, 8604.
28 (p. 65).—"When the first state after death is passed through, which is the slate of the exteriors, the man-spirit is let into the state of his interiors, or into the state of his interior will and its thought, in which ho had been in the world when left to himself to think freely and without restraint. Into this state he glides without being aware of it, in like manner as in the world, when he withdraws the thought which is nearest to the speech, or from which the speech is, towards his interior thought, and abides in that. When, therefore, the man-spirit is in this state, he is in himself and in his own very life; for to think freely from his own affection is the very life of man, and is himself.
"The spirit in this state thinks from his own very will, thus from his own very affection, or from his own very love; and in this case the thought makes one with the will, and one in such a manner that it scarcely appears that the spirit thinks, but that he wills. The case is nearly similar when he speaks yet with this difference, that he speaks with some degree of fear lest the thoughts of the will should go forth naked, since by civil life in the world this habit also had become of his will."—H. H., 502, 503.
29 (p. 66).—"All man's will and love remains with him after death (n. 470–484). He who wills and loves evil in the world, wills and loves evil in the other life, and then he no longer suffers himself to be withdrawn from it. Hence it is that the man who is in evil is tied to hell, and likewise is actually there as lo his spirit, and after death desires nothing more than to be where his own evil is; consequently it is man after death who casts himself into hell, and not the Lord. For no one comes into hell until he is in his own evil and in the falsities of evil, since it is not allowed any one there to have a divided mind, namely, to think and speak one thing and to will another. Every evil spirit must there think what is false derived from evil, and must speak from the falsities of evil; in both cases from the will, thus from his own love and its delight and pleasure; just as in the world when he thought in his spirit, that is, as he thought in himself when he thought from interior affection. The reason is that the will is the man himself, and not the thought, only so far as it partakes of the will, and the will is the very nature itself or disposition of the man; thus to be let into his will is to be let into his nature or disposition, and likewise into his life."—H. H., 547, 510.
30 (p. 66).—"Every one comes to his own society in which his spirit had been in the world; for every man as to his spirit is conjoined to some society, either infernal or heavenly, a wicked man to an infernal society, a good man to a heavenly society (see n. 438). The spirit is brought to that society successively, and at length enters it. An evil spirit when he is in the state of his interiors, is turned by degrees to his own society, and at length directly to it, before this state is ended ; and when this state is ended, then the evil spirit casts himself into the hell where his like are."—H. H., 510.
31 (p. 67).—"The Lord never acts contrary to order, because He Himself is Order. The divine truth proceeding from the Lord is what makes order, and divine truths are the laws of order, according to which the Lord leads man. For this reason to save man by immediate mercy is contrary to divine order, and what is contrary to divine order is contrary to the Divine. Divine order is heaven with man, which order man had perverted with himself by a life contrary to the laws of order, which are divine truths. Into that order man is brought back by the Lord out of pure mercy, by means of the laws of order; and so far as he is brought back, so far he receives heaven in himself, and he who receives heaven in himself, comes into heaven. Hence again it is evident that the divine mercy of the Lord is pure mercy, but not immediate mercy."—H. H., 523.
32 (p. 69).—"There is a connection of the natural world with the spiritual world, and this is why there is a correspondence of all things which are in the natural world with all things which are in the spiritual. According to this law of correspondence the Word was written in which all the words and senses of the words are correspondences, and thus contain a spiritual or internal sense, in which the angels are. For this reason, when man reads the Word and perceives it according to the sense of the letter, or the external sense, the angels perceive it according to the internal or spiritual sense; for all the thought of the angels is spiritual, whereas the thought of man is natural. These thoughts indeed appear diverse, but still they are one, because they correspond. . . . . The natural ideas of man thus pass into spiritual ideas with angels, without their knowing anything of the sense of the letter of the Word; as of a new heaven and a new earth, a new city of Jerusalem, its wall, the foundations of the wall, and the measures. Nevertheless the thoughts of angels make one with the thoughts of man, because they correspond. They make one almost like the words of a speaker, and the understanding of them by a hearer who docs not attend to the words, but only to the meaning. . . . . When, therefore, the angels think thus spiritually, and man thus naturally, they are conjoined almost like soul and body: the internal sense of the Word also is its soul, and the sense of the letter is its body. Such is the Word throughout: hence it is evident that it is a medium of the conjunction of heaven with man, and that its literal sense serves for a basis and foundation."—H. H., 303, 307.
33 (p. 69)—"In the natural world there are three degrees of ascent, and in the spiritual world there are three degrees of ascent. Man alone is a recipient of the life both of the three degrees of the natural world and of the three degrees of the spiritual world. From this it is that man can be elevated above nature, while the animal cannot. Man can think analytically and rationally of the civil and moral things that are within nature, also of the spiritual and celestial things that are above nature, yea, he can be so elevated into wisdom as even to see God."—D. L. W., 66.
34 (p. 69).—"An opinion has prevailed with some, that God turns away His face from man, rejects him from Himself, and casts him into hell, and that he is angry with him on account of evil; and with some it is supposed still further, that God punishes man and does evil to him. In this opinion they confirm themselves from the literal sense of the Word, where such things are said, not being aware that the spiritual sense of the Word, which explains the sense of the letter, is altogether different; and that hence the genuine doctrine of the church, which is from the spiritual sense of the Word, teaches otherwise, namely, that God never turns away His face from man and rejects him from Himself, that He does not cast any one into hell and that He is not angry with any one. Every one also whose mind is in a state of illustration when he reads the Word, perceives this to be the case, from the fact that God is good itself, love itself, and mercy itself; and that good itself cannot do evil to any one, also that love itself and mercy itself cannot reject man from itself, because it is contrary to the very essence of mercy and love, thus contrary to the Divine Itself. Wherefore they who think from an enlightened mind when they read the Word, clearly perceive that God never turns Himself away from man, that He deals with him from good, love, and mercy ; that is, that He wills his good, that He loves him, and that He is merciful to him. Hence also they see that the literal sense is spoken in accommodation to the apprehension of man, and according to his first and common ideas."—H. H., 545.
"When things that are contrary to the Divine are treated of in the Word, they cannot be presented otherwise than according to the appearance … for such as man is, so does the Lord appear to him."—Arcana Cælestia, 3425, 3605.
35 (p. 70).—"Now, times which are proper to nature in its world are in the spiritual world pure states, which appear progressive because angels and spirits are finite; from which it may be seen that in God they are not progressive because He is Infinite, and infinite things in Him are one (as has been shown above, n. 17–22). From this it follows that the Divine in all time is apart from time."—D. L. W., 75.
36 (p. 70).—"Because God is a Man, the whole angelic heaven in the aggregate resembles a single man, and is divided into regions and provinces according to the members, viscera, and organs of man. Thus there are societies of heaven which constitute the province of all things of the brain, of all things of the facial organs, and of all things of the viscera of the body; and these provinces are separated from each other, just as those organs are separated in man; moreover, the angels know in what province of man they are. The whole heaven has this resemblance to man, because God is a Man. God is also heaven, because the angels, who constitute heaven, are recipients of love and wisdom from the Lord, and recipients are images."—D. L. W., 288. (See also note 32.)
37 (p. 72).—"Visions are often spoken of which indeed are really seen, but in phantasy. The spirits which induce such phantasies work upon persons of weak minds, and who are easily credulous; such persons are visionaries, and the things which they see are illusions conjured up from outward objects, especially in obscure light. Visions caused by enthusiastic spirits are similar to these, but refer to subjects of belief."—Arcana, 1967–68.
"Genuine visions are the actual sight of things which exist in the other life, and are seen by the eyes of the spirit, not of the body."—Arcana, 1970.
38 (p. 72).—That angels are spirits and cannot see into the world except by some one as a medium whose interior senses are opened to perceive the things of the spiritual world.—See Arcana, 1880.
"Spirits of all kinds perceive the very thoughts of man: angelic spirits the interiors of thought; angels the causes and ends which are still more interior."—Arcana, 1931.
"The spirits attendant upon man perceive not the objects presented to the mans sight, or the words he hears, but the subjects of his thoughts."—Arcana, 6319.
39 (p. 73).—How little Kant was capable of making a true psychological estimate of Swedenborg's experience is abundantly shown in this single allusion which reveals the fact that either Kant was entirely ignorant of Swedenborg's public life, or else that he, like others since his time, shirked the difficult problem of reconciling Swedenborg's political activity as a trusted and highly valued member of the House of Nobles, and as an important contributor to the science of his time, with these charges of "foolishness" and "lack of this world's intelligence." The "Traume" was published in 1766. In 1760 Swedenborg had presented in the Diet of Sweden the following papers:
Memorial in favour of returning to pure metallic currency.
Appeal in favour of the Restoration of a Metallic Currency.
Additional Considerations with respect to the Course of Exchange.
Memorial to the Ring against the exportation of Copper.
Memorial declining to become a Commissioner on Exchange.
It is difficult to conceive that a man deserving to be characterised as "a fool on earth," and as "lacking in this world's intelligence" should have been invited by the Swedish House of Knights and Nobles to sit as a member of a private Commission on Exchange. The fact is also to be borne in mind that, at this date, Swedenborg's Arcana had not only been entirely published and circulated, but that his own authorship of the work, printed anonymously, was now publicly revealed. In the same year, 1761, in which he was writing several of his minor treatises, on the Spiritual World, and on the Sacred Scriptures, on Faith, and on the Last Judgment, he was engaged in a political controversy with Councillor Nordencranz in defence of Von Hoepken and the Swedish Government, and sent a Memorial to the Diet on The Maintenance of the Country and the Preservation of its Freedom (Documents I., 510–538). Swedenborg filled the office for many years of Assessor of the Royal College of Mines, was one of the Founders of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, was a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, and of the Society of Sciences at Upsala. Christian Wolf and foreign men of learning addressed him by letter, in order to obtain his ideas on subjects which they found it difficult to fathom. [See also Sir Samuel Sandel's Eulogy over Swedenborg in the House of Nobles, in the name of the Royal Academy of Sciences, October 7th, 1772.]
40 (p. 76).—Swedenborg states that the things recorded in his "Memorabilia" are not "visions" properly so called, but scenes beheld in the most perfect state of bodily wakefulness and which "I have now experienced for several years." Arcana, 1885. He describes two other kinds of vision which he rarely experienced, one as being "taken out of the body" or reduced to a certain state between sleeping and waking: during his continuance in this state he cannot but know that he is wide awake. This is such as is mentioned in Cor. xiii., 3. The other kind of vision is that which is called "being carried by the spirit into another place," I. Kings xviii. 12; II. Kings ii. 16; Acts viii., 39. The experience is described, Arcana, 1883–84. Of dreams Swedenborg says:
"Visions of the night are so called because they are obscure revelations. Revelations are made variously: 1, by Dreams; 2, by Visions of the Night; 3, by Visions of the Day; 4, by Speech which the man hears within him; 5, by Speech heard without by a visible angel; 6, by Speech heard without by an angel not visible.—Arcana, 6000.
41 (p. 77).—On the subjective origin of sight, as of all the senses, Swedenborg treats in the following numbers of the Arcana:—
"It is not the body that sees and otherwise sensates, but the spirit in the body; hence, when the body is put off by death, the spirit is in full enjoyment of its senses."—4622.
"The corporeal man as the receptacle of the sensitive consists of sensual faculties subject to the understanding and will. Sight is the principal of these, subject to the intellectual part; and hearing to the voluntary part; smell and taste conjoin both."—5077.
"The sensual faculty of sight has its life from the intellectual because the latter sees from the light of heaven."—5114.
"Divine Truth from the Lord is light, which light illumines the mind of man and gives him internal sight or understanding."—9399.
"What the will, or voluntary part of man, determines into form, appears to the sight in the intellectual part, which sight is thought."—9915.
42 (p. 79).—"The sight of the eye, strictly speaking, is nothing but the sight of the spirit produced outwards."—Arcana, 1806.
43 (p. 82).—"The five sensories of the body, by virtue of an influx from within, are sensible of the impressions which enter by influx from without; the influx from within is from the spiritual world, but the influx from without is from the natural. With these facts the laws inscribed on the nature of all things are in concert, and these laws are: 1. That nothing exists, subsists, is acted upon or moved by itself, but by some other being or agent; whence it follows that everything exists, subsists, is acted upon and moved by the First Being, who has no origin from another, but is in Himself the living force which is life. 2. That nothing can be acted upon or moved, unless it is intermediate between two forces, of which the one acts and the other re-acts; thus, unless one acts on one part, and one on the other; and, further, unless one acts from within, and the other from without. 3. And since these two forces, whilst they are at rest, produce an equilibrium, it follows that nothing can be acted upon or moved, unless it is in equilibrium, and that when it is acted upon, it is out of the equilibrium; and, further, that everything acted upon or moved seeks to return to an equilibrium. 4. That all activities are changes of state and variations of form, and that the latter are derived from the former. By state in man we mean his love; and by changes of state the affections of love; by form in him we mean his intelligence, and by variations of form, his thoughts; the latter also are from the former."—Ath. Cr., 45.
44 (p. 87).—The reality of heaven is deduced by Swedenborg not from the hopes of man, but from the laws of divine order.
"The laws of order are called the laws of the Divine Providence, and of these the natural mind can have no knowledge, unless it is enlightened. And because man has no knowledge of them, and thus forms his conclusions concerning the Divine Providence from contingencies in the world, and by these means falls into fallacies and thence into errors, from which he afterwards with difficulty extricates himself, they must therefore be brought to light. But before they are brought to light, it is of importance that it should be known, that the Divine Providence operates in all the several things which belong to man, even in the most minute of them all, for his eternal salvation; his salvation having been the end of the creation both of heaven and earth. For the end was, that out of the human race might be formed heaven, in which God might dwell, as in his own special abode, and therefore the salvation of man is the all in all of the Divine Providence. But the Divine Providence proceeds so secretly, that man scarcely sees a vestige of it, and yet it is active in the most minute particulars relating to him, from infancy to old age in the world, and afterwards to eternity; and in every one of them it is eternity which it regards. Because the divine wisdom in itself is nothing but an end, providence therefore acts from an end, in an end, and with reference to an end; the end being that man may become wisdom and love, and thus the dwelling-place and the image of the divine life."—Ath. Cr., 36.
45 (p. 88).—"There is a correspondence of the will and understanding with the heart and lungs, consequently a correspondence of all things of the mind with all things of the body.—This is new: it has hitherto been unknown because it has not been known what the spiritual is, and how it differs horn the natural; therefore it has not been known what correspondence is; for there is a correspondence between things spiritual and things natural, and by means of correspondence they are conjoined. It is said that heretofore there has been no knowledge of what the spiritual is, or of what its correspondence with the natural is, and therefore what correspondence is; yet these might have been known. Who does not know that affection and thought are spiritual, therefore that all things of affection and thought are spiritual? Who does not know that action and speech are natural, therefore that all things of action and speech are natural? Who does not know that affection and thought, which are spiritual, cause man to act and to speak? From this who may not see what correspondence is between things spiritual and things natural? Does not thought make the tongue speak, and affection together with thought make the body act? There are two distinct things: I can think without speaking, and I can will without acting; and the body, it is known, neither thinks nor wills, but thought falls into speech, and will descends into action."—D. L. W., 374.
46 (p. 88).—"The practical ability of the reason dependent on the will.—Every man is born into a capacity to understand truths to the inmost degree in which the angels of the third heaven are; for the human understanding, rising up by continuity around the two higher degrees, receives the light of their wisdom. Therefore man has the ability to become rational according to his elevation; if raised to the third degree he becomes rational from that degree, if raised to the second degree he becomes rational from that degree, if not raised he is rational in the first degree. It is said that he becomes rational from those degrees, because the natural degree is the general receptacle of their light. The reason why man does not become rational to the height that he might is, that love, which is of the will, cannot be raised in the same manner as wisdom, which is of the understanding. Love, which is of the will, is raised only by shunning evils as sins, and then by goods of charity, which are uses, which the man thereafter performs from the Lord. Consequently, when love, which is of the will, is not at the same time raised, wisdom, which is of the understanding, however it may have ascended, falls back again down to its own love. Therefore if man's love is not at the same time with his wisdom raised into the spiritual degree, he is rational only in the lowest degree."—D. L. W., 258.
47 (p. 90).—How far from being "done with" this subject of a Spiritual World Kant really was, appears from his choosing the subject of the Two Worlds as that of his Inaugural Dissertation in 1770, as well as from the Lectures on Metaphysics, where he dwells at length on the arguments for the existence of a spiritual world and on the nature of the life after death. See the Introductory Essay for the present work, p. 28.
48 (p. 93).—"A law of the Divine Providence is: That man should not be reformed by external means, but by internal; by external means are meant miracles and visions, fears and punishments; by internal, the truths and goods derived from the Word and the teaching of the church, and looking to the Lord. For these means enter by an internal way, and cast out the evils and falsities which reside within; but external means enter by an external way, and do not cast out the evils and falsities, but shut them in.—If man could have been reformed by miracles and visions, then all men throughout the whole world would be so. It is, therefore, a holy law of the Divine Providence that internal freedom should not in the least degree be violated; for by it the Lord enters with regard to man, even into the hell where he is, and by it He leads him there; and if man is willing to follow. He brings him out, and introduces him into heaven, there bringing him nearer and nearer to himself."—Ath. Cr., 53.
49 (p. 95).—A full account of all these clairvoyant experiences narrated of Swedenborg will be found in Tafel's Documents concerning Swedenborg, II., 613–692, under the heading, "Three remarkable facts."
50 (p. 101).—Kant, for reasons of his own, indulges in the pleasantry of characterising as "full of nonsense" and "void of the last drop of reason" the great work which he forthwith proceeds to subject to a careful analysis, resulting in conclusions so similar to those of speculative reason that he is compelled to admit the resemblance, even at the risk of the one falling or standing with the other. This affected ridicule was necessary to the carrying out of the purpose of the book itself, which was the discrediting of metaphysics as a source of knowledge. It is possible that he foresaw, in the course of his ingenious and daring essay, that the rationality of a spiritual world, such as Swedenborg described from experience, ex visis et auditis, might, after all, be turned by the reader to a corroboration of metaphysical doctrine rather than an argument against it, and that, therefore, unless he should undo his work and abandon his plan altogether there remained for him only one course, and that was to call Swedenborg's system "nonsense," while he treated it with the seriousness of the deepest rational and practical reflection.
How Kant's critique of Swcdenborg was regarded by his contemporaries may appear from the following letter of the Dutch banker-poet, John Chiistian Cuno (1708–1780, the David Paulus ab Indagine, author of a widely published Letter to Swedenborg), addressed to a friend in Hamburg, in 1771. In this letter Cuno says of Swedenborg:—
"I am quite willing to confess that I do not know what to make of him. He remains to me a riddle which I cannot solve. In 1766 a little work was published in Koenigsberg, by John James Kanter, bearing the title: 'Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, explained by Dreams of Metaphysics.' The author is anonymous. In volume IV. of the 'Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek,' which is published in Berlin, (p. 281), he is called I. Kant.[1] But this is a satire which is directed more against the learned in general, than against the spirit-seers in particular.
51 (p. 104).—"The man of the church at this day knows scarcely anything about heaven and hell, nor about his life after death, although they are all described in the Word; yea, also many who were born within the church deny those things, saying in their heart, who has come thence and told us? Lest therefore such denial, which reigns especially with those who have much of the wisdom of the world, should also infect and corrupt the simple in heart and the simple in faith, it has been given me to be together with angels, and to speak with them as man with man, and also to see the things which are in the heavens and in the hells, and this during thirteen years; and now to describe them from things seen and heard, hoping that thus ignorance may be enlightened and incredulity dissipated. That at this day such immediate revelation exists, is because this is that which is meant by the coming of the Lord."—Introduction to H. H.
52 (p. 104).—"Man has an external and an internal memory, an external memory which is of his natural man, and an internal which is of his spiritual man; and every thing which man has thought, willed, spoken, done, also which he has heard and seen, is inscribed on his internal or spiritual memory; and the things which are there are never erased, since they are inscribed at the same time on the spirit itself, and on the members of its body, as was said above; and thus the spirit is formed according to the thoughts and acts of its will. I know that these things appear as paradoxes, and consequently are scarcely believed, but still they are true. Let not man therefore believe that any thing which one has thought in himself, and has done in secret, is concealed after death; but let him believe that each and all things then appear as in clear day.
"Although the external or natural memory is in man after death, still the merely natural things which are therein are not reproduced in the other life, but the spiritual things which are adjoined to the natural things by correspondences; which things, nevertheless, when they are presented to the sight, appear in a form altogether like that in the natural world; for all things which appear in the heavens, appear in like manner as in the world, though in their essence they are not natural, but spiritual, as may be seen shown in the chapter on representatives and appearances in heaven (n. 170–175). But the external or natural memory, as to those things in it that are derived from what is material, and from time and space, and from all other things proper to nature, does not serve the spirit for that use in which it had served it in the world; for man in the world, when he thought from the external sensual, and not at the same time from the internal sensual, or the intellectual, thought naturally and not spiritually. Yet in the other life, when the spirit is in the spiritual world, he does not think naturally, but spiritually, and to think spiritually is to think intellectually or rationally. Hence it is that the external or natural memory, as to those things which are material, is then quiescent, and those things only come into use which man has imbibed in the world by means of material things, and has made rational."—H. H., 463, 464.
53 (p. 105).—"The speech of an angel or a spirit with man is heard as sonorously as the speech of a man with a man; yet it is not heard by others who stand near, but by himself alone; the reason is, because the speech of an angel or spirit flows first into the man's thought, and by an internal way into his organ of hearing, and thus moves that from within; but the speech of man with man flows first into the air, and by an external way into his organ of hearing, and moves it from without. Hence it is evident that the speech of an angel and of a spirit with man is heard in man, and, because it equally moves the organs of hearing, that it is also equally sonorous."—H. H., 248.
54 (p. 105).—See Note 38.
Compare Goethe's Faust, Act V., "Pater Seraphicus," to the "Seligen Knaben:"
"Steigt herab in meine Augen
Welt—und erdgemass Organ!
Konnt sie als die euren brauchen:
Schaut euch diese Gegend an!"
55 (p. 106).—"Man has no other knowledge than that he thinks and wills from himself, though he does not do so in the smallest degree; for thought and will cannot be so united to the recipient as to be his own, precisely as the light and heat of the sun cannot be united to a subject of the earth, and become, like it, material. But the light and heat of life affect and fill the recipient, precisely according to the quality of the acknowledgment that they are not his own, but the Lord's; and the quality of the acknowledgment is precisely according to the quality of the love in acting according to the Commandments, which are uses."—Ath. Cr., 39.
56 (p. 106).—"Although all things in heaven appear in place and in space just as in the world, still the angels have no notion and idea of place and space. All progressions in the spiritual world are made by changes of the state of the interiors, so that progressions are nothing else than changes of state. From these things it may be seen that, although in heaven there are spaces as in the world, still nothing there is estimated according to spaces, but according to states; consequently that spaces cannot there be measured as in the world, but only he seen from the state, and according to the state of the interiors of the angels."—H. H., 191, 192, 198.
57 (p. 107).—"That there are many earths, and men upon them, and spirits and angels from them, is very well known in the other life; for it is granted to every one there who from the love of truth and thence of use desires it, to speak with spirits of other earths, and to be confirmed thereby in regard to a plurality of worlds, and to be informed that the human race is not only from one earth, but from innumerable ones."—H. H., 417.
58 (p. 108).—"It is well known that the will and understanding rule the body at pleasure, for what the understanding thinks, the mouth speaks; and what the will wills, the body does. From this it is plain that the body is a form corresponding to the understanding and will. And because form also is predicated of understanding and will, it is plain that the form of the body corresponds to the form of the understanding and will. But this is not the place to describe the nature of these respective forms. In each form there are things innumerable; and these, on either side, act as one, because they mutually correspond. It is from this that the mind (that is, the will and understanding) rules the body at its beck, thus as entirely as it rules its own self. From all this it follows that the interiors of the mind act as one with the interiors of the body, and the exteriors of the mind with the exteriors of the body."—D. L. W., 136.
59 (p. 108).—"All things which exist in nature, from the least to the greatest, are correspondences. That they are correspondences is because the natural world, with all things in it, exists and subsists from the spiritual world, and both from the Divine. It is said that it also subsists, because everything subsists from that from which it exists, for subsistence is perpetual existence; and because not anything can subsist from itself, but from something prior to itself, thus from the First; from whom therefore if it be separated, it utterly perishes and vanishes.
"All that is correspondent which in nature exists and subsists from divine order. The divine good, which proceeds from the Lord, makes divine order; it begins from Him, proceeds from Him through the heavens successively into the world, and is terminated there in ultimates. The things which are according to order there are correspondences; and all things are according to order there which are good and perfect for use, for every good is good according to use; form has relation to truth, because truth is the form of good. Thence it is that all things which are in the whole world, and in the nature of the world, relate to good and truth."—H. H., 106, 107.
60 (p. 114).—"In each single word of the Word there is a spiritual meaning from the Divine wisdom, and a celestial from the Divine love; and these are perceived by angels when the Word is devoutly read by man."—D. L. W., 280.
"I have sometimes spoken with angels about the Word, and said that it is despised by some on account of its simple style, and that nothing at all is known about its internal sense, and that for this reason it is not believed that so much wisdom lies concealed in it. The angels said that the style of the Word, though it appears simple in the sense of the letter, is still such that nothing can be at all compared to it in excellence, because divine wisdom lies concealed, not only in the entire sense, but also in each word; and that this wisdom shines forth in heaven; they wished to have it said that it is the light of heaven, because it is divine truth, for divine truth in heaven shines (see above, n. 132). They said also that without such a Word there would be no light of heaven with the men of our earth, thus neither would there be conjunction of heaven with them; for as far as the light of heaven is present with man, so far there is conjunction, and so far likewise divine truth is revealed to him by the Word. The reason why man docs not know that this conjunction is by the spiritual sense of the Word corresponding to its natural sense, is because the man of this earth does not know anything about the spiritual thought and speech of the angels, and that it is different from the natural thought and speech of men; and unless he knows this, he cannot at all know what the internal sense is, and that by it such conjunction can be given. They said also that if man knew that there is such a sense, and should think from a knowledge of it when he reads the Word, he would come into interior wisdom, and would be still more conjoined with heaven, since by it he would enter into ideas similar to those of the angels."—H. H., 310.
61 (p. 110).—"That heaven in the whole complex resembles one man, is an arcanum not yet known in the world; but in the heavens it is very well known. To know that, and the specific and particular things concerning it, is the chief of the intelligence of the angels there: on that also depend many more things, which, without that as their common principle, would not enter distinctly and clearly into the ideas of their mind. Because they know that all the heavens, together with their societies, resemble one man, therefore also they call heaven The Greatest and the Divine Man; Divine from this, that the Divine of the Lord makes heaven."—H. H., 59. (Compare St. John xvii. 21; Romans xii. 4.)
See also the full explanation of the proposition: "The whole heaven is the Grand Man (Maximus Homo), and is called the Grand Man because it corresponds to the Lord's Divine Human: for the Lord is the only Man."—In Arcana Cæl., 4219, 4224.
THE LIFE THAT LEADS TO HEAVEN.
62 (p. 121).—"Some people believe that to live the life which leads to heaven, which is called spiritual life, is difficult, because they have been told that man must renounce the world and deprive himself of the lusts which are called lusts of the body and the flesh, and that he must live spiritually. And these things they do not understand otherwise than that they must reject worldly things, which consist chiefly in riches and honours; that they must walk continually in pious meditation about God, about salvation, and about eternal life; and that they must spend their life in prayers and in reading the Word and pious books. This they esteem to be renouncing the world, and living in the spirit and not in the flesh. But that the case is altogether otherwise it has been given me to know by much experience, and from conversation with the angels; and indeed that they who renounce the world and live in the spirit in this manner, procure to themselves a sorrowful life, which is not receptive of heavenly joy; for with every one his own life remains. But to the intent that man may receive the life of heaven, it is quite necessary that he live in the world and engage in its business and employments, and that he then by moral and civil life receive spiritual life; and that spiritual life cannot otherwise be formed with man, or his spirit prepared for heaven. For to live internal life and not external at the same time, is like dwellinq in a house which has no foundation, which gradually either sinks, or becomes full of chinks and breaches, or totters till it falls."—H. H., 528.
THE MOTIVES OF SPIRITUAL LIVING.
"If the life of man be viewed and explored by rational intuition, it is discovered to be threefold, namely, spiritual life, moral life, and civil life, and those lives are distinct from each other. The spiritual man believes in the Divine, and he acts sincerely and justly, not merely because it is according to civil and moral laws, but also because it is according to divine laws. For the spiritual man, inasmuch as he thinks about divine things when he acts, communicates with the angels of heaven, and as far as he does this, he is conjoined with them, and thus his internal man is opened, which viewed in itself is a spiritual man. When man is of such a character, he is then adopted and led by the Lord while he himself is not aware of it, and then in doing acts of sincerity and justice which are of moral and civil life, he does them from a spiritual origin; and to do what is sincere and just from a spiritual origin, is to do it from sincerity and justice itself, or to do it from the heart. His justice and sincerity in the external form appear altogether like the justice and sincerity with natural men, even with evil and infernal men; but in the internal form they are altogether dissimilar. For evil men act justly and sincerely merely for the sake of themselves and the world; and therefore if they did not fear the law and its penalties, also the loss of reputation, of honour, of gain, and of life, they would act altogether insincerely and unjustly, inasmuch as they neither fear God nor any divine law, and are not restrained by any internal bond. They would therefore in such case to the utmost of their power defraud, plunder, and spoil others, and this from delight. … Although such a person does not commit adultery, still because he believes it allowable, he is perpetually an adulterer; for as far as he can, and as often as it is permitted, he commits it. Although he does not steal, yet inasmuch as he covets the goods of others, and regards fraud and evil arts as not contrary to law, in intent he is continually acting the thief. The case is similar as to the precepts of moral life, which teach not to bear false witness and not to covet the goods of others. Such is the character of every man who denies the Divine, and who has not a conscience grounded in religion. That such is his proper character appears manifestly from similar spirits in the other life, when, on the removal of things external, they are let into their internals; then, inasmuch as they are separated from heaven, they act in unity with hell, and so are consociated with those who are in hell. It is otherwise with those who have in heart acknowledged the Divine, and in the acts of their lives have had respect to divine laws, and have acted according to the three first precepts of the decalogue equally as according to the rest. When these, on the removal of things external, are let into their internals, they are wiser than when in the world ; for when they come into their internals it is like coming from shade into light, from ignorance into wisdom, and from a sorrowful life into a blessed one, inasmuch as they are in the Divine, thus in heaven. These things are said to the intent that the quality of the one and of the other may be known, though both have lived a similar external life."—H. H., 528, 531.
Notes
[edit]- ↑ The editor of the "Sammlung einiger Nachrichten," &c., adds here: "This is quite right. His name is Immanuel Kant, and last year, viz., 1770, he became professor of logic and mataphysics in Koenigsberg." In the third volume of the Griefswalde Neue Kritische Nachrichten (p. 257) we read as follows:
"The author of this work, who is said to be a Mr. Kant, M.A., of Koenigsberg, had his attention directed to the writings of Swedenborg and his phenomena, and he was induced to institute investigations, the results of which he now communicates to the world. His work consists of two parts, a dogmatic and an historical. In the latter he relates the principal phenomena of Mr. Swedenborg, most of which are known to our readers, and which perhaps might be augmented by them with additional ones; and afterwards he gives extracts of the peculiar sentiments of the author. In reality, however, he considers simply "the things heard and seen," without taking into consideration the Arcana Cælestia, a work tilling eight quarto volumes, and in which is contained an entire hermeneutical and theological system. We leave to Mr. Kant to answer for his judgment, which sometimes is very severe and bitter."—Tafel's Documents II., 485.