That love in its essence is heat, is evident from the fact that the mind, and thence the body, becomes warm from love and according to its degree and quality; and man experiences this alike in winter as in summer. The heating of the blood is a further confirmation of the same truth.
That natural heat which exists from the sun of the world, serves spiritual heat for a receptacle, is manifest from the heat of the body, which is produced by the heat of its spirit and supplies the place thereof in the body. But it is more strikingly evident from the effect of the vernal and summer heat upon animals of every kind, which then every year renew their loves. Not that the latter heat produces this effect, but it disposes their bodies to receive the heat which also flows into them from the spiritual world; for the spiritual world flows into the natural as cause into effect.
Whoever imagines that natural heat produces their loves, is much deceived; for there is an influx of the spiritual world into the natural, and not of the natural world into the spiritual; and all love is spiritual, since it belongs to the life itself.
He, likewise, who imagines that any thing exists in the natural world without the influx of the spiritual world, is equally deceived; for what is natural exists and subsists only from what is spiritual. And the subjects of the vegetable kingdom also derive their germinations from influx out of that world. The
