the man, but only an instrument for the use of his spirit.
But confirmations from experience are preferable, because the deductions of reason are not comprehended by many, and because they who have confirmed themselves in the contrary opinion, turn them into matters of doubt by reasonings drawn from the fallacies of the senses. It is usual for those who have confirmed themselves in the contrary opinion, to think that beasts live and feel the same as man, and thus that they, too, have a spiritual nature like that of man; and yet that dies with the body. But the spiritual of beasts is not the same as the spiritual of man.
I will here relate a certain arcanum concerning the angels of the three heavens, which has never before entered the mind of any one, because no one has hitherto understood the subject of degrees. The arcanum is this: that with every angel, and also with every man, there is an inmost or supreme degree, or an inmost or supreme something, into which the Divine of the Lord first or proximately flows, and from which it arranges the other interior things which succeed according to the degrees of order with the angel or man. This inmost or supreme [degree] may be called the Lord's entrance to angels and men, and his veriest dwelling-place with them. By virtue of this supreme or inmost, man is man, and is distinguished from brute animals; for these do not possess it.
