Table of Contents

i. [Introduction] §§1-2

I. There are two worlds: the spiritual world, inhabited by spirits and angels, and the natural world, inhabited by men. §3

II. The spiritual world first existed and continually subsists from its own sun; and the natural world from its own sun. §4

III. The sun of the spiritual world is pure love from Jehovah God, who is in the midst of it. §5

IV. From that sun proceed heat and light; the heat proceeding from it is in its essence love, and the light from it is in its essence wisdom. §6

V. Both that heat and that light flow into man: the heat into his will, where it produces the good of love; and the light into his understanding, where it produces the truth of wisdom. §7

VI. Those two, heat and light, or love and wisdom, flow conjointly from God into the soul of man; and through this into his mind, its affections and thoughts; and from these into the senses, speech, and actions of the body. §8

VII. VII. The sun of the natural world is pure fire; and the world of nature first existed and continually subsists by means of this sun. §9

VIII. Therefore everything which proceeds from this sun, regarded in itself, is dead. §10

IX. That which is spiritual clothes itself with that which is natural, as a man clothes himself with a garment. §11

X. Spiritual things, thus clothed in a man, enable him to live as a rational and moral man, thus as a spiritually natural man. §12

XI. The reception of that influx is according to the state of love and wisdom with man. §13

XII. The understanding in a man can be raised into the light, that is, into the wisdom in which are the angels of heaven, according to the cultivation of his reason; and his will can be raised in like manner into the heat of heaven, that is, into love, according to the deeds of his life; but the love of the will is not raised, except so far as the man wills and does those things which the wisdom of the understanding teaches. §14

XIII. It is altogether otherwise with beasts. §15

XIV. There are three degrees in the spiritual world, and three degrees in the natural world, hitherto unknown, according to which all influx takes place. §16

XV. Ends are in the first degree, causes in the second, and effects in the third. §17

XVI. Hence it is evident what is the nature of spiritual influx from its origin to its effects. §§18-20

11. -IX-. That which is spiritual clothes itself with that which is natural, as a man clothes himself with a garment.

It is well known that both an active and a passive are necessary to every operation, and that nothing can be produced from an active alone, and nothing from a passive alone. It is similar with what is spiritual and what is natural: what is spiritual, as a living force, being active, and what is natural, as a dead force, being passive. Hence it follows that whatever existed in this solar world from the beginning, and whatever comes into existence from moment to moment since, exists from what is spiritual by means of what is natural; and this not only in regard to the subjects of the animal kingdom, but also to those of the vegetable kingdom.

[2] Another similar fact is also known, namely, that in every effect which is produced there are both a principal and an instrumental cause, and that these two, when anything is done, appear as one, although they are distinctly two; hence it is one of the laws of wisdom, that the principal cause and the instrumental cause make together one cause; so also do what is spiritual and what is natural. The reason that in producing effects these two appear as one is that the spiritual is within the natural, as a fibre is within a muscle and blood within the arteries, or as thought is inwardly in speech and affection in the tones of the voice; and it causes itself to be felt by means of the natural. From these considerations though thus far only indistinctly, as through a lattice it appears that what is spiritual clothes itself with what is natural, as a man clothes himself with a garment.

[3] The organic body with which the soul clothes itself is here compared with a garment, because it invests the soul; and the soul also withdraws itself from it, and casts it off as old clothing, when it departs by death from the natural into its own spiritual world. Moreover, the body grows old like a garment, but not the soul; because this is a spiritual substance, which has nothing in common with the changes of nature, which advance from their beginnings to their ends, and are terminated at stated times.

[4] Those who do not consider the body as a vesture or covering of the soul, which in itself is dead, and only adapted to receive the living forces flowing into it through the soul from God, cannot avoid concluding from fallacies that the soul lives of itself, and the body of itself, and that there is, between their respective lives, a PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY. They likewise infer either that the life of the soul flows into the life of the body, or the life of the body into the life of the soul, whence they conceive INFLUX to be either SPIRITUAL or NATURAL: when, nevertheless, it is a truth attested by every object in creation that what is posterior does not act from itself, but from something prior, from which it proceeded; thus that neither does this act from itself, but from something still prior; and thus that nothing acts except from a First, which does act from itself, thus from God. Besides, there is only one life, and this is not capable of being created, but is eminently capable of flowing into forms organically adapted to its reception: all things in the created universe, in general and in particular, are such forms.

[5] It is believed by many that the soul is life, and thus that a man, since he lives from his soul, lives from his own life, thus of himself, consequently not by an influx of life from God. But such persons cannot avoid tying a sort of Gordian knot of fallacies, in which they entangle all the judgments of their mind till nothing but insanity in regard to spiritual things is the result; or they construct a maze, from which the mind can never, by any clue of reason, retrace its way and extricate itself. They also actually let themselves down, as it were, into caverns underground, where they dwell in eternal darkness.

[6] For from such a belief proceed innumerable fallacies, each of which is horrible: as that God has transfused and transcribed Himself into men, whence every man is a sort of deity that lives of himself, and thus that he does good and is wise from himself; likewise, that he possesses faith and charity in himself, and thus derives them from himself, and not from God; besides other monstrous sentiments, such as prevail with those in hell, who, when they were in the world, believed nature to live or to produce life by its own activity. When these look towards heaven, its light appears to them as mere thick darkness.

[7] I once heard from heaven the voice of some one saying that if a spark of life in man were his own, and not of God in him, there would be no heaven nor anything that exists there; whence also there would be no church on earth, and consequently no life eternal.

For further particulars relating to this subject, the memorable relation in the work on Conjugial Love 132-136, ¹ may be consulted.

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9. VII. The sun of the natural world is pure fire; and the world of nature first existed and continually subsists by means of this sun

That nature and its world — by which we mean the atmospheres and the earths which are called planets, among which is the terraqueous globe on which we dwell, together with all the productions, in general and in particular, which annually adorn its surface subsist solely from the sun, which constitutes their centre, and which, by the rays of its light and the modifications of its heat, is everywhere present, everyone knows for certain, from his own experience, from the testimony of the senses, and from the writings which treat of the way in which the world has been peopled. As, therefore, perpetual subsistence is from this source, reason may also conclude with certainty that existence is likewise from the same; for perpetually to subsist is perpetually to exist as a thing first existed. Hence it follows that the natural world was created by Jehovah God by means of this sun as a secondary cause.

[2] That there are spiritual things and natural things, entirely distinct from each other, and that the origin and support of spiritual things are from a sun which is pure love, in the midst of which is Jehovah God, the Creator and Upholder of the universe, has been demonstrated before; but that the origin and support of natural things are a sun which is pure fire, and that the latter is derived from the former, and both from God, follows of itself, as what is posterior follows from what is prior, and what is prior from The First.

[3] That the sun of nature and its worlds is pure fire, all its effects demonstrate: as the concentration of its rays into a focus by the art of optics, from which proceeds violently burning fire and also flame; the nature of its heat, which is similar to heat from elementary fire; the graduation of that heat according to its angle of incidence, whence proceed the varieties of climate, and also the four seasons of the year; besides many other facts, from which the rational faculty, by means of the senses of the body, may confirm the truth that the sun of the natural world is mere fire, and also that it is fire in its utmost purity.

[4] Those who know nothing concerning the origin of spiritual things from their own sun, but are only acquainted with the origin of natural things from theirs, can scarcely avoid confounding spiritual and natural things together, and concluding, through the fallacies of the senses and of the rational faculty derived from them, that spiritual things are nothing but pure natural things, and that from the activity of these latter, excited by heat and light, arise wisdom and love. These persons, since they see nothing else with their eyes, and smell nothing else with their nostrils, and breathe nothing else through their lungs but nature, ascribe to it all things rational also; and thus they imbibe what is natural as a sponge sucks up water. Such persons may be compared to charioteers who yoke the team of horses behind the carriage, and not before it.

[5] The case is otherwise with those who distinguish between things spiritual and natural, and deduce the latter from the former. These also perceive the influx of the soul into the body; they perceive that it is spiritual, and that natural things, which are those of the body, serve the soul for vehicles and mediums, by which to produce its effects in the natural world. If you conclude otherwise you may be likened to a crayfish, which assists its progress in walking with its tail, and draws its eyes backward at every step; and your rational sight may be compared to the sight of the eyes of Argus in the back of his head, when those in his forehead were asleep. Such persons also believe themselves to be Arguses in reasoning; for they say, 'Who does not see that the origin of the universe is from nature? And what then is God but the inmost extension of nature?' and make similar irrational observations, of which they boast more than wise men do of their rational sentiments.