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

15. XIII. It is altogether otherwise with beasts.

Those who judge from the mere appearance presented to the senses of the body conclude that beasts have will and understanding just in the same manner as men, and hence that the only distinction consists in a man's being able to speak, and thus to utter the things which he thinks and desires, while beasts can only express them by sounds. Beasts, however, have not will and understanding, but only a resemblance of each, which the learned call an analogue.

[2] A man is a man, because his understanding can be raised above the desires of his will, and thus, from above can know and see them, and also govern them; but a beast is a beast, because its desires impel it to do whatever it does. A man is thus a man from the fact that his will is under obedience to his understanding; but a beast is a beast from the circumstance that its understanding is under obedience to its will. From these considerations this conclusion follows: that a man's understanding is alive, and thence a true understanding, because it receives the light flowing in from heaven, and takes possession of it and regards it as its own, and thinks from it analytically with all variety, altogether as if from itself; and that a man's will is alive, and is thence truly will, because it receives the inflowing love of heaven, and acts from it as if from itself; but that the contrary is the case with beasts.

[3] Therefore those who think from the lusts of the will are compared to beasts, and likewise, in the spiritual world, appear at a distance as beasts; they also act like beasts, with only this difference, that they are able to act otherwise if they wish. Those, on the other hand, who restrain the lusts of their will by means of the understanding, and thence act rationally and wisely, appear in the spiritual world as men, and are angels of heaven.

[4] In a word, the will and the understanding in beasts always work together; and because the will in itself is blind, being a thing of heat and not of light, it makes the understanding blind also. Hence a beast does not know and understand its own actions; yet it acts, notwithstanding, for it acts by an influx from the spiritual world, and such action is instinct.

[5] It is supposed that a beast thinks from the understanding what to do; but it does not in the least: it is induced to act solely from the natural love which is in it from creation, with the assistance of the senses of its body. The reason that a man thinks and speaks is simply that his understanding is capable of being separated from his will, and of being raised even into the light of heaven; for the understanding thinks, and the thought speaks.

[6] The reason why beasts act according to the laws of order inscribed on their nature, and some of them (differently from many men) in, as it were, a moral and rational manner, is that their understanding is in blind obedience to the desires of their will, and thence they have not been able to pervert those desires by depraved reasonings, as men do. It is to be observed that by the will and understanding of beasts in the foregoing statements we mean a certain resemblance and analogue of those faculties. The analogues are called by the names of those faculties on account of the appearance.

[7] The life of a beast may be compared with a sleep-walker, who walks and acts by virtue of the will while the understanding sleeps; and also with a blind man, who passes through the streets with a dog leading him; as likewise with an idiot, who from custom and the habit thence acquired does his work according to rules. It may be similarly compared with a person devoid of memory, and thence deprived of understanding, who still knows or learns how to clothe himself, to eat the food which he prefers, to love the sex, to walk the streets from house to house, and to do such things as soothe the senses and indulge the flesh, by the allurements and pleasures of which things he is drawn along, though he does not think, and therefore cannot speak.

[8] From these considerations it is evident how much those are mistaken who believe that beasts enjoy rationality, and that they are only distinguished from men by their outward form, and by their inability to express by speech the rational things which they conceal within; from which fallacies many even conclude that if a man lives after death, a beast will live also; and, conversely, that if a beast does not live after death, neither will a man; besides other fancies arising from ignorance in regard to the will and understanding, and also concerning degrees, by means of which, as by a flight of stairs, the mind of a man mounts up to heaven.

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.