On The WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD

On The
WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD
Treating Of The Birth Of The Earth, Of Paradise, And Of Living Creatures, Also Of The Nativity, The Infancy, And The Love The First Begotten, Or Adam

Emanuel Swedenborg

This work was published by the Author in 1745, two years after the opening of his Spiritual Light; but it appears to have been written at an earlier period. The first edition of the English translation was printed at Manchester in 1816; the second at London in 1828. The notes are by the Author, except those which are subscribed Tr., which were furnished by the translator.

ADVERTISEMENT.

As the Author, in the following work, makes frequent references to ancient mythology, and on several occasions adopts its terms, as well calculated, by reason of that interior wisdom in which they were grounded, to convey his own ideas, it is thought proper to prefix here an explication of those terms, which otherwise, to the unlearned reader, at least, must of necessity appear obscure and unintelligible. The following alphabetical Glossary is accordingly drawn, up by the Translator.

Aganippe — a famous well or spring in Bseotia, which rose out of Mount Helicon, and is hence applied by our Author to denote intelligence, while its nymphs represent the affections of such intelligence.

Apollinary— sports so called in honor of Apolio, and of his victory over the serpent Pytho, and hence applied by our Author to denote the sports of folly or- insanity in the human mind, instituted in honor of the supposed victory which it gains over wisdom and intelligence.

Cerberus — a dog with three heads and as many necks, which, according to ancient mythology, was the keeper of Pluto’s palace in hell, hence applied by our Author to represent the prince of darkness, and to express the terrible form under which he appears.

Erebus and Orc us —? ancient names given to the infernal abodes.

Erichtons —the word may be applied either as derived from Erichtho, a noted enchantress, or from Erichthonious, the fourth king of Athens, who is said to have had the feet of a dragon, and who took his name from contention.

Gorgons—the three daughters of Phorcus and Cetus, who are said to have turned men into stones by their aspect only, and had dangling vipers instead of hair, whence they are applied by our Author to denote the terrible forms and operations of the evil affections.

Helicon — a hill of Basotia, consecrated by the ancients to Apollo and the Muses, and hence applied by our Author to denote the abode of the sciences and intelligences in the human mind, which, according to the wisdom of the ancients, were personified under the names of Apollo and the Muses, Apollo representing their king, and the Muses representing the sciences and intelligences over which he presided.

Medusean— from Medusa, the daughter of Phorcus, whose hair is said to have been changed by Minerva into snakes, whence the term is applied by our Author to figure again the terrible forms of the evil affections.

Morpheus —the supposed god of sleep and dreams.

Musjea and Athenjea — buildings consecrated by the ancients the Muses and Minerva or Athjena.

Olympus— a hill between Thessaly and Macedon, so high that it is said no bird flieth to the top, nor clouds are seen above it. Hence it was applied by the ancients to denote the habitation of the gods, and is a term adopted by our Author to figure the interior abode of the celestial wisdoms in man.

Pallas — according to the ancients, she was the Goddess of Wisdom, sometimes called Minerva and .4th ana.

Parnassus — a mountain of Phocis, consecrated also by the ancients to the Muses and their king, and hence again applied by our Author, to denote the abode of the sciencesand intelligences in man.

Pegassus — a supposed ivingedhorse, under which emblem the ancients figured the human intellect, and the power which it possesses of elevating itself above earthly things to the contemplation of heavenly things, in which sense it is applied by our Author.

Python — a serpent supposed to be shot to death by Apollo, in memory of which the Pythian or Apollinary games were instituted ; the Author’s application of which may be seen under the word Apollinary above explained.

Styx — a poetical infernal lake, which had its name from a poisonous lake of Arcadia.

Tartarus— the deepest part of the infernal regions according to the poets.

Venus — the supposed goddess of Love and Beauty.

Vertumnus — a god worshipped by the Romans under several shapes, because he was supposed to be the god of Change, and to be graceful under every form.

Vesta and Vestal — the goddess of Fire among the ancients, from whom the Vestal Virgins derived their name, who were appointed to watch over the sacred fire in their temples.

INTRODUCTION.

1. Walking once alone in a pleasant grove, for the sake of composing my thoughts, and observing that the trees were shedding their foliage, and that the falling leaves were flying in all directions, (for autumn at that time took its turn in the revolution of the year, and dispersed the decorations of summer,) from being sad I became serious, because I recollected the gratifications which that grove, from the beginning of spring even to this season, had communicated, and so often diffused throughout my whole mind : but on seeing this change of scene, I began to revolve on the vicissitudes of times; and it occurred to me whether all things relating to time do not also pass through similar vicissitudes, viz. whether this is not the case, not only with forests, but also with our lives and ages; for it is evident that they, in like manner, commencing from a kind of spring and blossom, and passing through their summer, sink rapidly into their old age, the image of autumn. Nor is this the case only with the periods of men’s individual life, but also with the ages or periods of the world’s existence, that is, with the general lives of societies, which from their infancy, integrity, and innocence, were formerly called gold and silver ages, and which, it is now believed, are about to be succeeded by the last or iron ages, which in their turn will shortly moulder away into rust or the dust of clay.

2. For the ancient wise men, whose minds were in a sort of removal from their bodies, and were thus nearer to heaven, in applying themselves most intently to investigate the interior secrets of nature, discovered clearly in the revolutions of their own times, that ages more distinguished than their own had preceded, and that in the beginning of creation, justice and purity, with their attendant virtues, ruled the sceptre of the kingdoms of the world; wherefore they taught posterity to believe, that their deities, descending at that time from their astral abodes upon earth, conso- ciated with mankind in all the friendship of life, so that heaven itself, as it were, descended from on high to these lower regions, and poured forth its superior delights upon the inhabitants of air, or of its ultimate theatre of operation : in compliment to these deities, these times were called Saturnian and the golden age. The earth also itself they conceived to be adorned with the most delightful shrubberies and orchards self-cultivated, and they represented it as entirely converted into a sort of continual garden or Paradise; yea, they contracted the four seasons of the year into one, and this they concluded to be a perpetual spring, which breathed its zephyrs continually, so that while it produced a temperature of the atmosphere, filled and refreshed the minds of the inhabitants also with its blandishments. With such introductory scenery the ancient Sophi opened the theatre of the world which we behold, doubtless because in singular its sports, or offspring and products, both living and dead, they contemplated an express image of such order: For there is nothing but what commences its existence from its spring and blossom, and from its infancy and innocence; for particular representations are so many mirrors of things in general, and general representations are so many mirrors of things in particular, which have their allotted places under these general things : from the persuasion wrought by this perpetual authority of nature, they conceived, in looking back to former times, that a similar state of spring and of infancy existed in their beginning. Let us also contemplate the face of the universe in the mirrors presented by the singular things of which it is composed, and from them let us unfold the stated circumstances of times and of ages. Nevertheless, without the favor and influence of the Supreme Deity, from whom, as from the only fountain and highest sun of wisdom, all truths flow down as rays into our understandings, inquiry would be vain: wherefore, let us with adoration supplicate his presence and his favor.

WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD.

CHAPTER I.

.SECTION FIRST.

CONCERNING THE BIRTH OF THE EARTH.

3. Our earthly globe, as a planet, revolves every year round about the sun, the centre of this universe, and marks the dimensions of its gyration by the stars of the zodiac through which it passes: the time of its circuit, or its return to the same point of its circle, is called its year. While it performs this its gyration or year, it is turned aside, a little obliquely towards the constellation of the seven stars, and downwards in opposition to them, from the great equinoctial circle, and thus in every its least progress, wheresoever it is, it beholds the sun under a varied aspect, whence comes its four seasons of the year, viz. spring, summer, autumn, and winter. In this its circumvolution, it turns like a wheel about its axis, which runs from pole to pole through the middle equinoctial circle or equator, and by these revolutions it divides the circumference through which it runs into parts or degrees, which are called the days of its year. The effect of each of these rotations is, that the sun rises, and from rising gains a meridian altitude, and thence declines, and at length sets and is hidden: hence again come the four times of every day, called morning, mid-day, evening, and night, together with their hours, which form, as it were, a ring about this

day, and measure the times of the seasons of the year. The four intervals of every day represent themselves in the four intervals of the whole year, as lesser effigies in greater ; thus the morning represents itself in the spring, mid-day in summer, autumn in evening, and winter in night, and so forth

4. As the terraqueous globe revolves around the sun, as a fluent circumference encompasses its centre, so the moon revolves around the earth, as again its centre; and in like manner cuts the equinoctial circle in two opposite points or nodes, and runs through a kind of zodiac; thus being nearer to one or other of the poles, she changes her situation every moment of her progress, and with her situation her aspect, by which she enlightens her central globe. The revolutions which she makes are so many of her years, to us months : thus again an image nearly similar is represented of her course, seasons, vicissitudes, and several other things, which result from these revolutions as from causes, resembling the image which exists in our earth.

5. Besides these, there are large and ponderous bodies, wandering around our sun, the common fountain of light, within this its universe, which are called wandering stars, vulgarly planets: these in like manner perform their gyrations, and, according to their distances from the centre, roll and describe circumferences, which are so many annual times or spaces which they accomplish. These immense masses, in like manner as our terraqueous globe, carry each its axis erect to the poles of the universe, and are urgent in their course according to the flexure of their zodiac, whence they also have springs, summers, autumns, and winters. They have a rotation also like orbits around an axis, by virtue whereof they look at their sun within each turn of rotation, rising in the morning and setting in the evening, whence they also have noons and nights, with intermediate lights and shades. Moreover also around these globes, which emulate the globe of our earth, there are moving moons, called satellites, which in like manner illuminate the surfaces of those orbs with light borrowed and reflected from the sun. The globe, which being rejected to the most remote circumference, is farthest distant from the sun, to prevent his wandering with a fainter and more doubtful light than the rest, is encompassed with a large satellite, like a continued lunar mirror, called his belt, which receives the rays of the sun, wearied with their journey, and diffuses them at large, when collected, over the faces of that globe which are turned towards them.

6. Around the great system of the sun, and of its wandering orbs, and of^the moons which accompany them, shine innumerable stars, which constitute our starry heaven, divided into twelve signs, according to the sections of the zodiac, and present its immensity visible. All these stars , remain fixed, and as images of the great sun, being immoveable in their centres, they also occupy a kind of plane, excited by their rays, which they subject and ascribe to themselves as their own proper universe. There are therefore as many universes as there are stars encompassing and crowning our world, according to the virtue and quantity of light emitted from them, greater and lesser. These heavenly circuses mutually press and bind each other by contact, and by continual concatenations enfold together a heavenly sphere, and by infinite orbs complete a form, which is the exemplar of all spheres and forms, in which all and singular the starry orbs most harmoniously conspire to one and the same end, viz. that they may mutually establish and strengthen each other, by virtue of which union resulting from the perfection of the form, this complex of universes is called the firmament ;* for in a grand body

* This form, which the stars with their universes determine or coeffect by intermixture and harmony with each other, and which on that account is called celestial, cannot at all be acknowledged as the most perfect of all forms in the world, if we depend only on the view presented to the spectator’s eye on this globe of earth; for the eye does not penetrate into the distances of one star from another, but views them as placed in a kind of expanse, one beside another: hence they appear as without order, like a mass of confusion. Nevertheless, that the form resulting from the connecting series of all the starry universes, is the exemplar and idea of all forms, may appear not only from this consideration, that it serves as the firmament of the whole heaven, but also from the consideration, that the first substances of the world, and the powers of its nature, gave birth to those universes, from W’hich, and their cooperation, nothing but what is most perfect flows forth; this is confirmed also by the distances of the stars from each other, preserved lor so many ages, without the least change intervening. Such forms protect themselves by their own proper virtue, for they breathe somewhat perpetual and infinite : nevertheless, they cannot be comprehended as to their quality, except by lower or lowest forms, the knowledge of which we have procured to ourselves from objects which affect the sight of the eye, and further, by continual abstractions of the imperfections under which these forms labor. But let us view these forms in their examples : the lowest form, or the form proper to earthly substances, is that which is determined by mere angular, and at the same time by plane subjects, whatsoever be their figure, provided they flow together into a certain form ; this therefore is to be called an Angular Form, the proper object of our geometry. From this form we are enabled to contemplate the next superior form, or the form perpetually angular, which is the same as the Circular or Spherical Form ; for this latter is more perfect than the other in this respect, that its circumference is, as it were, a perpetual plane, or infinite angle, because totally void of planes and angles; on which account also it is the measure of all angular forms, for we measure thus consociated, no member claims anything to itself as its own, unless it be of such a quality that it can flow in

• angles and planes by sections and sines of a circle : from these considerations we see, that into this latter form something infinite or perpetual has insinuated itself, which does not exist in the former, viz. the circular orb, whose end and beginning cannot be marked. In the circular or spherical form, again, we are enabled to contemplate a certain superior form, which may be called the perpetually circular, or simply the Spiral Form ; for to this form is added, still further, somewhat perpetual or infinite, which is not in the former, viz. that its diameters are not bounded or terminate in a certain centre, neither are they simple lines, but they terminate in a certain circumference of a circle or superfices of a sphere, which serves it instead of a centre, and that its diameters are bent into a species of a certain curve, by which means this form is the measure of a circular form or forms, as the circular is the measure of the angular. In this spiral form we are enabled to view a still superior kind of form, which may be called the perpetually spiral or Vortical Form, in which again somewhat perpetual or infinite is found which was not in the former; for the former had reference to a circle as to a kind of infinite centre, and from this, by its diameters, to a fixed centre as to its limit or boundary ; but the latter has reference to a spiral form as a centre, by lines perpetually circular; this form manifests itself especially in magnetics, and is the measure of the spiral form for the reason above-mentioned concerning inferior forms. In this, lastly, may be viewed the highest form of nature, or the perpetually vortical form, which is the same with the Celestial Form, in which almost all boundaries are, as it were, erased, as so many imperfections, and still more perpetuities or infinities are put on; wherefore this form is the measure of the vortical form, consequently the exemplar or idea of all inferior forms, from which the inferior descend and derive birth as from their beginning, or from the form of forms. That this is the case with the formations of things will be demonstrated, God w illing, in the doctrine of forms, and the doctrine of order and of degrees adjoined to it. From this form those faculties and virtues result, by virtue whereof one thing regards another as itself, nor is there anything but what consults the general security and concord, for in that form there is not given any fixed centre, but as many centres are there are points, so that all its determinations, taken together, exist from mere centres or representations of a centre, by which means nothing can be respected as proper to it, unless it be of such a quality that from what is general, or from all the centres, which taken together produce what is general, from what is general into what concerns itself, and again, as by an orb, can re-flow into what concerns the other Universes, or into what is general; on which account also they do not shut up their lights and torches within their own sphere, but diffuse them even into the opaque bodies of the solar world, and into our earth, and when the setting sun causes night in the hemisphere, they supply his place.

7. In the bounded space of this universe, as was said, large bodies revolve, which, performing their circuits round the sun as a common centre, grow to their respective ages. The sun, like an aged parent, regards these revolving globes no otherwise than as his own offspring which have attained to a considerable maturity in age; for he continually consults their general and particular interests, and although they are distant, he never fails to exercise over them his care and parental protection, since by his rays he is, as it were, present in his provision for them; he cherishes them with his warmth issuing forth from his immense bosom; he adorns their bodies and members every year with a most beautiful clothing : he nourishes their inhabitants with a perpetual supply of food : he promotes the life of all things, and moreover, enlightens them with his luminous radiance. Since the sun thus executes all the

it may flow in into itself as a similar centre, and may re-flow through an orb for the benefit of all, or into what is general. This indeed must of necessity appear strange at first view, because it is fetched from a distance, or remote from the objects of our sight; nevertheless, that the case is so, is clear and obvious to the sight, from a consideration of all phenomena traced up to their causes and their principles; especially from the human body, where such an arrangement of parts is everywhere to be met with, so that everything respects itself as placed in a centre, although with respect to the terminations of the neighboring and more remote parts, it seems to be constituted in a kind of circumference, diameter, or axis: the eye presents to us a still more evident idea of this phenomena in the ether modified by rays. functions of parental duty, it follows from the connexion and tenor of causes, that if we are desirous to unfold the

manifest from his heat and light, for both are contained in his rays, heat in the measure and proportion of his altitude, and according to the density and column of the atmosphere through which the rays pass, also in some degree according to his continuance above the horizon, and the meeting of heat exhaling from the object; and lastly, according to the distance or angle which his large countenance subtends; for bodies in the extreme limit of his universe are affected with a less power of heat than those wdrich wander at a less distance and more immediately under his view ; wherefore the sun cherishes, ivith heat bursting forth from his large bosom, these bodies which have been derived from him, agreeable to the proposition. Moreover he also adorns them with the most beautiful clothing; for the universal face of the earth, with its fields, shrubberies, and gardens, blossoms at the new breathings of his warmth, namely, in the spring and summer seasons ; and singular the things which clothe that face, although extinct, rise again from their tombs to a kind of life ; but instantly, when the sun descends from his height, and becomes lower by the inclination of the plane of the horizon, cold begins to prevail, in consequence of which the subjects of the vegetable kingdom sink to decay, and are consigned to death ; thus he nourishes the inhabitants with perpetual food excited from the bosom of the earth, and continues their life. Moreover also he gives times, which derive from the sun their greatest and least durations, and their vicissitudes ; for ages with their years, years with their days, and days with their hours, exist by his alternately changed aspects, and by his risings varying to his settings, and by his settings returning by a kind of resurrection to risings ; ami thus they become subjects of number, because subjects of sense. He presides over annual and diurnal motions : for as the sun excites by his rays active and living powers in all other things, so also he stirs up and renovates his whole universe with the ethereal atmospheres excited according to the nature of his rays, by a common force corresponding to irradiation, and thus by a kind of animation; without such an origin of motion these great bodies could in no wise be kept in a constant revolution around him their centre and fountain; from particular forces there results a general force, as a compound results from the simple particles of which it is an aggregate. Moreover also he enlightens those orbs with his luminous radiance, for, as was said, his rays convey along w ith them both heat and light, but this according to his heights above the horizon, and according to distances, also according to columns of air and the time of their continuance in the history of the earth from her earliest infancy, and to examine her from her origin, we must have recourse to the sun himself: for every effect is a continuity of causes from the first cause; and the cause by which anything subsists is continued to the cause by which it exists, since subsistence is a kind of perpetual existence.

8. Let us first then contemplate the earth in its birth, or in its egg, and afterwards in its infancy and progress to maturity; let us afterwards follow her through her several states and periods, which, if they coincide with those things that are presented to our view in the mirrors of universal nature, will be so many satisfactory proofs, which, being next transposed from the place of consequents into the place of antecedents, by an inverted order, will confirm the origin itself from its own series.

9. There was therefore a time like no time, when the sun being in a state of pregnancy, carried in his womb the bodies of his own universe, and when, being delivered, he emitted them into the regions of air ; for if they were derived from the sun, as a parent, it is manifest that they must have burst forth from his fruitful womb. Nevertheless, it was impossible that he could carry in his burning focus, and afterwards bring forth, such heavy and inert productions, and therefore such burdens must have been the ultimate effects of his exhalation, and of the powers thence flowing and efficient. Hence it follows, that the sun primitively was overspread with effluvias excited and hatched by his real irradiation, and flowing together in abundance and in every direction to him, as an asylum and only harbor of rest; and that from those fluids, in process of time

hemisphere; thus in his rays there are two natures, so distinct, that one exists without the other; as in mid-winter, when the sun shines with as great light as in mid-summer from the same degree of altitude ; to this latter nature of his is opposed shade, but to the other, cold ; by his luminous radiance he enlightens those things which he produces by heat, that they may affect our sight.

condensed, there existed a surrounding nebulous expanse, or a mass like the white of an egg, which, with the sun included in.it, would resemble the Great Egg of the Universe ; also that the surface of this egg could at length derive a crust, or a kind of shell, in consequence of the rays being intercepted, and their influences shut up, which crust, the sun, when the time of parturition was at hand, by his inward heat and agitation would burst, and would thereby hatch a numerous offspring, equal in number to the globes visible in his universe, which still look up to him as a parent.* Something similar to this process appears to take place both in the great and smaller subjects within the sphere of his world and of its three kingdoms on the earth, whether they be produced from the womb, from seed, or from an egg, for all such products are only types effigied according to the idea of the greatest, and in themselves, although in a small effigy, they resemble and emulate a kind of universe.t

* It is manifest that similax* incrustations have also not ^infrequently appeared in the starry heavens ; for occasionally new stars have been seen, shining with great brightness, and presently by degrees growing obscure, yet afterwards either returning to their former splendor, or altogether vanishing ; which is a sure proof that those stars, in consequence of a conflux of parts excited by their exhalation, have been covered over with a similar crust, which would either be dissipated, or would altogether hide them, so as to withdraw them from our view. Besides, if we compare the immense magnitude of the sun with the planetary bodies which revolve around him, we may easily be instructed, by a slight calculation, that such a surrounding crust would have sufficed for producing so many and so large bodies. This egg was the chaos so famous in old time and at this day, consisting, as is supposed, of the elements of all things in a heap of confusion, which afterwards being arranged into the most beautiful order, produced our world.

t It is a generally prevailing opinion, that everything is produced from an egg ; as also the viviparous creatures of the animal kingdom, first in the ovaries, next within the chorion and amnion, which, with

10. On the bursting of this immense repository there sprung forth large masses, equal in number to the planets visible in this universe, and resembling our earth, but which being yet without form, and not balanced in any ether, pressed upon the great border of their parent; for no force was as yet operative to carry them in another direction : thus they lay scattered like suckling masses near the burning bosom of their father, and, as it were, at his teats. But presently when the sun, the folding-doors being unlocked and the gates thrown open to the empty universe, had begun to cast forth fiery exhalations from his now full and swelling mouth, and to distend it with his powers and forces, he first filled the neighboring, and presently the more remote distances, with auras, and thus with spaces; hence arose ether, their liquid, have reference to the shell with the white in the egg. The seeds of vegetables also represent the same thing, being covered with little coats, and encompassed within with a juice resembling that of animals. In all cases there is a similitude of productions, for when the time of birth is at hand, whether in the womb, in a seed, or an egg, there is a bursting of a cover, a coat, a shell: the only difference between these lesser instances of birth, and the greatest in the case of the sun, is, that the cherishing heat or warmth in the former, penetrates from things outermost to things inmost, before it acts from things inmost into things outermost; but in the latter, from things inmost to things outermost, that it may return towards those things which the inmost involve; for the operation of principles is in a manner altogethei- inverted, in respect to that of the causes or effects existing from those principles: this is continual, not only in the moments of birth, but also at other times, as will be illustrated by examples in what follows. In this manner these orbs, as so many offsprings, have gained their birth and existence from the bosom of the sun: for it amounts to the same thing, whether elements have been accumulated immediately from the centre into that immense crust, or from the circumferences excited from the centre, and relapsing to the compass of the centre with the commencing elements.

which being diffused around the sun, and at the same time also around the masses which encompass him, wrapped the latter, as it were, in swaddling clothes or spires, and encompassed them with spheres suited to the mobility of each; in the circumferences of their spheres he placed a vertical point, which he drew into perpetual orbs, and from them produced a central gyration, in which the mass was involved. Hence it came to pass that those bodies, being as yet fluids, and, as it were, molten, assumed an orbicular form from the concourse of so many centripetal forces. These now became orbs, and, as it were, of no weight, because in centres, and being conveyed and put in rotation by the circumambient ether, at first they began to creep and make progress round the sun, and presently, like little children, to dance, and by quick and short circuits to make a commencement of years, and a rotation of days, and thus to enter upon their periods.

11. When these masses were now carried round the sun into their first periods, and by hasty and short circuits accomplished their annual spaces, according to the perpetual gyrations of the heavenly bodies, in the manner of a running spiral or winding line, they also cast themselves outwards into new circumferences, and thus by excursions resembling a spiral, removed themselves from the centre, and at the same time from the very heated and burning same principle and fountain; for unless this was the case, all concordance or agreement among them must perish. And if we examine that ether from the phenomena which it presents, we shall find it to be of no other nature than that of the substances which excite the solar focus itself; nor of any other form, than of the supreme form in nature, which is called the supra-celestial; but those substances were thus only formed anew, that they might afterwards receive the rays of their sun, and transfer them when received to the most remote limits of the universe: therefore from his burning furnace, in this beginning of existences, it is not said that a ray bursts forth, but an exhalation, that is, something of the materials which enter into his composition.

bosom of their father, but slowly and by degrees ; thus being, as it were, weaned, they began to move in another direction. There were seven foetuses brought forth at one birth, equal in number to the planets which revolve in the grand circus of the world each of these being balanced in its sphere, according to the proportion of its size with its weight, receded by a quicker or slower pace from its natal centre. Thus the brethren being separated, every one moved with a velocity received in open space, and at the same time that he made an excursion into gyrations, he made an excursion also by degrees from gyrations into circumferences made plain through the ether. Some of them also brought along wdth them, from the palace of their parent, little orbs, some more and some fewer, like servants and satellites, received w^Tithin the spheres that were in gyration around them : but our earth brought only one as a handmaid, which is called the moon, that she might reflect the luminous effigy of the sun received in herself, as in a mirror, especially in the night-time, into the face of the interposed earth, her mistress; thus whithersoever they went, and in whatsoever direction they turned themselves, they nevertheless acted under the view, and in the presence of their parent.

12. Our globe therefore was impelled round its sun in perpetual windings, and the spires of a continued screw, that by repeated and quick revolutions it might turn to him all the points of its tender and yet naked body, and thus receive in itself, by all vicissitudes and degrees, the influences of his heat; for as yet it was not earth, but an uncovered wave, the whole being without a shore or slime, and thus a large fluent heap of principles of inert nature, which being operated upon by the rays of a neighboring burning focus, was in a continual state of effervescence and ebullition from its very bottom. To the intent therefore that these principles or elements of inert and heavier nature might coalesce into secondary new principles of water, salt, earth, and the like, and from these principles might be again finally hatched foetuses of an infinite variety, this globe must of necessity have undergone innumerable vicissitudes and changes, as so many efficient causes, from the series of which, continued in itself, general effects might be produced, which derive their perfection according to the order of successive principles, and the perpetual continuation of causes.

13. For two principles of nature were now come to their birth and luxuriancy, viz. active principles and passive, the former of which filled the whole universe, for ether was the atmosphere of such principles or forces: but the latter or passive principles, were heaped together into one, and constituted globes suspended and equally balanced in the centres of the circumgyration of the active forces. But these principles were to be joined together, and one was to be given to the other in a kind of marriage, that a new and mediating atmosphere might be conceived, which might proximately encompass the orb, and receive the solar fires, and temper them according to the variation of its state* ^or density and column; when this atmosphere was born it was called air, deriving from its birth this property, that in all modes of acting it emulates ether, and moreover, as being heavy, presses itself, and thereby the earth.

14. After that this atmosphere was hatched from the most attenuated principles exhaled from the bosom of the orb, and married to ether, and thereby began to temper the heat which flowed from the fiery fountain so near at hand, then our liquid orb began to contract a crust, or to be super-induced with a kind of coat, at first rare or attenuated, but presently denser, which continually increased according to the affluence of the parts emerging from beneath : for as yet it boiled from its very bottom. The orb being covered around, and, as it were, clad with this super- fices, then first assumed the appearance of an earth, and induced a clean and beautiful appearance; for it was a perpetual plane, without spots, or hills, and valleys, one sphere without a boundary, which was divided by rivers and streams springing up from hot baths, like warm veins in a new body; and being overspread on all sides with a dewy mist, which entered the new-born atmosphere, and relapsing into the warm bosoms of the earth, cherished it with continual vapor.

15. This virgin and new-born earth furnished with so

becoming an aspect, now represented a kind of a new egg, but which was laden with as many small eggs collected at its surface, or small seeds of its future triple kingdom, viz. the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal. These seeds or beginnings lay as yet unseparated in their rudiments, one folded up in another, namely, the vegetable kingdom, in the mineral kingdom, which was to be the matrix ; and in the vegetable kingdom, which was to serve as a nurse or nourisher, the animal kingdom; for each afterwards was to come forth distinctly from their coverings. Thus the present contained the past, and what was to come lay concealed in each, for one thing involved another in a continual series; by which means this earth, from its continued auspices, was perpetually in a kind of birth, and, as it were, in the view of something to follow, while it was in the end, and, as it were, forgetfulness of what was gone before; and according to progression in its orbit receding from the centre, it involved continually new powers, by virtue of which were successively unfolded uses.

SECTION SECOND.

CONCERNING PARADISE.

16. The earth, which was still naked and unadorned, advanced towards its maturity, and, like a young damsel, as yet unmarried, hastened to the flower of its first age ; for while by its interior gyration its orbit almost touched the disk of the sun, its seasons were so rapid, that it passed through ages, which, if measured by the periods of our time, would scarcely equal as many months, inasmuch as every revolution was a year, and every rotation about its axis was a day : but it lengthened out these times as it lengthened out its spaces, while revolving with a spiral motion, it continually enlarged the orbits of its gyrations. Thus there was a time when it moved over the disk of the sun like a spot; and afterwards there was a time when it revolved in the orbit in which the planet at this day revolves which is nearest to the sun ; and next in that occupied by the beautiful star which announces in a morning the sun’s \ rising, and in an evening his setting; thus there was no space from the centre to its present circumference, which it did not once occupy and circumscribe.

17. When therefore the earth, by its evolutions, continually extended the circumferences of its orbit and lengthened out its years, it arrived successively at the first flower of its age, viz. at that goal of its course or first station where the years of its revolution being neither too much contracted nor too much extended, preserved a kind of mean; in other words, when the four seasons of the year pressed so closely on each other, or succeeded each other so rapidly, that one was quickly changed into another, and tripped up its heels, like a wheel in motion, or, to express it otherwise, when the very short summer hastily overtook the short spring, and the quick autumn the summer, and the winter again the autumn, bringing back the year to its spring, so lately left, and not yet driven away; thus the four seasons, distinct from each other, by the quick influxes of one into the other, coalesced into one season, resembling a perpetual spring. For in such contracted spaces of the year, the day-star heat, or the heat of summer, could not enkindle to excess the warmth of spring, nor could the autumn abolish it, still less could the winter disperse it: but one only tempered the other by a grateful variety and interruption : for it is the tediousness and delay, especially of cold and shade, which induces on things a sorrowful countenance; whereas a quick return, or rapid alternation, disperses, and gives it a contrary air of cheerfulness ; thus from the union of seasons in contiguity with each other, there resulted a resemblance of one continued or vernal kind of sport, tempered by a delightful effusion of cold. The case was the same also with days, which, like the years, by their quick revolutions lessened the tediousness of delay; for as soon as the day-dawn unfolded the day, it was not put to flight by noon or mid-day, but by a rapid declension towards evening was brought back again, and after a few moments of night, returned again to day-dawn. Thus also cold did not disturb the heat of the day but only tempered it, and by a grateful alternation brought it back again to the bosom of day-dawn with a kind of usury. Thus all things relating¹ to space and time, both things greatest and things least, conspired to one end, that our globe might enter into the flower of its age or perpetual spring.

17. Nor was this conjoint labor confined to times and spaces, but it extended also to the stars of heaven, to the atmospheres, and to the earth itself, that such a spring-like temperament should be induced over the globe, while it tarried in this its station ; for the stars of heaven, by their hasty rising and precipitate setting, with their lights by night, supplanted a doubtful shade, and enlightened the terrestrial disk by a brightness as if continual, thus adapt, ing the very atmospheres to receive in a better-prepared bosom the warmth of the quickly-rising sun. The case was the same also with the moon, which being now nearer, received with her large face the countenance of the huge sun, and by an abundance and influx of reflected light, renewed the middle sphere of the earth to admit the cherishing warmth of the quickly-returning sun. The proximate atmosphere itself, or air, breathed the most grateful temperament in consequence of receiving so copious a light and alternate heat, and at the same time, being warmed by fruitful dews exhaled from the bosom of the earth; for as yet there was no furious wind, no Boreas to disturb the air with his stormy whirlwind ; nor as yet did the smallest cloud intercept the splendor of the sun and of the stars; but the face of everything was serene, and zephyrs only, with their gentle fannings, appeased the murmurs of the winds. The earth herself also, being encompassed with so many blandishments, and gently warmed in herself from the surface to the centre, did her part in return, and embracing these vernal delights which flowed into her bosom, poured them back again into the bosoms of all things appertaining to her. Thus it might be supposed that all heaven had descended to this new-born earth as to its centre, with a kind of perpetual spring, and had conferred upon her, all its favors, as if she was the only object deserving of them.

18. That the natures of all things in the universe might collect their aids, and make a tender of their faculties to introduce such a spring, it was decreed and provided for an end, before the birth of the sun and of seasons, that is, from eternity, that the earth should not only hatch the seeds and eggs which she carried in her now most chastised womb, but also should nourish and educate every individual of her offspring, born from no other than from the common parent of all things ; likewise that she should bestow upon every one the vernal season which herself enjoyed ; for everything derived its auspices from a similar spring. There was a time therefore when the vegetable offsprings first of all burst forth from the seeds wherein they were reposited; and when the animals themselves, both those which swim and fly, and also those which creep and walk, were unfolded from their first wombs and eggs, and were afterwards nourished with the sweetest milk emanating from the florid bosom of her who gave them birth, as from a pap; and were brought even to that age when they were able to provide for themselves.* This, without the favor of heaven itself, could never have been brought into an effect, which was again to be an efficient cause of so many infinite effects, for without that favor the produced offsprings, at their first birth, would have exhaled their new souls. Therefore the Divine Providence so arranged and directed the orders of things, that there was a succession of powers as of causes, continually joined together, and mutually embracing each other, to perpetuate the effects which they produced.

* Something similar takes place in our spring, in which not only vegetables are resuscitated from seed or their root, but also animals are hatched from little eggs through the mere influence and aspiration of a vernal temperature ; this however is the case only with those animals which do not prolong their ages beyond the boundaries of our spring or summer also. But it was a law binding on the larger animals, that they should be born in a continued spring, corresponding to the length of their infancy and life, that afterwards they themselves might conceive, hatch, and bring forth their offspring; and thus by continual cherishing and ardent concern, might have a resemblance in themselves of that continued and perpetual spring which had given the first origin to these imitations of it. Both the one and the other ii a manifest proof of the Divine Providence.

19. When the earth first entered upon her spring, she brought forth most beautiful flowers from the small seeds which lay nearest to her surface, and attained their maturity ; these flowers were variegated by a thousand forms and colors, figuring so many smiles and delights of nature; for the all-producing earth, like all her productions, was herself first in a state of spring and of efflorescence, and this with such a variety of gracefulness, that every flower disputed with its neighbor the palm of elegance, inasmuch as that must, of necessity, be most perfect, which is produced immediately by the creator himself, the fountain of all perfection; thus in proportion to the number of the clods of earth on which the different rays of the sun exerted their influence, were the varieties of efflorescent beauty: even the northern regions themselves were luxuriant in flowers; but#to express in words and numbers these sports of rejoicing nature, would be to run through the whole boundless globe: for as a single turf produced its own new form, so every step of the advancing spring still added new ones, yea, several which were never afterwards seen, viz. which had inscribed on their leaves, and presented to view in different manners, the series of the fates of the globe and the nature of the universe ; some, for instance, were marked with stars, or varied with spots, and thus represented heaven itself with its interpointed constellations; while some again figured the flaming sun with its rays, and his marriage with the earth; some again represented the circles of heaven, distinguished by some color, with its spheres, above which was placed a crown; for in proportion to the number of the first fruits of spring was the number of lucid mirrors of things in general, and the number of representations of destinies to this boundary of the series. Thus the earth in its first age, self-sportive like a new bride, clad in a kind of robe adorned with the most beautiful rosebuds, and wearing a kind of chaplet of the most select flowers, proceeded in her course, while the very flame of all pleasantnesses sparkled in her countenance, so that she might invite to her bedchamber the inhabitants of heaven themselves, and greet them with grateful gifts and frankincense, collected from her first- fruits, the delightful product of each individual bed. Each individual offspring, in this case, in like manner as the great parent herself, breathed interiorly a kind of perpetuity, and a spring resembling the great one ; but one efflorescent germination in one way, and another in another, thus in a thousand modes. It was a property common to all, that each produced new seeds, the hope of a future race, which being conceived from its ultimate strength, and afterwards brought forth, it let down into the great bosom of the parent, near its own, and covered with its own leaves, and when these were withered into dust, it overspread with new ground, and thus, like a new parent, prepared it to call forth and bring forth its offspring. It was otherwise with others of the offspring ; for being again and again quickened from their stock, they either renovated their flowers in a long series, or resuscitated themselves from their own ashes : for the sap, which, being extracted from the mother, they diffused into their veins, was big with mere principles, and thus was fruitful in innumerable new beginnings of itself; for the whole earth throughout was already a seminary and ovary, and ground at length grew up from the tombs of dead flowers : there was still a difference with other efflorescences, for in every place and every time there was a con-

of the form of its genetrix, and includes in it the general destinies of the future offspring as if they were present: wherefore while these seeds unfolded themselves according to that successive order in which they had birth, they must, of necessity, effigy their former universe by some aspect and form, as also at this day is presented to view in the case of most efflorescences.

stant variety. Such was the ornament with which our earth commenced the theatre of its orb.

20. Whilst the earth was in this efflorescent state, and advancing in her spring, shrubs and young plants sprang up in all directions out of the new-born ground, but the forest was at first lowly, yet adorned with flowers or the first-fruits of spring. Afterwards, as the globe took still a. wider circle of revolution, trees arose, which struck a deeper root in that pure earth, increased by the decay of so many flowers, and which unfolded their crowned heads in the air. The greatest part, in resemblance of the great spring, contracted also their seasons, or their ages into one, for they were perpetually springing, and at the same time perpetually bringing forth fruits, and concentrated their first forces and powers in their last, after performing a continual gyration; or while the flowers also hatched seeds, into which they infused their very nature or soul, and at the same time also performed the office of a mother, in imitation of the great one ; for these seeds, deposited in ovaries or receptacles, they encompassed with manifold coats, nourished and matured with overflowing juice, and at length presented them to their great mother, that from them she might raise up an offspring like her own, but this with an infinite discrimination, yet with one and a most constant law, that each thing might live from its own auspices, and might perpetuate from itself the birth which it had received.

21. Thus our globe, elevated, as it were, from its own ground, and changed into a most beautiful grove, respired nothing but pleasantness and plenty, and exhaled fragrances from the branch of every shrub, and from the pore of every leaf and fruit, and filled the ambient air with these delightful fragrances, which were so many fruitfulnesses exuding from the earth by new ways, viz. by the roots, the twigs, and leaves of new-born vegetations : this was the delicious garden called Paradise, situated and excited in the highest region of ether, and in the very neighborhood of the sun, which, innumerable streams, bursting from their fountains, dissected, and preparing a way for themselves through beds of violets and evergreens, sported in perpetual circuits, the rivulets of which, cut into multifarious hidden channels, like so many vessels full of warm blood, watered the members of their earth, and by winding ways returned to the gentle heads of their fountains as to their hearts. Thus the earth itself, like a large body, not unlike its flowering and fruit-bearing offsprings, was luxuriant with its veins, and thus continually nourished the roots of its germinations with a moisture big with principles and little eggs. This was the first scene of the theatre of this world, adorned with so many painted coverings.

SECTION THIRD.

CONCERNING THE LIVING CREATURES IN PARADISE.

22. The earth at this time, in whatsoever aspect she was viewed, presented herself as a most beautiful theatre of the whole world, for she was adorned with such festive and circumfluent ornaments, that it might be said that she singly carried in her bosom the dainties and riches which were concentrated from the universal heaven. But all this, which in appearance was so goodly, was void of life, being only a comely and gaudy clothing woven together from so many vegetables. For nature bubbling from her fountain, or from the sun, had now exhausted all her powers, since to' perfect this most flourishing kingdom, in agreement with her own order, she first called forth the lowest, and afterwards the highest powers, conferred upon the seeds of her productions, and sent them forth as transcripts into a kind of new orb of nature. Thus she performed her greatest revolution, and by this she established all other revolutions in resemblance of this. The earth also herself poured forth her powers, and lavished the fruitfulness she had received in the commencements of so many foetuses; nor did she now any longer bring forth new seeds from her own common ovary, but only received what were sown from her own productions and vegetations, and hence resuscitated primitive images ; for now the ground and earth was made.

23. But these magnificent preparations, whence every kind of store abounded, were not for her own sake, for a kingdom was yet to come consisting of things animate alone, which was to enjoy these good things overflowing in such luxuriant abundance : the time also was now at hand when animals were to be introduced to these stores. There was no shrub, and not even leaf, or smallest effect of nature, which did not in itself respire some use, not only proper for itself and its own branch, but also specifically some for its stock, and besides a common use for the universal egg, first excited the supreme and most simple auras or atmospheres, also middle ones, and finally the last, or the aerial; these, or their individual forms or substances, which are the most active forces of her universe, she conjoined by the mediation of the sun’s rays with the principles of the earth endowed of themselves with no activity, and thus she conceived new forms, which being inclosed in seeds, were to be the most fruitful principles of new foetuses or productions; but these she hatched in an order inverted from her own, viz. she first principled those forms which were conceived from the ultimate aura, also those which were conceived from the middle aura, and lastly, those which were conceived from the supreme; by which method, as before observed, out of this earth, first sprung up flowers, afterwards shrubs, lastly, trees, which were prior to the rest in perfection and duration. Thus nature is said to have advanced from her first to her last, and from her last to her first, and to have performed her greatest revolution, the model of similar and lesser subsequent ones ; how this greatest revolution was established is clear from the series itself above-mentioned. That a similar progression takes place in the animal kingdom throughout, manifestly appears from those continual revolutions which prevail in bodies, and constitute both their general and particular fabric.

earth ; yea, a still more sublime one for the kingdom to be inhabited by souls, for the use of which all those uses in their multiplicity were to be subservient.

Thus in every product or effect the ruling principle was use, which reigned as a soul in its body: wherefore in every vegetable some principle was deeply hid, especially in the natures of seeds, which incited them from an inmost ground to the production of something new, conceived also from seed, and in like manner to come forth from an egg, viz. such a production as might not only be endowed with an activity of nature but also of life, to the interest or advantage of which all this redundance mi<rht be subservient. Every vegetable therefore became now, as it were, pregnant, for the purpose of establishing these new ovaries, of replenishing them with a delicious juice extracted from the marrow of their seeds, of next exposing them to the sun, and of moderating his heat by their leaves, and afterwards of raising up and cherishing the hatched offspring, and of supplying him with a soft couch, and of preparing provision, and of nourishing him with the milk of their veins, and, as it were, with the spirit of their fibres, not intermitting parental care, until he was grown up, and could leap forth from his couch or nest, and again return to the pap; and lastly, when left by his proper nurse, to procure food for himself from his common stock or house. This natural instinct, as it were, was in every plant from the very seed; for inwardly in the generating nature of seeds such an endeavor and conatus lay concealed; consequently there was something living in what was not living, or animate in what was not animate, which at length unfolded and opened itself. For there are two principles perfectly distinct from each other, one natural, in itself dead, the other spiritual, in itself alive : this latter exercises an efficient agency, ruling most singularly in everything, and universally in all, that nature may breathe and intend nothing but uses, or be subordinate as a cause to a cause, and thus the series itself may advance to its effects. Consequently the earth now was efflorescent with both continual effects and continual uses, joined like bodies to their souls, and this with such a pleasantness, that if she had been viewed by a sort of mind, or superior sight, which could see effects, and at the same time the uses which they contained, this paradise would have appeared to it so abundant in delights, that it would have seemed not a terrestrial, but a celestial paradise.

25. This seminal nature, animated from inmost principles, now impregnated the tender leaves, which began to swell like new seminaries and ovaries, and hatched newborn little eggs, but of another genus.* First therefore were produced animalcula of a more ignoble stock, and afterwards of a more illustrious one, exactly in the same order in which nature propagated her vegetable progeny : at the commencement, therefore, and during the progress of the spring, little worms and caterpillars crept forth for the enjoyment of light, foetuses which performed the exercises and offices of their life in a state of greater ignorance than other creatures.

These smallest semblances of life or living types of nature, concealed in like manner in their first forms by which they were animated, a still more interior hidden principle, which unfolded itself after that the life of the reptile or worm ceased : this interior living power changed its worms into nymphs, aurelias, or chrysalises, and so continually protracted and knit together the stamina of the former little

* The vegetables themselves, in imitation of their great mother, were primitively, as it were, mere seminaries and ovaries, but which produced not only after their own kind, but also after a kind different from themselves : for one thing lay so folded up in another, that the other did not come forth until all things were ready prepared which might serve for the exercises and necessities of its life. From the series itself of productions, it may be manifest whence came the souls of brutes, which are said to have been ingenerated in the seeds of the vegetable kingdom ; for as the seeds of vegetables arose from the conjunction of the active powers of nature with the inert powers of the earth, through the medium of the radiation of the sun of the world, so these seeds, which are animated, arose from that form or spiritual essence, infused into the forms or active powers of nature, through the medium of the radiation of the sun of life, which is spiritual and living; wherefore these lives went forth in the same subordinate series as those powers of nature themselves which constitute the atmospheres, consequently in the same as the seeds of vegetables themselves, from which finally they were hatched. And since that life from its fountain breathes nothing but uses, and nature is nothing but an effect for the sake of uses, it is evident that it was so foreseen and provided, that uses themselves, as effects, might unfold themselves : he is totally blind and in the grossest darkness who in these things does not discover what is Divine, body, that presently, shaking off all hindrances, and casting off their exuviae, they were girded with wings, and being elevated on high from the ground, they passed the small remainder of their life in the delights of their loves, for the sake of perpetuating their kind, and became fruitful like mothers : there was no natural function not even the smallest, in the little orb of their more obscure life now elapsed, nor any little artery or fibre in the organical texture of their bodies, which had not a view to this condition of their life, and urged it, as it were, to a kind of goal, that they might reap the fruit of their accomplished labor : thus the life, from which they acted, derived its stamina by the series which contained it, and nature accommodated herself most readily to its purpose. Moreover, in this universal ignoble family, there was no species which did not contribute something to the common stock, if not for the present, still after a lapse of ages, although we are not able to discover those benefits, which are myriads in number, by any of our senses, since our senses only sip the surfaces of effects, and collect from them very few uses. Thus now our paradise was exalted by new uses and new decorations at the same time, to still superior splendor, in its smallest substances ; for every leaf carried its living principle, and every flower glittered with the effulgence of its colors, elevated by the life of nature with which it was united.

2G. When now the violet beds and groves of paradise became luxuriant with these new breathings of life, then another progeny, which was to adorn the animal kingdom, began from similar rudiments and matrixes to come forth into their day, viz. the winged tribe, prior indeed by nature, because more noble, but posterior in birth to the above volatiles and twice-born progeny. To this winged tribe the earliest shrubs, or the offsprings of middle spring, pregnant with leaves and juices, gave their birth, which afterwards hatched the seeds of their own proper stock, and asserted for themselves the hope of duration, unlocked their still more interior windings and fibres, and began to put forth these their more noble fruits, viz. partly little eggs with their yolks, and the beginnings of new life, which being laid gently in nests, constructed by their officious shoots encompassing them in all directions, they committed the remaining care to each parent, viz. to the earth as yet warm, and to the sun about to hatch them with his ray; just as if the leaf-bearing stems acted from intelligence, or genius, resembling science. But nature in all things was compliant with the life, which, acting from inmost principles, excited such effects, that from them the uses of that sort of life might exist in act ; for use, as was said, is the soul of every effect. Thus the feathered offspring were cherished and hatched by the vernal warmth issuing from the pores of all things, and at length were nourished and educated by the parental vein, and by the grain which was providently scattered round about, until they balanced themselves by their wings, and, pendant in the new air, attempted to fly. From the nests of these, which were built spontaneously, as many genera and species of the winged tribe flew forth as there were genera and species of shrubs. But the secondary vegetations of this kind, or those which budded forth, not from the seed of the earth, but from their own, ceased to be oviparous as soon as they were born; for the principle of all principles, whence life is derived, before the birth of causes, so arranged together all origins, provided one from another in a continual series, and so established the orders themselves from inmost or highest principles, that one in its proper season might produce and bring forth another. This offspring, proud in its ornaments, by its celestial and flaming colors gave lustre to the whole atmosphere and orb ; for there were some species which had their heads crowned and crested, as it were, with gems, and diadems, which hung about the neck like costly necklaces, while stars, auroras, and future rainbows, were distinguishable in their tails, and the sun’s rays, turned into purple, adorned the large feathers of their wings; some also bore the marks of paradise itself, or of its grand scenery, in their feathers. At this time the new earth was almost encrusted by a granary, heaped together from the fruitfulness of so numerous a progeny ; into this granary this new earth-begotten offspring, at the proper time, was introduced, as to a rich repast provided and prepared for them. Thus universal providence, in things most singular, directed what was to be effected and what was effected, that as one cause flowed from another into another, so use likewise might flow from one into another by a constant and eternal law.

27. Lastly, quadruped animals, flocks of cattle and herds, entered into these stores thus enlarged, but not until the low shrubs had produced their vital progeny, or the winged fowl, lest the four-footed animals, which were of later birth, should consume the vegetations, tread them under foot, and destroy the seed intended for the nourishment of life. These last and proper productions of paradise were in like manner produced from viviparous forests, but from such as had in them a superior nature : these forests, from a like tendency to prolification, at length unfolded their inmost bosoms, and impregnated the soft little eggs hanging from the branches with seminal juice, which being brought down into expanded wombs, and committed at the same time to flowers and herbs, involved themselves in coats, the Amnion and Chorion , and sealed the doors with placentas, and by suction drew to the liver vegetable milks purified in these organs, by means of winding little cords, where the same underwent purgation, and, like chyle, being married to the blood, were delivered up to the heart and the brains, to be- distributed and dispersed for the use of the growing body; nor did the cautious and provident care of the nurse cease until the cattle entered upon the activity of their own proper nature, under the auspices of their own life. The greatest part grew with brawny muscles and ribs, and presented bodies of large bulk, carrying on their foreheads branching horns, so many proofs of their descent from the forest, and of the noble maternal stock raised high above the ground. From the countenance of every one the mind was plainly discoverable, nature herself transcribing herself into the figure of the body, at the same time that she transcribed herself into the animals’habits; for bodies in a kind of type, represent the soul, since life joined to nature begets a cause, and a cause which contains both, produces an effect, which effect is the complex and image of uses designed from life by nature. In proportion therefore to the ' number of new faces was the number of dissimilar minds, so that it might be said, ‘that all minds in the universe, joined and disjoined, being clothed with body, united to form this terrestrial distinguished Olympus, and a government consisting of diverse minds: for some were fierce and savage, and delighted in nothing but blood ; some of them, hating their own light and that of others, were black ‘with gall, and had sullen countenances; some were animated and haughty at beholding their ow^rn image; some were boastful and walked with a kind of strut: others were tame and gentle, and indulgently endured the threats and haughtiness of their coeval race; but others were timid and fearful, trembling at the mere sight of fierceness ; some were employed only in the pleasures of love, and were continually sportive. Nevertheless, among this tribe, so discordant in their tempers, there prevailed a certain form of government, and a restraint induced by love and fear; for every one knew another from his countenance alone, and read the motions of his nature as if they were written, inasmuch as the senses, which were as guards, and kept perpetual watch, instantly referred the discovery of every one’s nature to the soul, the principle of their life, from which conformable motions resulted, and the institutes and determinations of life flowed forth as from an oracle. They were as yet ignorant of their destinies, which were about to unfold themselves at length, after many ages, like threads from their spindles; the horse knew not that his mouth was tobe cur bed with a bridle, and his back was to afford a seat for the rider; the sheep knew not that they were to give their wool for clothing; the timid deer were not aware that their flesh was to be accounted a great dainty ; not to mention other cases of ignorance among the brutish tribe : but there was not one of the number, in which their uses were not determined before times of times; hence came such a variety that nothing was wanting which could be admitted into the number or account of uses.

28. As the earth, when adorned with flowers and shrubs, gave birth to its reptiles, its winged and quadruped animals, so also did the banks and bottoms of streams, clothed with their vegetation, give birth to aquatic animals of every species, and indeed in the same order as the dry earth did, viz. first to those which enjoyed more obscure light, as tortoises and shell-fish, which carried on their back their houses, shining with the bright color of gems, and winding in perpetual circles or spires, after the manner of the revolving heaven ; afterwards to fish, which being furnished with oars like those of a ship, cut their way through their heavy atmosphere, and which, unfolding their still wider sails and wings, made a path through the air ; and also to the amphibious race, which when they had enjoyed their watery dainties, crept forth to a second meal on beds of earth; finally, to the greater monsters, which trod upon the broad bottoms of the waters as on their firm ground. All things were now full of animals, or of souls living in bodies : every blade of grass, every shrub and grove, as it were, exulted that it could now open its bosom with dainties, and extend from itself a rich and choice repast for its new inhabitants. Nothing was omitted, for the atmospheres themselves, and also the rivers, received and nourished their own productions, and spontaneously offered to them every abundance of aid which was allowed them. But what still elevated higher the natures and the lives of paradise and its perpetual spring, was, that there was nothing which did not represent in itself a type of a kind of new ovary; the living creatures themselves, in general, specifically and individually, had reference to a kingdom which was to receive perpetual animation from them; the case was the same with every green thing which constituted the general garden, since it also had reference to every future vegetable which was to spring from it throughout all succeeding ages; altogether in imitation of the great parent or earth, which, as an ovary, contained together, and in one complex, all the offsprings of its kingdoms, and by means of the fecundating spring, hatched one in order after another : thus particular representations were the mirrors of general ones. The earth herself also effigied in herself the grand egg of the solar world : for this latter, as an exemplar and idea of the ovaries existing from itself, carried at the same time, and in one complex, whatsoever was to be produced in process of time in its world, and its globes, the resemblances of our earth. What then must be the case in the principle of all principles, or in the Divine and Infinite Mind, before the origin of origins, or before the birth of the sun and the stars, in which mind, both universally and most singularly, together and in one complex, must needs be contained and present, not only whatsoever the solar world, but also whatsoever the universe of universes, and the heaven of heavens, brought forth successively from their eggs, without any and the least mistake or accident.

CHAPTER II.

SECTION FIRST.

CONCERNING THE BIRTH OF THE FIRST-BEGOTTEN OR ADAM.

29. The earth now being enriched with its living creatures, and so amply furnished and adorned with delightful fruits, advancing and wandering through its degrees, at length reached the middle station of its spring, or the mildest temperature, and having now attained its highest degree, it overflowed with every emolument. The infant wild beasts being weaned, droppings of milk flowed plentifully from the fertile and lately pregnant branches, and through new veins returned back to the roots of the maternal leaves. The grassy bed-chambers acquired a consistency and coherence from the honey dropping from the combs of so many colonial bees. The silk-worms spun their webs, and overspread the face of the earth with threads, connected into reels, as with cheap merchandise. Every species of animal was led officiously to the employment suitable to his nature, and provided uses and benefits only for future time, and, as it were, for posterity. Everything, according to the nature with which it was endowed, celebrated the festival days, not only of its own spring, but also of the general one at the same time.

30. The globe was now at its height, nor was anything wanting to any sense, by which it might exalt its life, and replenish the soul itself with joys. For the touch, there was the sweet warmth of the spring, mixed with the natural moisture of the earth, which by its influence gratified every fibre. For the smell, there were fragrances exhaling from every pore of every leaf, with which the air, being full charged, expanded the inmost reticular textures of the lungs, with the little vessels, and thus the breast itself, beyond their common measure. For the taste, there were fruits of the most exquisite relish, and clusters hanging down to the ground from the leafy vine, whose grapes, taken into the mouth, stimulated by their essences, which were, as it were, vivified from an inmost principle, the repositories of the chyle and of the blood For the hearing, there was a concert and lovely melody of so many chirping and singing birds, which echoed so harmoniously through fields and groves, that the interior recesses of the . rain were put into a tremulous and concordant motion. For the sight, there was the whole aspect of the heaven and of the earth, whose greatest objects were so distinctly ornamented by their least that they easily disposed the animal spirits to pleasure and delight. But there was still wanting a being who could refer these gratifications of the senses to a sort of proper mind, or to his own consciousness and perception, and who, from the faculty of intellect, might decide upon the beauty resulting from all these harmonies, and also from beauties might perceive delights; from delights, grounded in a true origin, might form conclusions concerning goodness ; and, lastly, from goodness might comprehend the nature of blessedness : there was wanting, I say, that son of the earth, or that mind under a human form, which from the paradise of earth might look into the paradise of heaven, and from this again into that of earth, and thus, from a kind of interior sight, could embrace and measure both together, and from the conjunction of both could be made sensible of essential pleasures to the full; consequently, who, from a kind of genuine fountain of gladness and of love, could venerate, and adore above everything, the Bestower and Creator of all things, There was no object, not even the smallest, from which some resemblance of Deity did not shine forth, and which, in consequence, was not desirous to offer itself to the enjoyment of such a being as could return immortal thanks to that Deity for himself and for everything.

31. Nature, according to the order instituted by the Supreme, which order embraced in itself all orders in the universe, first called forth from the earth her lowest energies, then higher, and, lastly, the highest, and thus by decrees raised herself to things more elevated, and to her first principles. Every production of her’s in like manner, commencing from its first nature, unfolded- itself to its last principle, and from this, as from a goal, returned to its first, 4*

Thus in all cases, what was first, having performed a semirevolution to its last station, bended itself backward to its beginning. In like manner, that great order, which, opening and leading all other orders, directed the universe, now by its mediations, and the exertions of causes, brought itself to its ultimate, and from its ultimate determined itself to return to its first principle, or to such a subject of life and of nature as might bring back all and singular things universally to the fountain of their derivations, or, to complete the orb pre-determined from eternity, might refer them to the Supreme and Cheating Mind. Already everything appertaining to the earth expected this last concluding object of excellence ; heaven also viewed this object as present, viz. man, who, as being first in the infinite intuition of the Deity, was to be the completion, or last ornament of creation; for he was to combine lowest things with highest, or nature with life ; and highest things with lowest, or life with nature: not like the animals sent before him into his orb, which do not refer the habits of their life to the first principle of their power, but to something made natural, from which nothing raises itself upwards towards higher things, but instantly rolls itself backward, and bends itself towards animal life and the several natures of bodily organization.

32. There was a grove in the most temperate region of the orb, not under the meridian sun, but in a certain middle station, between the arctic pole of the zodiac and its greatest curvature from the equator, which was exposed to the rays of the summer sun, not falling directly from the zenith, nor too obliquely from the side, but where they held a kind of middle focus between their heat and cold, or highest ascent, and whence thus from a kind of centre of his annual rising and setting, the sun could temper the subject air with the mildest spring of all others. This grove, I say, was a complete orchard, so thick with leaves and branches folded into each other, that by its shade* it broke the violence of daily heats, and cooled the days, and thus, as it were, induced a new spring under the general one: in this grove also were bubbling streams, which, flowing in different channels, beautifully perforated its area, and from which a vapor, drawn up by the rays to the under side of the leaves of the trees, and there pendant, cherished the ground continually with a falling dew. This was a Paradise in a Paradise, or the delight and crown of every grove and garden of the eaith : it was also the latest in its formation, and crowned this centre of the solar rays. In the midst of it again was a fruit-tree, which bare a small egg, the most precious of all others, in which, as in a jewel, nature concealed herself with her highest powers and stores, to become the initiaments of the most consummate body : this fruit-tree was from hence called the Tree of Life.

33. But this little egg was not as yet fecundated, only nature collected into it, as into a sort of sacred little ark, her most distinguished treasures and valuables, and provided it with such noble furniture, as a bride prepares for her bed-chamber, when she expects the coming of the bridegroom, and the offerings of a new covenant. When nature had thus in every respect completed her work, and collected, as it were, her circumferences into this egg, as a centre, then the Supreme Mind came to meet her, and from itself, as the sun of essential life, with concentrated rays, conceived the superceleslial form, or soul, which was life, and capable of containing what is infinite, by the selfinfinite ; this form or soul the Supreme Mind infused into this treasure or little egg.* This was the first happy token

* What, and of what quality the human mind is, can hardly fall into the first ideas of our understanding, by a naked description perceived according to the expressions themselves, for it is a spiritual essence, and therefore is not easily signified and expressed by terms similar to those which express natural essences; but whereas these terms and formulas must be made use of as aids, therefore, in order that it may be perceived, the ideas must be, as it were, sublimated by the intellectual faculty itself, which is superior, and the boundaries are to be withdrawn which attach to natural things, and thus its faculties are to be represented to itself in an eminent manner : but how a notion of the soul, in some measure distinct, may be insinuated into our mind, will be shown in what follows; hence it will be manifest, that the soul is the only essence in our body which lives, so that our being and life is of one soul, and all other things appertain to nature, which are supposed to live, because they are acted upon, wherefore it is a substance so real, that by it and from it we proximately exist and subsist, and without it we are not bodies, but stocks: consequently there is nothing truly substantial but the soul; and that other things, as accessaries, are called in to its aid, that through the instrumentality of nature ends may be promoted by effects, and in that universal series of effects or causes, continual uses may be produced ; for intelligence is a more sublime life, and it is the property of intelligence to look at nothing but ends, and by the mediums of nature to arrange effects, which are called uses so far as they conspire to attain the end. By a slight reflection on the operations of our own minds, it is clearly enough discovered, that to look at, to arrange, and to provide for ends, is a thing altogether different from the of connubial intercourse of spiritual essence with the supreme aura of nature, for the purpose that the fluent orb of causes, conceived by the infinite in the grand egg of the world, and brought down to this least egg, might be completed within nature, but afterwards, by connexion with the infinite, might be rendered infinite ; and that by such conjunction a terrestrial court might be annexed to a celestial palace. From this continual influx of ends into ends, and of uses into uses, it is clearly seen, that everything has come forth from the Supreme fountain of intelligence and wisdom; for it is the property only of an intelligent being to regard ends, and to arrange means into order ; and it is the property only of a wise being to provide, and by his power so to operate, that while all things produce an effect they may also promote an end : it is therefore the property of the one Provident Being to complete a chain of ends, in which every link, and every ligament of a link, may perform its revolution for the strength and security of the whole ; and moreover that this concatenation may flow from perpetual uses, so consociated, that every one may be directed to an ultimate, and may flow only from its end into its origin, and from its origin into its end, and thus may never cease.

34. This soul, a spark irradiated from the supreme mind, as soon as it was first breathed into its little egg, instantly began also with pure ideas to look at ends, and to represent to itself the universe, not only the universe of nature, as the souls of brutes do, but also at the same time the universe of heaven, with its stores and intelligences: it began, therefore, from a kind of sacred fire, inwardly to burn and desire, that being girded, as it were, with wings, or elevating powers, it might be conveyed down from that highest

causes and effects, which are adjoined, that the end may succeed by intermediate ends, as causes by middle causes, and may perform its revolution. citadel, on which it was seated, to the lowest things of the world, or the bottom of the atmosphere, even into paradise itself, the birth-blace of its egg; and after that it had imbibed its delights through organical doors, or by the senses, might thence be carried upwards, and tell in heaven of these delights turned into felicities by virtue of an interior sense, and the soul itself. While it was employed in taking a most distinct view of these and similar things in its idea, it looked around for means and instrufnents, by the assistance of which it might enjoy its wishes and its prayers; and while it was intent on these things, lo ! Nature, with her aids inclosed in the same mansion or little egg with her, was at hand, and made a tender of herself and of her power, and forces of forces, to be called forth at the least intimation of her purpose, to afford every assistance that might be desired ; for they were so ordinately arranged within, that when this animating point from the navel of its egg only intended to produce the ends represented in itself, and contemplated by itself, they, as if they heard what was said or ordered from their principled forms, spontaneously hastened to obey. For nature with the powers of the substances of the world, and the world with the substances of the powers of nature, were so excited, made, and instructed, that they might be subject to intelligences, souls, or spiritual essences, as these latter were subservient to their Deity or Creator, like ready servants, who have no will of their own, but that of pure compliance, and who most obsequiously conform to everything which is agreeable to order; wherefore nature was prepared only for the sake of minds, that she might bring into effect, and thus turn into continual uses, the good pleasure and decrees of the Supreme Mind, or its ends : for all intermediate ends in act and effect are called uses, and they are so far true uses, as in their series, consequently in their measure, they lead and conspire to the last, or End of Ends.

35. The soul burning with this desire, as a mind formed to the image of the Supreme Mind, began also to build a kind of little world or microcosm, after the effigy of the great world but not out of nothing, agreeable to the eternal purpose, that it might clothe itself with it as with a body, and might operate in it as a kind of Deity, administering laws at its own disposal by the understanding, and so holding the reins of its nature according to its intentions, that it might have only to regard ends, in which case all things, which at any time were woven together in the body from fibres, would act in conformity and compliance with these ends, as readily, as if they were not required to do so ; by which also it might represent and testify in itself, as in a little universe, the obedience of universal nature to the powerful Creator of all things. Nor does she hesitate a moment, but from the little fountain of her life, as from a little star, she began to emit her vibrating virtue, like rays, into the apparatus of the egg, and from these rays whirling into little spheres of a celestial form, she first of all designed a kind of olympus, or type of heaven, which she allotted for the habitation of intelligences, and of sciences, and of experiments, their servants; and from that olympus, and its little vortexes, she brought forth the finest stamina of the consistence of the thinnest vapor, and the beginnings of numberless fibres, that by them she might prepare and weave together the webs of an organical body, and of its viscera and members. Thus she began to construct her taiaria, or rather her stairs, by which she might descend from the supreme watch-towers of nature, where she now resided, to its bottom, and thus into Paradise.

36. But as yet there was only an egg, into which she introduced these first principles, communicating to them a soft swell as they increased ; but that from these auspices she might complete their divine work, she studiously and vehemently forced everything into her service, according as its nature was likely to make it serviceable. The tree of life itself unfolded its branch, which bare this golden and vital apple, into a soft and easy womb, and covering it with a thin bark and soft leaves, drew off the nourishing juice from the neighboring leaves, and consulted only its life: the neighboring trees also contributed their juice, by instilling it into the roots of this tree which crowned the centre of the grove, rejoicing that they were allowed, from their vegetable store, to impart something of life to the same. The sun dared not to approach near with his light to this last egg of his world, burning with a spiritual lumen, except by rays, which passing through lucid apples, and thus turned, as it were, into the streaks of a kind of flower, were divested of the more immoderate power of their heat. The air, with its spring and zephyr, indeed, breathed, but it was forbidden interior admission, lest it should disturb the web, commencing from highest principles, by the influence of its rude, and, in ultimate things, active spirit, and should too soon expand the tender lungs which were yet in their lineaments. The young shoots of the surrounding trees, which were born for guardianship, extended, as it were, their arms, that they might sustain the burden of the leafy mother, and receive the birth at her delivery ; others prepared cradles, and overlaid them with cotton carried through the air from the cotton trees : in a word, the whole neighborhood was skilfully and officiously employed in exerting every endeavor, that nothing might be wanting to the completion of this last effigy of the world : for all things were so prepared as to accommodate themselves to the arbitration of the Supreme Mind, and to the performance of the duties which it imposed.

37. Nor was nature alone at hand and urgent to supply all her aids, but Heaven also was favorable by its presence ; for its inhabitants, or spiritual minds were let down for this gracious purpose, that they might second and direct the offices of nature ; also that they might drive away whatsoever would infest this sacred grove : for,- instantly when any fierce animals overleaped the boundary assigned them, being struck with sudden terror, they fled far away into their forests, or with a faltering step fell down on their knees as if to worship their Prince and Lord ; part also kept watch, and guarded the passage itself at a distance. For pure spiritual essences, by virtue of the power and force alone which issue from them, so affect and astonish minds enslaved to nature, that they ignorantly and impotently forget themselves, and adopt habits even contrary to their own nature.

38. All things were now prepared ; the parturient branch, according to the times of gestation, declining itself by degrees towards the ground, at length deposited its burden commodiously on the couch underneath. The celestial living beings, clothed with a bright cloud, were also at hand, and found that nothing was neglected, but that all things were prepared obsequiously by nature in conformity to their provisions. Hence when the months were completed, at that time so many years, the foetus, perfectly conscious of what was decreed, himself broke through the bands and bars of his iiiclosure, and raised himself by his own exertions into this world and its Paradise, desired from the first moments of his life; and immediately drew in with his nostrils and breast the air, which he saluted with a slight kiss, and which pressed in by its force as a new,vital guest and spirit, for which interior chambers were now provided ; and by its aid opening a field for exertions, he excited to their respective offices all the powers of his body, which now were in the ability to exercise themselves. The choicest flowers, encompassing this bed-chamber, now exhaled their odors from their winding ducts, that by them, infused into the attracted air, they might also penetrate and exhilarate all the blood of the infant flowing from the heart and now meeting the air, with rich and delicious gifts: whatsoever was in the kingdoms of nature, as if it was gifted with consciousness, (for all celestial stores at this moment were effulgent, and by their influx, as it were, announced their presence,) excited by a kind of festivity, favored, and in their manner greeted this birth-day : choirs of celestial inhabitants concluded this scene, which was the third, with the delicate vibrations of their lights, as so many tokens of gladness and approbation.

by virtue of which man was made animate.’ It is evident, as well from inspiration on the reception of air through the nostrils, as from animation or the respiration thence arising, that by that spirit the life of his body was opened. Moreover that wind and the aerial atmosphere, which the lungs respire, is more than once called, in the Sacred Scriptures, divine spirit, may be manifest, as was said, from parallel passages and the interpreters of this, as from Gen. chap. vi. 17., chap. vii. 15. Psalm civ. 29, 30 : to quote only Gen. vii. 22. ‘ Jill things whatsoever on the earth, which drew in vital spirit with the nostrils, died.’ Also Exod. xv. 8, 10. ⁽M the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were heaped together; by Thee, when Thy spirit blew, they were overwhelmed in the sea.’ 2 Sam. xxii. 16. ‘ Jit

the blast and spirit of Thy nostrils the whirlpools of the sea were discovered’ Job xxvii. ‘ So long as breath shall remain in me, and I shall have divine spirit in my nostrils,’ &c. &c.

N. B. The translator thinks it proper to remark on the above note, that although the author here contends for the literal sense and meaning of the term vital spirit, yet in his Jlrcana Calestia, and other of his theological works, he equally insists on the spiritual sense and meaning involved in the term. See A. C. n. 94,95, 96, 97 ; also true Christian Religion, n. 470, where it is shown that man is not life, but a receptacle of life from God.

SECTION SECOND.

CONCERNING THE INFANCY OF THE FIRST-BEGOTTEN, OR

ADAM.

39. It was midnight, and the constellations of heaven, as if also about to applaud, did not now shine only with brightness, but glittered with a kind of flaming beam ; they were also ardent to prevent their setting, but the daydawn, hastening to its rising, dimmed their lustre, and instantly opened the gates of day for the sun. The inhabitants of heaven, as was observed, took their stations around, and by their flaming light prevented the rays of any other lumen from kindling the first spark of the light of his life ; rejoicing also at the sight of an infant, the first-begotten and hope of the whole human race, lying with his breast and face upward, and his tender hands folded and lifted up to heaven, moving also his little lips, as if he would venerate the Supreme Builder, and his Parent, not in mind only, but also by a certain posture and correspondent gesture of the body, under a species of the purest thanksgiving, that the workmanship of the world was now completed in himself.

40. He was naked,, but encompassed with the mildest spring, as with a bath: so fair, and of a countenance so beautiful, as if he was a Deity not born to mortal life. Innocence itself, with its brightness and purity, beamed from his face ; for his face was so entirely effigied according to the idea of his mind or soul, that every fibre represented some ray of it shining, and at the same time delineated in itself, so that the mind appeared under a human shape; he acted also wholly under its auspices and government, for according to the law of his existence he subsisted from the same, and this in such a manner, that while it inwardly delighted itself with his body, the cou tenance, instantly smiling, effigied the gladness of the soul, which also tended much to increase his beauty. Thus now the soul incited its little body, like a sort of active force, directing its powers to all things which were to. be done, and taught it the manner by which to incline itself to the paps, several of which were extended forth by the maternal branch ; to press them with its fingers; to suck the milk with its mouth; to roll it about with the tongue and palate; to lie down again after taking a proper quantity ; and several other operations, which were inspired into this infant alone, born without a nurse, into the essential order of life and nature, and educated under the protection of celestial beings : for, if not even the smallest action of this infant could be concealed from the omniscience of the Great Creator before the birth of the world, in like manner not even the smallest could escape His providence.

41. Those godlike essences, or celestial images, to whom the care of this little infant, as of the world’s treasure, was committed, administering to him, as to the little son of the Supreme Governor, were providently and attentively circumspect to see that nothing was omitted of the supplies to be presented to him by nature : nor did nature intermit her spontaneous endeavors until the infant pupil, under the guidance of his own mind, seemed able to provide for himself. Moreover, the celestial guards, to the intent that the little body might sooner be initiated into this compliance, accelerated the end, by breathing into him their virtue, and annexing to him their power; nor were they only like idle spectators standing about him, but they also infused themselves into his little body and its recesses, as yet folded-up in unexplored membranes; for celestial spirits, as being spiritual essences, have a power of penetrating even into inmost principles, since nothing which is of nature opposes; for as they are in supreme principles, so also they are in inmost, yea, they even enter into a certain kind of society and discourse with the soul and mind itself: having therefore saluted this soul or mind, they explored singular the things which were organically formed in it, especially those which encompassed its inmost and sacred recesses, viz. its Olympus shadowed in the crown of the head, which was the habitation about to be allotted to intelligences and sciences,* being much delighted at finding it formed to be

* Where this Olympus is, or heaven of intelligences, or to speak more clearly, where our intellectual mind resides, there is no other medium of investigation given than to follow the fibres themselve s even to their ultimate and first boundaries ; for all our sensation passes to its inmost sense, and thence to the understanding, according to the fibres which are called sensitive, thus from the sight of the eye through the fibres of the optic nerve; from the smell of the nostrils through the olfactory fibres; from the hearing through the hard and soft fibres allotted to that sense, and so forth. To the intent, therefore, that their first and last boundary may be found, the brain must be thoroughly explored, nor must you stop till you arrive at the ends, and at the same time, the beginnings of the fibres ; the brain being thus explored, there occur little spheres, wonderfully folded together i which are commonly called the cortical glands, where, inasmuch as the fibres there terminate and commence, our mind must needs act, and no where else, if it acts from the beginnings of all the fibres; for to them, as ultimate ends, it deduces and collects the modes and radii of all its senses, and there emits them into a spacious and interior circus of perceptions and understanding; for all fibres, howsoever numerous, are born and produced from these substances : wherefore here is our common sensorium, consequently also our inmost, or intellectual sensorium, which from its senses perceives, from what it perceives thinks, from what it thinks judges, and from what it judges chooses, from what it chooses desires, and, lastly, from what it desires determines into act the things which it wills : here, therefore, is the supreme sphere of our bodies, and asit were [our Olympus or heaven, for hence, as from centres, or from inmost or supreme principles, other things are seen and provided for as in circumferences or beneath. That these substances, called cortical, taken together, constitute this our heaven, is also confirmed by the light of experience, for when they are affected, the universal appendix of the fibres, that is the brain and the body, is affected and decays: and indeed according to the degree and mode in which those substances are affected, the pow- 5*

a living and regular effigy of the great or celestial olympus; into which, therefore, under the influence of this delight, they invited each other, and consecrated it by a kind of sacred right and. vow ; rejoicing also at this, that every intelligence had his assigned holy abode; and that singular things were so arranged into a representation of the starry heaven,* that you would suppose the great heaven had been brought into its last concentrated type. They observed also the grand egg of the world expressed in a kind of effigy,+ whereby, according to two axes, it transmitted and poured forth its fibres, as rays brought forth from the very palaces and habitations of the intelligences, into the inferior regions of his world, or body. Finally, they discovered that the soul itself, like a deity, chose its habitation in inmost and supreme principles, that it might view and govern everything as placed without and beneath it not to mention several other particulars which were marked, the ultimate texture of which they saw clearly as already effected, from first principles, and also from ends, discoverable from the series of connections consequent on each other.

42. After they had so cheerfully indulged themselves in these joys, they decreed, with unanimous consent, to insti- crs of imagination grow dull, those of thought languish, the memory decays, the determinations of the will hesitate, the desires are wavering, and the sensations are stupified.

* That those little spheres, called cortical, which are the beginnings of the fibres, consequently also of the cerebrum at large, or together with the cerebellum, the medulla oblongata and spinal, are so arranged and formed into spires, yea, are also furnished with their greater circles, poles, and axes, so as altogether to resemble the form of the celestial sphere, will be demonstrated elsew’here.

1 Namely, the cerebrum, which is not only likened to an egg, but also first receives into itself all the fibres derived from the abovementioned principles, and presently transmits them, and finally brings them down in every direction into the provipcqsof the body by the medulla oblongata and spinal, jn this case also corroborated and collected into nerves. lute a festival in celebration of this last day of creation, and the first of the human race : wherefore they devised a new kind of sport, called paradisiacal, never before sported in the heavens, but not by tripping and dancing, such as terrestrial nymphs adopt in their amusements, but such as celestial intelligences indulge in, while they are desirous to return into a state of innocence, and, as it were, into infancy ; for they so initiated it by revolutions and mutual influxes, as it were, into itself from things ultimate, that from innumerable sports they formed one perpetual and continued ; which end was secured by such circular spheres, and spiral windings, like so many labyrinths to our sight,, but still more distinct in themselves,- that not' even one number in the rhythms gave an ambiguous harmony; for they insinuated themselves from the circumferences by continual circuitious and involutions towards the centre, by a rapid but continual flexure, that they all concentred themselves by measures mutually succeeding each other and so united, that there was not even one which did not see itself, as it were, constituted in the very centre ; for thus, by the advantage of the harmony and form alone, from being discrete they could unite together in one continual sport. Nor was this sufficient, for being thence only enticed and incited to a still more delicious continuation of their sport, commencing from this centre, as it were a common one, because diffused equally among all, the crowning choir of celestial beings, from more interior goals, and a more uni- versal rotation, thus still more perfectly began new orbs, which in like manner concentred themselves, that they might again, from the former unity continued distinctly into all and singular, introduce themselves into a more intimate and thus a prior concentration : which same sport the chorus also triplicated, until they so insinuated themselves into each other, that they no longer emulated what is perpetual, but what is infinite, and saw themselves so most closely conjoined to the idea of super-celestial harmony, and, as it were, initiated into it, that they had a sensible perception that they were no longer many, but as one, and in the inmost principles of centres ; for in like manner as they united themselves, they united also their minds and their minds’ delights. They translated also the mind of our infant, from the ultimate rotation in which he was constituted, towards inmost principles, along with themselves^ by these insinuations, and being thus united with it, they presented him conjointly as one and a divine spirit from unanimity itself, to the Supreme Deity, who being delighted with the end of His works, both first and last, represented in him, hailed his coming with grace and favor: then bursting forth under the influence of this divine honor, from this inmost and most sacred of centres, they again extricated and unfolded themselves by similar circuits and concentrated orbs, but now rolling back in the same order towards the circumferences, and unfolding themselves from one again into several, they reposed the infant again in his ultimate circle. The essential delights of his soul, which were excited by this sport, sparkled with such lucidity from his mouth and eyes, that his soul appeared, as it were, to have leaped forth from inmost principles into the outermost forms of his countenance: and while they were w^rith him in inmost principles they observed him so animated with the pleasantness of all delights, or the concentrated joys of happiness, that.his lungs forgot ta reciprocate the attractions of their air, in consequence of the festive stupor and lovely swoon of the spirits in the fibres: and when he was conveyed back to his circumferences those lobes beat with so quick, so frequent, and rapid reciprocations, that by their little motions they emulated the ultimate pleasures of the sport. By this sport, and others like it, they so excited the tender body to compliance with its soul, which was thus called forth into its ultimates, that the sphere of his mind seemed to act from its inmost principle.

43. From these and similar excitements, our first-begotten, from the first time of his birth into the light of his world, acted like a delighted mimic, under the observation and full government of the soul itself from which he was formed, and although ignorant of it as to the body, he still effigied and gesticulated, with an imbecility of action, her pleasure and decrees : in this respect being altogether exempt from the lot of his posterity, and impotence of action, in their most tender [years.]*

* Brute animals, which are born into a full obedience to their soul from the first moment of their nativity, have also power over their limbs and muscles, stand upon their feet and walk, and skillfully perform the proper functions of their nature, still more wonderful than what are above recounted; and from the same moment they enjoy in full vigor the external senses : but it is otherwise with the human race in their most tender infancy: the reason is, because we enjoy a certain proper mind, which is called intellectual and rational, from which, as from its fountain, the will proceeds : this our mind is what governs the muscles and sensories of the body; wherefore also the actions, which are determined by means of the muscles, belong to it, and are called voluntary, which are so far rational as they descend from the purer and more sublime intellect of that mind. This our mind, which, as was said, presides over the muscles and organs of sense, is not born together with the body, but is opened, grows, and is perfected in process of time by the beneficial aid of the senses; and this is the reason why we are born into such impotence of acting and feeling. It was altogether otherwise in our first-begotten, whose rational or intellectual mind was not to be instructed and perfected in a similar manner, or from the bodily senses, but from the soul itself, while the sensories of the body only administered and were subservient ; for he was born into a state of the greatest integrity, and into perfections themselves ; wherefore full power must of necessity have been given, from the first moments of life, to his soul, enabling it to operate upon the muscles and sensories of the body, without the medu ation of this secondary mind and its will: but that the case is otherwise in his posterity, is a most evident sign of imperfection. Nevertheless, without a clear perception of what the soul is, and what the intellectual mind is, and how one is joined to the other, and one distinct from the other, it is not allowed clearly to discern rational truth on this subject; for which end we shall endeavor to elucidate it in the scries pf what follows.

Thus he lived wholly and entirely as the soul, under the image of an infant clothed with body ; for the soul saw the beauties of Paradise pellucid through, as it were, her own eyes, not his, and delighted herself not from the harmonies of effects, but from the delight of uses, and of the goodness contemplated in them; according to his delectations also, the pupils and eye-lashes of his little eyes had a fiery brightness; for the use of no object is concealed from the soul, inasmuch as it contemplates all things from an end, and from the principles of nature, and therefore perpetually acts in her body from the most secret and inmost principles of causes and of sciences ; on this account from her new sight she instantly perceived what was profitable or what was injurious to the body, and its connexion with herself: she therefore moved her mimic at pleasure, as a power acting upon a wheel, and bended him at her will, and directed his joints and muscles to effects, as she directed herself to ends; wherefore, at the first twinkling of its sight, the little infant crept from its cradle, and with its fingers laid hold of whatever came in its way, but only on such things as were suitable, and brought them to its little lips, and again betook itself to its couch by creeping : the ruling mind sometimes also laid him on his back, where drops of milk fell straight into his little mouth : wheresoever also fragrant flowers grew, thither he extended his hands, and moved them to his nostrils, that he might excite his organ of smelling: in like manner he pricked up his ears to the singing of birds, nor was anything grateful to any of his senses which was not conducive to the use of his body. After repeating these operations occasionally in the course of the day, she laid him asleep again, possibly also with a whisper and oscillatory motion inwardly excited ; and when he was disposed to view again the conveniences and utilities of Paradise, she awoke him : this was the constant habit, that when he was asleep, she lifted up the hands, cjosely folded together, towards heaven. But all these things were done under the influence of the Supreme Deity providing, yea acting, who in all and singular things is the sole Agent, because the soul living Being ; for from Him, because from His life, we live, and living act.

44. Although the soul transcribed herself into the form of the body, and for the sake of accomplishing her own ends, formed a type of herself, as a kind of perpetual plane of uses, from fibres radiating from herself, and infused fluid and heavier essences into its continual mazes and pores winding in perpetual circles, which essences pressed downwards by their weight this its effigy, and as it were fixed it to the earth to be its inhabitant, yet she herself, residing in her supreme and inmost principles, and thus in a celestial palace, while in her own, was always endeavoring to elevate her type, or little machine, to herself, and thus towards things superior, and was continually inspiring all the fibres of the tender body, drawn downwards by the accessory powers of inertness, to take a direction upwards. For the infant was as yet reptile, and differed nothing from the wild beasts in his manner of moving, which being observed by the soul with a mixture of concern and indignation, she used all her endeavors to lift him up on high, and to set him erecton his feet; while she was intent upon this end, means could not be wanting for its accomplishment, for from the centres and sanctuaries of all the arts and sciences she conceives the auspices of her operations, and thus arranges the works of nature to provide for the necessities of all ends; hence she contrived various, but at the same time lovely tricks ; for she bended his eyes to most beautiful fruits hanging from branches aloft, and instilled a desire that he should lay hold of them with his fingers, adding also strength to his muscles ; in like manner she enkindled also a desire to feed on clusters of grapes, which grew high on their vines, but bending downwards, that clinging to the branches he might lift himself upwards: by these and similar incitements she allured him to raise his countenance upwards from the ground. ' The celestial genii also adjoined their divine cunning to these incitements, and by feign delectations sported with and circumvented him; for at one time above his eyes they represented a pendent Paradise, girded and wreathed him with garlands and nosegays, which attracted his attention; at another time they induced him to believe that he saw infants, as so many little brothers, flying rapidly and winged, and directing their course towards him, for the sake of playing with him, but presently raising themselves on high, and when he endeavored to follow them, they led him to suppose that he also was furnished with similar wings, on which to balance himself. For the inhabitants of heaven, before

pure eyes and minds, free from earthly loves, are able to represent anything, and at the same time to enkindle in those minds any ardor and attention they please. By these sportive blandishments, and delightful fascinations, our infant, in the space of a few days, being set upon his feet, walked erect with his countenance directed upwards to the starry heaven; nor was he willing to let it down again, except when he was desirous to refresh himself with food, prepared on all the tables of the earth, for the sake of recruiting his body alone.

45. But these things were only preludes, and by the loves of his nature, inaugurations of the muscles into their active and moving powers, and of the organs into the modes of their sensation ; especially into favor and obedience to the vicarious and succenturiate mind, which being about to become rational, was to be adorned with understanding and will, and to which the soul was to deliver up the reins of its body, while she herself ruled the orders of his nature. For already, for his provided advent, from the first stamen, she marked that Olympus, and in it, as in a sacred temple, she furnished three interior chambers, the inmost of which, called the sanctuary, the soul herself, as the goddess of her little world, and an inhabitant of each heaven, reserved for herself; but the second, named the sacristy, she dedicated o the intelligences united into one mind, to be as their own; but the third, as an outward court, she granted to the sci- themselves, but also towards mediating and ministering causes, as towards nurses, which is especially rendered manifest by a species of hatred joined to indignation, as it were, of envy, which is an affection contrary to that love, when infants like themselves are also adopted and taken to the bosom of the mother or nurse. To the loves of nature is also to be referred love towards little infants like themselves, for they view and perceive themselves, as it were, in them, and thus discover a kind of union; for love is an affection of union, and such love results from the life of the soul diffused throughout the nature of the body, where itself is omnipresent by its fibres.

ences with their verities : she also established this law, before the gates were opened, that the sciences, as servants, should administer to the intelligences in every exercise; but the intelligences, bound by a kind of religious obligation, should yield obedience to their soul as their chief ruler, and, in the performance of their duty, should provide also for her salvation. Such was the marked purpose, previous to their birth, to the intent that when they grew up, they might be introduced as brides into these their inmost ^z marriage-chambers. For the soul herself, sitting alone with the key of her own kingdom, without vicarious administration by this mind, could will nothing but under the government of an essential end; thus she was bound to compli" ance with that end, but the end was not under her arbitration ; w’hen she viewed, through the eyes of her infant, the most pleasant theatres of paradise, she did not look at the harmonies except through their uses, nor at these uses only as involved in their ultimate end and at the same time as conducing to the welfare of her body: but w'hen she elevated herself towards heaven, becoming almost forgetful of her body, she grew negligent about it and her own nature: sometimes also she strove to be elevated upwards, while the body was carried downwards, and to separate from herself all her earthly incumbrances; but the necessity of the end opposed,'which the soul perceiving in herself, although not from herself, but fiom the Supreme Deity, desired nothing more than to introduce into her consecrated Olympus a kind of mind, which, from the affection of good might comprehend truth, and from the understanding of truth ' might desire good, and which might conjoin things celestial with things terrestrial, and might rightly balance both in herself as in a pair of scales. ■

46. With a view of exciting this mind to be her vicegerent in the kingdom of the body, the soul like a school-mistress, prepared the eye, through which nature might flow in with rays of her modified light; therefore she turned it to beautiful forms, and such as allured the sight. When the infant as yet passed the shade of his life, crawling like a worm of the earth, then the soul, elevating the forehead and the eyebrows, poured forth his full vision into splendid and pleasant gardens, that at once, and by one draught, she might induce the most general idea of the parts : afterwards she directed the eye-balls to peculiar species of flowers, concealing all other things by the interposition, as it were, of veils, lest the sight should wander into things more common ; and at length she concentrated it, fixing it upon some individual flowers ; at the same time also she inspired the pleasantness of their beauty, by the sweetness of the odor which issued from them, to the intent that he might examine them nearer, by taking them into his hands, and applying them to his nostrils. Thus she began to build that new mind, which was to become intellectual, altogether according to the idea of creation, viz. that she might quickly cast all things in a complex as into an egg, in which she might distinguish, and afterwards unfold, all other things successively insinuated by a series. But when she had raised her littlechild from that low life, or from his reptile state, and set him on his feet, then, in like manner, she presented to his view the whole garden of paradise, in its lofty aspect, even to its highest boughs, and by degrees, little clumps of trees, and at length each individual tree, as objects of his attention ; and lastly she fixed him in the tree of his own life, and in the branch of it which as yet yielded milk. Afterwards she introduced animals to his view ; for there was nothing which did not comply with the wishes of the soul, as with so many decrees of the ruling end, that is, of the Supreme Mind, from which proceeded the government of all ends and their operation in causes: they, with their young, by a new impetus of nature, being called from their forest and hiding-places, and rushing by troops into the grove spontaneously so arranged themselves into companies and legions, according to their genera and species, that they were presented to his view as one herd: but afterwards being distributed into species, and by degrees discriminated, they departed singly, each looking to the ground in token of respect. The inhabitants of heaven also, by their skilful representations, made flowers to spring from seed before his eyes, which seed, after that it had put forth its stems and germs into leaves, produced new seeds by the opening and concentration of the juices into their first powers : not to mention several other species of forms, full of fruitful delight, and of delightful intelligence, by the sight of which the ardency of the eyes being excited, transmitted them as new objects of vision through fibres, even into the inmost chambers of the future mind.

47. The soul, from the sanctuaries or centres of her Olympus, that she might continually meet those beautiful forms which, like new guests, insinuated themselves through the doors and chambers of vision, attenuated by degrees her most splendid light, and girded herself with a less shining mantle, and at length descended to the ultimate door-post,

clothed herself in a shadowy but still pellucid robe, adding, also gems, but crystalline: thus she always compounded herself anew, even to the meeting of images, which borrow their form from the rays of the solar light; which having seen, she received them with friendly kisses and embraces, under the very threshold, about the last step of her ladder : but these images, when they had returned the salutation, instantly felt themselves re-formed, so that when they looked at each other, they could no longer distinguish themselves as sisters : for that goddess, or queen, by her kiss and embrace, infused life into them from her own life, so that they no longer appeared as images but as ideas: she also converted their harmonies into beauties, and whatsoever at its admission smoothed and soothed the hinge of the introductory door-post, she changed into gratifications and delights : in like manner all the modifications of that light, by the mere breathing of her life, were converted into sensation : this first door-post they called their eye. This most respectable queen led down these strangers with her right hand even to the first court of her palace, where several lodgings were constructed in the most perfect arrangement, and she assigned to each his abode, that they might dwell in it as in a recess withdrawn from herself, until being called forth thence into her view, they might be admitted into the interiors of her palace; this place was»called the memory. But presently putting off her assumed and shadowy ceremonies, she recomposed herself^ and invited the strangers into higher chambers, or more sacred abodes, in decent order, and so animated them again with the breath of new and purer life, that while they again looked at each other they were lost, as it were, to each other’s view, and still less recollected each other than when they were beneath in the threshold, so resplendent were they made by her light; for what were before seen under an effigy as ideas, now perceived themselves, by mutual consociations, transformed into reasons* which

yet, being surnamed from their prior form, were called rational or intellectual ideas, the beauties of those ideas, which were formerly harmonies, being now renovated into goodnesses, and their gratifications and delights flowing from beauty, into joys and satisfactions, thus altogether into celestial forms. But these again being distributed into most becoming orders, she furnished with members and organs, that they might emulate corporeal forms, and then she no longer called them rational ideas, but truths. These so conformed, and of simple elegance, she remitted into the first chambers of her court, or memory, with an injunction, that they should be most ready to fly forth into the sanctuary at the first beck and token of their being wanted. From these, at length, she begat intelligences, which, that they might live in unanimity, she called intellect.

43. The above mind, or soul, took to her chaste bosom these intelligences, her daughters, whom she brought forth by the connubial torch of life and of nature, after they were conceived from truths, and from the moment they began to use their light; and she instilled into them, with her milk, not only life, but also the purest love; for as in the lumen of nature there is not only the splendor of light, but also heat, so also in spiritual lumen, there is not only life, but also love. This spiritual fire she so transferred, as a kind of blood, through the nature of their body, that by virtue of it they became effulgent with a flame of delight, like that of

the morning at the first dawn of day. Every moment they increased in the power of growing wise, as in active strength and beauty; for the intelligences themselves, or the intellect, have their infancies and progressions in wisdom. From their first stamen, as also from their milk, by virtue of this vital ardor, they so returned the love of their mother, that with difficulty they suffered themselves to be plucked from her embrace, and although removed, they still remained in her view, that they might obtain by sight what they could not secure by grasp : for love is an affection of union, and in its purest state is such, that one sees himself altogether in another, separated in nature, but not in mind. These infantile genii, refusing the milk to which they had been accustomed, were so overcharged, and, as it were, overflowing with joy, in consequence of the excitations of that love, that everything seemed to them to exult and sport, especially at the sight of the harmonies, which were re-formed into beauties, and at length into goodnesses : they were also made sensible in themselves of happiness resulting from their joys, but as yet they knew not that they were happinesses, conceiving them only to be pure joys; but afterwards, when they became more intelligent, they began both to think and perceive, that those joys and happinesses flowed forth from love, as from their fountain; yea, they also saw clearly from their light, that truth, goodness, and happiness, had continual reference to love from love, as by a kind of revolution, wherefore they sought nothing more ardently than the embrace of that love : thus they began to look at love as the end, and all other things as means leading to it ; which also they loved for the sake of the end ; for in the means they beheld the end, as it were, present. On perceiving these things the pious mother, exulting, as it were, with all gladnesses, began to take the highest delight in her infants, as in images of herself, because from desire they both willed and regarded ends, on which occasion, from her fondness towards them, she saluted them no longer as her intelligences, but as wisdoms.

49. At length this mother seemed to herself most happy, having called together her daughters, and at the same time, out of the chambers of the court, their slaves and servants, who arranged themselves about the wisdoms, now their mistresses, into the form of a most beautiful crown. And while with acute discernment she fixed her attention upon all and each of them in the assembly, she thus began to speak: My most beloved daughters ! the time is at hand that we must depart, you to your sacred offices, I into my sanctuary ; remember, daughters! that I am your parent, and that the life which you derive from mine, is so devoted to you by essential love, that by mind I am in you; thus although we depart, still ye can do nothing but under my auspices : the light, by which ye view ends, is from mine, because by me; yours is only to be circumspect, and to arrange means, that our ends may exist in effect and use.* I

* The activities of this new mind consist in thinking, judging, concluding, choosing, and willing, consequently both understanding and will appertain to it. All these operations, or activities, are mere variations of form, which, being regarded as powers, are called changes of state; for as the soul itself is a real substance, so also these forms, the first and supreme of its organical ones ; for whether we speak of forms or substances, it amounts to the same thing, since no substance produced from God is given without a form, whence it derives its faculties of acting, and its qualities. But what is the quality of the variations of forms, or changes of state, we do not well perceive, except from the forms or organs subject to our sight, all and singular of which are constructed and fabricated so as to have the power of varying their forms in ways innumerable; the muscles never act but by a variation of their forms determined by the moving fibres. Nor do the viscera of the whole body perform any operations except by similar changes. But in proportion as the substances are prior or superior, in the same proportion they are able to vary their forms, or change their states, not only more alertly, but by methods, if I may use the expression, more infinite, so that in the supreme substances there'is such a power of varying them, that they exceed all calculation, and all series of all calculations; for their very perfection, because their activity, consists in the variability of their form. That this variation may be comprehended by some hava adorned you not only with understanding, but with will; and thus I have subjected my ends to your arbitration. But again and again I pray and beseech you, not to look at and covet any other end than the best, that is, the love of the Supreme, breathed into you with life and with milk, for He is the End of Ends, the First of the Last, and the Last of the First ; from Him are all things, because He is the All of All; hence your gratifications, and the happiness of gratifications ; from your love ye are loved, and from His love ye love ; hence the light of your intuitions, and the sacred warmth of your actions ; for the rays of His light are so many truths, and the fires of His rays are so many goodnesses. On account of His and your love I abdicate my kingdom, and I deliver up the key to your care, for my great concern is

idea, let the circular form be taken for an example, which suffers itself to be varied into every possible species of ellipsis, of cycloids, and of curves; the ellipsis itself suffers itself to be varied into infinite species like and unlike itself; but the form’perpetually circular or spiral, which is a superior form, is variable into still more species because it does not immediately respect a single centre, as fixed, but a kind of entire circle, or another curve of the family of circulars, instead of a centre; hence this its power increases still to a kind of infinity : and this is always the case still more in forms still superior. They are therefore real activities which produce our ideas, and indeed so real, that they may be demonstrated to the. apprehension, yea, to the sight; consequently the understanding flows from the activity of its forms, as sight from the activities of its eye, and motion from those of its muscle ; wherefore it is not improperly called interior sight. These variations cannot exist in our first infancy, for we are to be inaugurated into them by the influx of our sensations, which is effected according to the fibres, into the very principles of the fibres, where the understanding itself resides. But the determinations of the will into acts, are also variations or changes in the same principles of the organs, but not such as are perceptions, imaginations, and thoughts ; for there are given variations of dimension, or expansions, and constrictions of form, since by these, as the blood is forced from its heart into the arteries, so the animal spirit is forced from its little hearts or cortical substances into the fibres, to excite the muscles : that this is the case is confirmed by all experience and science. only about you : behold me therefore no longer as your lawful mother, but your companion and minister. But I entreat you, my most beloved, and most dear, with the most earnest prayer, remember my salvation, while you remember your own, for my salvation and happiness are at your disposal, since I have delivered up to you my soul. At these words tears flowed from both the parties; they sunk into each other’s bosoms, and remained in close embrace.

50. But after a short pause of silence, she resumed again her discourse which had been interrupted with tears, and addressing her children, thus expressed her pious wishes: Behold, the kingdom which I have submitted to you, furnished by me so as best to promote your happiness ; it is, as you see, a little type of the universe, a copy of the greatest, so formed, that nature herself, unless she was blind, might distinguish herself in it, and the effigy of her own world; but I have adorned it with natures, or powers and forces, exempt from those of her world, viz. proper to itself,, yet according to her pattern, to the intent that it may comply, not with her’s but with your endeavorsand determinations; wherefore I dare not give her more authority in your world than only to secure and support its orders and states by general aid. I have also constituted it of mere centres, arranged into such an order that these may jointly effigy the circumferences, these the axes, and these the diameters,

and what from itself. I. The atmospheres of the circumfluent world are incumbent on the animal microcosm,’ press singular its points, with force and weight, according to their activity and column, and thus hold together in inseparable connexion whatsoever respects itself: but itself re-acts against these forces, gravities, and incumbencies, with similar ones on its part, so that the balance stands even, and action equals re-action. In like manner, when the atmosphere flows into the lungs, and inspires the body and its members with moving powers. II. The atmospheres also, especially the ethereal, or prior, urge singular its parts, consequently the whole, to their centre of gravity, viz. that we being depressed to the bottom of the atmospheres may walk on the clods of the subject earth, and may there construct our habitations and take up our abodes. In other respects we ourselves take the reins of our body, and direct it as we please, governing the kingdom by our own laws of administration. III. Moreover the atmospheres, by the rest of their properties, administer to and serve us, as by modifications, whereby they flow into the organs of our senses, and present, and re-present objects, notwithstanding their distance, as present, and, as it were, contiguous : these objects we apprehend by our sensories of hearing and seeing ; we consider them as proper to us, we gift them with life, and turn them into sensations. The case is the same also with the substances endow ed with the vis inertia, and which reach to a purer touch in the organs of the smell and taste. IV. The atmospheres also communicate to us the changes of their states, as heats, colds, temperament, dry, and moist, the motions of parts of their volume, storms, and several things besides. We, on the other hand, oppose to them the states of our body, and the changes, summers, winters, temperaments, and various affections of mind, flowing from inmost principles, to prevent them entering clandestinely, and penetrating deeper than our nature thinks allowable for us to be affected by them. V. The atmospheres also nourish, refresh, and continually renew our blood and spirit, by elements sublimed from a saline matrix, and thus occult; especially by aliments insinuated through the surrounding skin and the pulmonary vessels. In like manner also the earth, from its triple kingdom, but by open orifices and tubes, into the viscera of the chyle and blood. We, on the other hand, having enjoyed these aliments and gifts extended and proffered to us, cast out through the pores into the field of the universe, and also discharge through folding doors, the obsolete things which have performed viz. that all things, as mere equilibriums, may comply with your good pleasure in the most successful manner, and none may dare to resist, even in the least instance, your will. I have also induced upon the members, bound by soft and at the same time by hard bonds, a species of society, that none may worship itself more than another, except for the sake of itself and of all; thus also I have inspired them with love out of the store of my own. Take now into your hands the reins of this kingdom, all things submit to your authority; let it only be reserved for me to govern its nature : for I am well aware that the acts of your will tend continually to effect a change of the natural state; sometimes, also, if your minds are enkindled with ardor, to disturb essential order ; therefore I will constantly be upon the watch, especially during the night, when ye repose your cares upon my bosom, that I may recruit whatsoever has fallen to decay in the day-time, so that it may be ready to comply with your new purposes when you awake ; thus I their office, and the unsuitable things which might pollute their habitation. VI. The terraqueous and atmospherical orb ultimately receives into its bosom, stores up in tombs, and claims again what had been borrowed from it, and again disperses this corporeal world, nourished by, and composed of, its elements, when it has now closed its life. But the soul and supreme mind of that body, not dust, but a part of celestial nature, whose life that corporeal orb has lived, when it quits its abode, and bids farewell to the microcosm formerly its own, betakes itself inwardly into its own superior sphere of which it is an inhabitant. From these considerations, it appears what we derive from the circumambient world, and what from ourselves, viz. that that world, by its general aid, only sustains the orders and states of our body, and gives a faculty whereby we can enjoy our own proper powers and natures.

shall studiously and diligently attend to your necessities and conveniences while ye are at rest. Behold what I commit to your charge! the whole compass of this body, with its muscular, brawny parts and joints, for it is covered around by muscular fibres as with a coat of mail; at the same time also I give you charge over the organs of sense which keep watch like so many guards stationed round about. But the things that are within this compass, or all interior things, with their viscera, I would have committed to my care : for I know that you, by the intuition of your mind, take account of those things that are without, and of the universe which encompasses us, and of the innumerable varieties of the paradise of heaven and of earth ; in the mean time, that all things within may be properly performed, I will provide for, and favor your endeavors by my counsel. I grant also to you half the custody of the lungs, that ye may have something of rule and jurisdiction in the government of the nature of our body; for to the lungs, as to a general reservoir, I have committed all the blood, which partakes of life from me in the ultimate degree; the lungs also are the instruments which excite all our organical operations, and direct them to their offices. Moreover, I have created for you an ample palace, and have divided it into hemispheres, according to the idea of a celestial palace ; and all its great and lesser circles I have tied to poles; and have besides guarded it about with walls of bone; there is your throne and tribunal: this is called the cerebrum. But I, lest' I should interrupt you in your engagements, have selected for myself a sort of little palace, with its cells, where the arcana of the kingdom are stored up, beneath your feet and borders, distinct from your magnificent palace, not as a throne, but as a bench, which therefore I have called cerebellum. Thus ye see, my daughters I with what anxious care I have provided for you. But it was time for them mutually to recede from each other, and for the intelligences to take into their hands the reins committed to them ; the sun also began to appear with his upper border in the east, and the sensations began to awake.

51. These wise intelligences, separated from the embrace of their mother, with joined hands and quickened pace betook themselves to their palace, where they beheld divine and superb furniture, and a magnificent throne, elevated even to the ceiling of the roof, with a sceptre and insignia of royalty deposited on an ivory chair, which they viewed with eager eyes, and handled with busy hands, deriving from thence serenity and cheerfulness. In the midst was a hearth in which the flame, divided into several tapers, immediately on their passing over the threshold, gave a sound like a deep thunder; the hearth itself, constructed of adamantine circlesand wreaths of wrought gold, and, as it were, molten by flamingffire into [adamantine gold, emitted a sparkling splendor ; hence innumerable colors gave forth their radiance according to the position of every one’s eye ; which also appeared in every intelligence, for in like manner they glittered by its reflection and became efflorescent. On seeing these things, being struck with divine amazement, not knowing whether they were freed from the shackles of their body, or rapt above themselves, they prepared themselves to discharge the offices of their government, but not until they had performed sacred rites, agreeable to the ceremonies inspired by what they had seen.

52. Our first-begotten, not now an infant, but a youth, in the most quiet state of first awaking, for it was morning, distinctly overheard the very sweet discourse of the parent soul with her daughters, as if whispered within himself; he himself also hung upon her mouth that he might read all her words; and at the same time, he was attentive to what the virgins saw and did in the palace of their Olympus ; wherefore he hastened to meet them as they came towards him, and embracing each of them in the highest degree,* he thus accosted them with a smiling countenance.

* There are two ways or methods of teaching and of learning, one is called the synthetical way, the other the analytical; the former, or the synthetical, commences, or enters upon a view of things from inmost principles, and proceeds in order to outermost, or from ends themselves, or the principles of causes to effects, lastly to ultimates; or what is the same thing, according to the received method of speaking, from what is prior to things posterior, or from reason, by the philosophy of mind, to those things which are confirmed by the experience of the senses. But the other, or the analytical way, is the inverse of the former, for it begins from outermost things, and leads itself back or inwards to interior things, viz. from effects, according to an order natural to us, to causes, and thus finally to principles and essential ends, which is called a process from what is posterior to things prior, or from the experience of the senses by the philosophy of the mind, even to the first of causes and to reasons. By the synthetical way, or from ends, and thus from principles to causes and effects, all spiritual minds proceed, for they are in the very first and supreme principles, and view, as it were, beneath them, those things which follow in their order to ultimates: according to the same order also proceeds all formation, as of plants from their seed; for this adapts and unfolds itself from its principles, even to the extreme effect, and from this afterwards betakes itself to its former principles, or to seeds; according to the same order also, the soul builds its body; consequently according to the same order she formed and informed this rational and intellectual mind, already in her first-

My Intelligences 1 do not suppose that the smallest expression of the discourse which our parent poured forth into your bosoms from her most pious lips, escaped my ears, and that I did not behold your entrance into the palace, also the sacred hearth itself, and your libations, with my attentive eyes; for nothing of what you think is concealed from me, since ye are in my Olympus, which my mother and yours has committed to you, and ye have consecrated ; be it ratified; I also venerate and confirm her commands and decrees, as sacred; in that Olympus let your habitations be fixed, let us unite also and dwell together in the same chambers, for it is my intention to pass my life with you ; nothing shall be sweeter to me than to derive from your minds the maxims and the reasons of my life ; for I am indebted to my mother for the one, and to you for the other ; it is owing to her that I live and respire, but to you that I am wise and act with reason ; consequently I have to thank you that I am a man, for that alone is human which flows from the understanding and will of your mind. Moreover, I dare not claim and arrogate anything to myself as my own, except what is conveyed from your bosom into mine; for what ye deliver to me to be possessed as a

begotten; by a similar order the world was created from the Divine or Supreme Mind. Hence it appears that the intellectual mind of Adam, while all things were excited from their first auspices to last, was instructed by the synthetic way, from the soul first, and afterwards from its senses ; w’herefore now he is said to have met his understanding, or the intelligences who were coining to him. The case is otherwise in his posterity, in whom the rational mind, w hich had altogether no existence in infancy, is first, as it were, to be constructed, or opened from the senses, before it can be instructed, for it is perfected by age, though the benefit of experience, which is of the senses, and afterwards of the sciences, conceived and brought forth from the experience of the senses; and by like degrees the soul, w’ith its spiritual light, goes to meet it, and infuses power, whereby w^re are enabled to think, to judge, to choose, and to will, which, as was said above, is a manifest sign of the imperfection of our state. possession from yourselves, that alone I hold as my own and claim to myself; for it is mine, because 1 not only perceive it, but also feel it, being affected by it; and inasmuch as it is mine, whatsoever flows from the sight and energy of your mind is rightfully attributed to me ; but I am not my own, unless I be yours; all other things in us, which we do not seem to possess, belong to our common mother, who being bound by the hard, but now golden chain of necessity, governs the affairs of the kingdom for the pufpose of serving us; but she also communicates to us her satisfactions, for whatsoever of delight and gratification she meets with, she reflects into you, and causes us to enjoy her delights, with which she imbues and charms our minds and wills before she disperses them into her own nature ; thus also she teaches us to know essential goodness by a sense of exquisite gratification. And I derive from that liberty, which I enjoy through you, the faculty of self-possession ; by the advantage of your minds I am enabled so to elevate my views as to raise them into the palaces of heaven, and introduce them into association with its godlike inhabitants : I remember how I was lifted up, as out of a deep sleep, by a paradisiacal sport conducted by a chorus of celestials, even into the sanctuary, and, as a pledge of union, was offered up to our Supreme: on the other hand also, by means of your minds, it is allowed me to descend into the middle delights of the earth and paradise, and thus to look upwards or downwards as I please, and to choose and embrace whatsoever loves present themselves. But, my companions and inmates ! my attention was fixed particularly on what our mother said, that there is only one single love, which is the beginning and end of all, for they are infinite in number; let us only enjoy these, but in such a manner, that they may lead us to that single one, for of themselves, as far as I have seen, they thither point; wherefore while we keep our eyes fixed on them, let us keep our minds fixed in this; for it 7* is by virtue of it that we are ourselves capable of enjoying the happiness flowing from that love as our own ; and that the Supreme sees, as it were, Himself, because His own grace and favor in us by mutual love. Wherefore since we are confederated by so many and so great considerations, let us be united by an indissoluble bond, by virtue whereof I may cultivate and embrace you, although ye are several, no longer as several, but as one, and may call you my mind, my understanding, and my will.* I will also introduce new intelligences and wisdoms into your palace, and thus by new associations will fill up the measure of your delights. When he had spoken these words, one of the chorus, who stood next to the sacred hearth, lifted up the insignia of the kingdom and the sceptre from the ivory seat, and with a becoming bow extended them to the youth; she also conducted him with her right hand to the throne, while the others, taking in their hands his robe and purple, arrayed him in it; and thus they venerated liim as their prince and king.

Our acute and discerning youth exulted with joy, not because he was adorned with a crown and sceptre, but because he was exalted to the first rank in the assembly of the wise and intelligent, and was by them venerated as a king; wherefore he did not demand of them, but entreated them to assist him with their counsels; and first of all he invited them to the sport of his paradise, which he called the sport of wisdom, kissing his hand and courteously waving it; surrounded therefore by their company, when he had descended by the steps from the palace to the threshold, he walked into the midst of a grove under the covering of a shady tree, not far from his maternal tree, where was seen a circus, constructed in the form of an amphitheatre, with native porticos, the best contrived couches, and, as it were, benches: here having so arranged his damsels, as he called them, in a most beautiful order, according to the temper and talent of each, that he might view all at once, and each successively, from a kind of elevated seat, he thus again began to speak.* Ye see, my companions 1 how many beauties

* By his discoursing with his intelligences is to be understood that he discoursed with himself, that is, that he thought; for thought is a certain species of discourse with a man’s self; for since the operations of our mind are real activities, or changes of state by variations of form, it follows that they also constitute a species of interior speech ; for ovj’ speech itself is in like manner affected by variations of the form of its larynx, glottis, palate, tongue, and mouth; and in place of the air, whence sound from the latter is derived, in the former is the most pure air, which is called ether, and which agrees in all its nature with air, but is more perfect; so that there is no other difference between them than according to the perfection of the acting substances and principles. Unless this -was the case, and the same also in respect to vision, it would be impossible for us to perceive what we think, still less to discourse with ourselves, and to utter the same and transcribe into articulate sounds, or expressions, altogether according to the ideas of thought, from tendency [conatus] alone no action arises, as from rest no motion. Since therefore thought is real speech, but more perfectly than our speech by the larynx, and involves in it more things both at once and successively, it follows that it is heard and understood by celestial minds, which are called angels, as well, yea, infinitely more perfect, than oral speech is heard and understood by our companions and those we converse w’ith. Let us not then, I pray, immerse our rational views in empty sophisms, or rather in mere shades, and play at chess in the city of literature, now exalted to its highest pinnacle, by asking, whether our minds and souls arc material, or whether they arc extended, so as to fill spaces, and whether their activities are to be measured by times or the velocities of times, and the like ; for matter is only an expression, the attributes and predicates of which ought to be defined absolutely to all sense and apprehension, before it can be demonstrated according towhat underand pleasantnesses smile around you, and around me who am yours: and how many sweet and melodious harmonies resound from the tops of our trees ; and how many delights and conceits endeavor to captivate my senses by open allurements; but I wish you to be persuaded and to believe me, that these forms do not allure my senses, but my mind; I see also and read in your eyes, that the gladnesses exhaled from them do not remain fixed in your senses, but in your minds ; for I do not fix my attention upon their delusory and fading beauties, but taking a deeper and more penetrating view, I behold only that which is stored up in the marrow of them, viz. what they have in them of good, and what of usefulness ; I do not look at leaves, but at fruits and their seeds, nor do I relish shells, but kernels; for their goodness and usefulness delight me more than their most ornamented forms; for while I yield up myself no longer to the impressions of ocular vision, but examine those things by the radiance of

standing those forms and their activities are to be perceived: it is sufficient that they are substances, and actually exist and subsist, and that their activities are real activities, for they alone are, and act, in our body; therefore they are in space and in time, when in their body and in the world, for they belong to our body, not to the body of another, and they are in it, and emit their views even into heaven, as the eye emits its sight into the world; but out of their body, after separation, as they betake themselves upwards or inwards within nature, so the idea of space and time perishes with them : but that their state maybe understood, the states of the active superior forms ought first to be understood, especially of the celestial and spiritual, which put off the properties and adjuncts of natural bodies, and put on, as was shown above, many more perpetuities and infinities. Let us however pass over the above shady sophisms, because not real, but purely verbal, flowing only from an ignorance of forms and of their elevation, while we are fully persuaded that those forms exist and subsist, and at the same time live, more than any material substance, as will be shown below, and are the only forms which give us the faculty of perceiving, and of feeling and being affected according to perceptions, and thus of enjoying gratifications which flow from the perception of goodness.

two lights, I am affected by a kind of inmost harmony, sparkling as it were from their essential harmony : I believe that you, my wisdoms I insinuate this into me, as a kind of inmost sense of sweetness, which gratifies my mind, and disperses itself thence through the lower principles of animal life, and into the breast; and this with a variety altogether according to the nature and excellenc_eof every goodness; this from my inmost sense flows into my understanding, and quickly pours itself forth into the will, illustrating the former as with the most gladsome illumination, and kindling the latter with a kind of fuel of love : and thus goodnesses, related to delight, are revealed to me by a kind of sense and consent. * From goodness

* That our first-begotten was able to know what is good, or goodnesses, from an internal sense, is sufficiently evident from the formation of his mind, and from causes which foliowin their series; for the minds of those who liye in the love of the Supreme, not only see, but also feel, the affections of its goodnesses, and consequently have their understanding clearly enlightened by truths; wherefore from a sense of goodness the knowledge of all truths flows; for that we are bound to investigate truths by experience of the senses and by sciences, is merely to the intent that by them we may finally explore goodnesses, or good as to its quality, whether it be truly good, or apparently, or falsely good, or evil under the shape of good, what is better, and lastly, what is best, thus what we ought to choose : to this end we are gifted with understanding; but he who comprehends superior goodnesses by an inmost sense, has no need to run over that spacious plain of investigation, or to make his way through masses of truths, because he is in the knowledge of goodness itself, or, as it were, at the goal, from whence he can widely view and freely contemplate hig whole field; so true it is, as was said, that all truths concentrate in goodness, consequently expand themselves, as it were, into circumferences from goodness, as from a centre. After the inversion of the human state, of which we shall speak below, by the fall, this sensation of goodnesses, such as it was in the first-begotten, must of necessity have ceased: nevertheless a similar sense is connate with our external senses, yet not of moral and spiritual goodnesses, but only of certain natural ones; for the ear, howsoever untaught, apprehends and is sensible of the numbers, harmonies, and melodies of musical sounds, inasmuch as the mind is instantly and agreeably affected : the eye, in afterwards, as from an inmost goal or centre, I contemplate all other things; for I see clearly, as through glasses, that everything has reference to goodness ; this my understanding calls truths, and the things which again tend to these truths she calls sciences and experiences. But all these things I see clearly from goodness itself, for they are fitted to it as members to a kind of body ; therefore truths seem to me to be formed from a progressive series of goodnesses. The uses which tend to the fruition of goodnesses, are like souls, or ends in the soul, which from nature call forth stores to themselves, whereby they effigy to themselves a species of body, by which they may prepare

like manner, of itself, apprehends and is sensible of the beauties of nature, together with the elegant and harmonious connexions of different objects: the same is true of the tongue, in regard to the luxuries of food; and of the nostrils, in respect to agreeable odors; for this results from the soul, to which all sensation flows, because it flows forth into all things by its fibres, but not from any other principle, nor from the understanding, because we are affected in like manner before as after its perfection; for in the soul there is order itself, because it has excited and governs the nature of its body, wherefore it is sensible of what is agreeable to order, and in general points it out. But this, which is thus connate, is only an affection of natural goodnesses, which are so gross that they fall into our external senses, wherefore they are called delights or sweetnesses. Moreover, animals themselves apprehend from the senses alone what js agreeable to the blood and life of their body ; for they discover this agreement from the mere smell and taste ; yea, also, they discern from the hearing and sight what other animals are their enemies or their friends ; they are acquainted besides with infinite things which we are under the necessity of procuring to ourselves by sciences, as plainly appears from the government, the collecting of honey, and the honeycombs of bees; from the webs of spiders, the cones of silkworms, the nests of birds, the habitations of beavers, &c, all which things they do, because they refer their sensations, not to any mind inquisitive of truths before they investigate goodnesses, but immediately to their soul, which reflects it into the animal nature, and in this way reveals to them natural goodnesses. What then must have been the case with the first-begotten, born into all perfections, not only natural, but also spiritual.

and expand themselves and their uses for the production of effects; for they are not in their uses until they are in effects, but when they are in these, they are in themselves as in their own forms; so that effects are only uses thus unfolded and brought forth into the circle of nature: wherefore these flowering ornaments are nothing but external representations of uses, which on that account charm by their harmonies the external senses of our body and their doors, even for this use, that by an easy influence they may penetrate our minds ; but while they penetrate my mind they appear to me as naked without clothing, thus most engaging, because they sparkle from the effulgence of good and the brightness of truth. Hence I already observe that the discrimination of uses alone are what sport together through so many varieties, and through so many genera and species, and that each of them perform their own circle, and have a kind of perpetuity, for they flow from a certain first principle, through mediums to the ultimate, and from this again to their first; for I have not as yet seen the signature of a single point of a line which is not from use, by use, and for use. From this single view, while I examine all things from singular things and singular things in all, I discover that no knowledge of anything escapes me, but that general things, with their particulars, from their very sanctuaries^ flow in into my mind ; hence particular representations are to me so many mirrors of things general, and singular representations are mirrors of things universal, and vice versa. But what has principally exalted the inmost sense of my delights, even almost above itself, is the consideration, that all the goodnesses and uses of the universe have reference.' to superior goodnesses and uses, and at length to the Su-> preme, in a certain order distinguished by degrees, from which they seem to me to be distant, according to the excellence of the series, in which they are by nature; for one thing is continually for the sake of another, and all things finally for the sake of One, or our God, the fountain of all goodnesses and uses; behold, my wisdoms! that Divine [Being or Principle,] which I view in all things, and which flows in from singular things, not into our eyes, but into our minds; for it is the work of an infinitely wise Being alone to induce such an order into the things of the universe, and to construct, from mere uses, such continued chains, from things continued in Himself, and out of Himself, and to draw them together in their connexion even to Himself. I seem therefore to myself, being introduced into these enjoyments of uses, and into these goodnesses, as if I alone celebrate His glory for them all, thus in their stead, because they are dumb and void of reason, and yet as if they did so from themselves, while I pour forth jny vows and thanksgivings. As he spake these words and folded his hands, looking around, he saw himself encompassed with a bright cloud, streaked with purple and flame-colored tints, like the dawn of morning;. he was in the midst of a choir of celestial beings, who guarded the tree near which they were seated, lest he should gather any of its fruits; hence observing that the apple was sacred, he called that tree the tree of the knowledge of good, being as yet ignorant what evil was.

54. Not far from the area of this circus there appeared an elevated seat, after the manner of a theatre, covered with a carpet of interwoven flowers, and surrounded with curtains instantly produced : for the leaves of a strawberrytree were so bound and inserted with vine leaves intermixed, and creeping ivy, that by their circuits they discriminated such a space, and together represented birth-day scenes: hither he introduced his nymphs, not unwilling, as to their school, or sport of wisdom, which he instituted by questions and answers, as in the case of oracles unfolding destiny; and to the conquerors he offered rewards, according to the dignity of the reply, and the unfolding of what was more than ordinarily obscure; but he did

not promise palms and laurels, or donations of leaves, but entire kingdoms, and the provinces of nature, and moreover, purple and diadems, as insignia becoming what is honorable; for he called the universal orb his empire, and that kingdom which his mother constructed and established for herself as a type of the grand empire and kingdom, whose walls and gates only, opening into her empire and its kingdom, he was to guard in such a manner, that what happened in his universe, he might learn from the guards there appointed, and might refer it to his palace, and to the counsels of wisdoms. And when, on the conclusion of the sport, he had seen all his wisdoms and intelligences in possession of authority, and advanced, as it were, to the rank of queens ; and still from their answers he could not yet acquire the wisdom to discover from what source goodnesses and utilities, not introduced by truths, flowed in into his Olympus, which he now called Helicon, only perceiving this, that they insinuated themselves not through the doors of the senses, but through a most secret way, from a kind of sanctuary, through what was maternal: and that there was something which involved his Helicon in such appearances and forms, as distinctly excited, by affecting from their inmost principles a sort of sense of senses, and by it ideas of goodnesses; not from any principle of my own, he said, I am made sensible of this, because I know it not from means which are mine ; and while his doubtful attention was fixed on these things, and they so affected the hinges of his mind as almost to disturb the habitations of the nymphs who dwelt there, lo! he presently had a full view of his wisdoms in the very bosom of the Supreme love, and of his intelligences, in the consort of holy beings proximately encompassing that love, discoursing together in a friendly and familiar manner: on seeing them, as if awakening out of a dream, he almost vociferated with himself, behold now what I ask and seek ; this is that sanctuary from which the heats and lights of that exquisite sense flow, the rays of which, by their inmost sweets, reveal to me the natures of goodnesses and utilities: hence being cheered with gladness, as with a most serene aura, he called his nymphs to him with great eagerness, and with a countenance bright as the day when every cloud is dispersed, he thus accosted them: Why have ye concealed from me, and from my inquiries, the origin of the influx of the pleasant streams of goodnesses into my Helicon ? Didi not say, that ye are the beings who insinuate them into me? Ye have delighted me with your sportive tricks, for it is my wish to be thus imposed upon, since in this manner ye convert my sport into a true sport of wisdom ; for I have seen you with my eyes wide open, in the bosom of essential love, and I have seen you in the company of holy beings; hence ye derive those essential goodnesses with which ye inspire me ; for streams flow only from their fountain, and goodnesses in like manner flow only from the best of the good; hence I derive the sensation of all things, and the knowledge of all things ; I call you to witness, my graces, that hitherto I have cultivated you, but now I dearly love you ; for while I embrace you with love, and ye embrace the Supreme, I also embrace the Supreme by you ; deign also to favor me with your love, for while He embraces you, and ye embrace me as yours, He also embraces me with His Ipve : let us therefore be again united, and let us contend strongly that our former bonds may be altogether inseparable.

55. Having uttered these words both with his mouth and from his bosom, he burned with a vehement desire to know what his indigenous nymphs had heard from the sacred intelligences ; and when they looked on each other in profound silence, in consequence of increased ardor, and at the same time a stronger love now inspired by his wisdoms, he felt himself, as it were, rapt out of himself: but when he endeavored to compose himself, lo! he saw himself in the midst of the bosom of love, and at the same time in the midst of a choir of heavenly beings : and when he first strove in vain to prostrate himself on the ground, he heard these words spoken within himself; My son, I love joth thy wisdoms and thee; between love and love there is ;iot a closer nor a sweeter bond than wisdom : my ears have told me (for I hear whatsoever thou speakest,) how vehemently thou desirest to know what is the origin of the goodnesses of which thou art sensible, and from what source they flow into the sphere of thy mind : this I will teach thee from my own bosom: dost thou not know that all the happiness of life flows from love, and that that only is sweet which is loved ? What is pleasant grows and rises into what is gratifying, and what is gratifying into what is happy, according to the degree and essence of love. My son, there is only one love; from this one love, the first and supreme of all, thou hadst thy birth and existence, and hence came all the happinesses which are perceptible to the senses: I have just now felt, from the embrace of essential love, what happiness is, and whence goodness is derived ; do not any longer inquire after the fountain, now that thou sittest in its veriest vein ; perceive now that the love, with which thou embracest me, is from mine; I make thee sensible of it in thyself, and make thee perceive that it is from mine, and thus mine from thine ; consequently I enable thee at the same time to see both my parent and thine ; by me thou art His resemblance and image ; and whereas we are thus both of us from the same parent, thou shalt not be my son but brother. Fill now and feed thy mind with goodnesses, which flow from that source ; but take heed, my brother, lest thou draw anything from the fountain of the love of thyself: for from my goodnesses, which are given to thee, new ones are continually born, since whatever thou possessest from me is fruitful and prolific, and like seed, which, when it had performed its circle in nature, again produces not seed, but seeds : it is necessary that these involve what is mine, for that which is best is stored up in things inmost:*

*A11 formations, as was observed above, agree in things most general, and especially in this, that inmost or purest principles, which are essences themselves, or essentials, when they have unfolded themselves into suitable forms, even to ultimates, by wonderful insertions betake themselves to inmost things; as seeds, when they have put themselves forth into leafy trees, afterwards concentrate the purest essences of their juices again in new seeds: in what manner they betake themselves towards inmost principles is presented to view in the fruits themselves ; for in the inmost parts of the fruits they form to themselves repositories, and encompass these and themselves in foldings and membranes; in these lie concealed the veriest seminal powers themselves, which do not burst forth until the foldings are laid open. The case is similar in the animal body, in which the first and purest fibres, which are the essential determinations themselves, or from which the organical forms are designed, when they have performed their common circle, even to ultimates, or to the bloodvessels themselves, return again by them to their principles, or cortical glands, and by wonderful insertions involve themselves in those their principles, and unite with them, where they are adopted, and, as it were, introduced, by the purest fibres; for compound things cannot flow in into simple things, but simple things flow in into their compounds, such, and no other, being the order which prevails in universal nature, because no other can be given. In like manner, the viscera, members, muscles, nerves, &c, of our body, together with their smallest parts, or units, encompass themselves, as they multiply, with more general coats or coverings, in order to which, from singular the parts, ligaments or bands are emitted, which insert and tie themselves to coverings, and at length to the most general coverings, as their band ; for things general arise from their parts, but not parts from their generals. This is the case with all other things of which form or substance can be predicated. The formation of our minds is similar, but instead of seeds are goodnesses which insinuate themselves through the doors of the senses; from these, variously connected, arise series of goodnesses, which are called those seeds are goodnesses sown in thy mind, and I entreat thee to gather them from mine, not from thine resown, unless thine shall have been introduced by me to mine, otherwise they will not lead thee to me, but to thyself, as to their only love : I will grant indeed, that thou mayest discern my goodnesses from thy own, but not that thou mayest feel them; but from mine thou mayest both feel and perceive both thine and mine : I will cause thee also to distinguish them, for I will fill mine not only with delights, but also with happinesses. And that thou mayest remember these things, I have set a tree in the midst of thy Paradise, not far from thy maternal tree, which stands in the inmost and veriest centre of the grove, which also I have given to be guarded by my intelligences; while thou lookest upon this tree, let my sayings be recollected ; its fruits have reference to goodnesses; its first root was indeed from a seed out of heaven, but now it is from its own and proper root; it now also performs its ultimate circle, whence it derives its fruits; do not feed on them, but enjoy the rich feast and food let down to thee

truths, and are, as it were, germinations from their roots ; from truths thus hatched, are again conceived and born new goodnesses, which in like manner disseminate themselves altogether like a tree or body: such therefore, as is the quality of the goodnesses is the quality of the truths produced from them, and the quality of the goodnesses again conceived from these truths; for all truths respect goodnesses as their first and ultimate objects ; on which account, with a view to the efflorescence of truths, all things in their infancy seem to sport. The goodnesses, which are hatched by our truths, derive their nature from the objects of the world, wherefore what is above nature cannot be at all perceived or felt; for this betakes itself to inmost principles, as in seeds, nor is it thence unfolded, unless these coverings are first broken m pieces and reduced to nothing, in which case the inmost principle first bursts forthand produces a new germ. Butin all the first-begotten everything was born in an order the inverse of this our natural order. All other things may be concluded from comparison with what has been said above.

from me. That thou mayest know the difference between them, behold! I will open heaven to thee, and I will fold the rays of thy vision in mine : and instantly having opened his eyes, Contemplate, said she, my Paradise ; stretch out thy sight far and wide, and tell me whether thou seest here any limits and boundaries, as in thine ; whether anything here rises and at the same time sets; all is perpetual in its rising, in its light, and in its life ; what is in my paradise also appears in thine; * but only as a shade, and

* It is said that the celestial Paradise is opened, and that whatsoever is in it is shadowed in the terrestrial one ; consequently that one is represented in the other, as will be seen confirmed more clearly in what follows: for such is the established correspondence, that by natural and moral truths, by means of the transpositions only of the expressions that signify natural things, we are introduced into spiritual truths, and vice versa, and thus, as it were, from one Paradise into another. For the sake of illustration, let one or two examples suffice, as first, Light reveals the quality of its object, but the quality of the object appears according to the state of thelight, wherefore the object is not always such as it appears ; as in the case of beauties, if they are objects viewed in varied light. Now if instead of light we take intelligence, the quality of the object of which is the truth of a thing; since intelligence is universally allowed to be spiritual light, this conclusion follows: Intelligence discovers the truth oj a thing, but the truth of a thing appears according to the state of the intelligence; wherefore that is not always true which is supposed to be true. In like manner, if instead of intelligence wisdom be called into correspondence, the object of which is good; it then follows, Wisdom manifests goodness, but the goodness of a thing appears according to the state of the wisdom ; wherefore that is not always good that is believed to be good. To take yet another example, for correspondences of this sort are infinite, yea, there are correspondences of all things: Harmony flowing from the union of natural beings is not given without aprinciple of harmony from a superior union in nature, which conjoins singular things universally, and the universe singularly: Now if instead of harmony we say concord, and instead of union, love, and instead of natural beings, human minds, then this truth results from the proposition: Concord flowing from that opake, and in every point of it a boundary and end. Look now at the fountains of the goodnesses of which thou art sensible : but look at that Only One from which they all flow ; from thine thou mayest enter into mine, wherefore I will now dismiss thee. When these words were ended a kind of very thin veil being drawn over his sight, he felt himself brought back into the place of his school: but his sight was dizzy, as when we pass from a most serene light into what is doubtful and shady.

56. After some time, when he again beheld his grove, continuing, as it were, in suspense, he began to revolve in his mind what all this meant, when he seemed to be wrapt out of himself; is not this, said he, the very place where I lately was? Are not these the same flowers, the same fruits, the same clusters, which I just now saw 2 I have not been removed from the place, but where have I been ? And where now is that love in the bosom of which I was held ? Where is that Heaven which was opened to me in so great a light ? Am I fallen down or am I deluded ?

the love of human minds is not given without a principle of concord in superior love, which may consociate singular minds universally, and their universal society singularly. Or, if ir^tead of harmony, we adopt the terms satisfaction or happiness; and instead of union, the term love, as before, but souls instead of minds, then the following canon results : Happiness flowing from the mutual love of souls, is not given without a principle of love in Heaven, or in God Himself, who unites singular souls universally, and the universal society of souls singularly. But if instead of this love we take another, it will instantly appear what kind of union thence results, for as the quality of the love is, such is the union. From these and an infinity of similar cases, it is evident in what manner it is allowed to pass from a terrestrial Paradise into a celestial one, and to be instructed from the one concerning the goodnesses and truths of the other : but from propositions not true result falsities, and thus we are not introduced into Paradises. These things however will become still more evident from the series of the things which follow. _s

And when he was most intent on these inquiries, so that the intention itself made his bosom beat, Tell me, my wisdoms 1 said he, I intreat you by God, where I have been ; rescue me from this darkness. He also moistened his prayers with tears. Then said one of his wisdoms, Believe not, my lord, that thou hast been wrapt on high from this place, and art thence fallen down again; here we are, and here we have been: but thou art not alone with us, thou remainest yet in His bosom where He holds thee intimately, as I see with mine eyes, and thou also feelest; it is only the shade of thy sight which obstructs thy view; if that veil, which I see in thee to be a very thin one, be a little withdrawn, He will again appear; for He is in our inmost principles, and also in the highest, Himself and His heaven being in the former and the latter ; all inmost principles are full of His rays, and where His rays are, there is His sight from the highest or His throne, consequently His presence, for rays continue objects to the sight. The sight of thine eye was willing to believe me, that there were, as it were, ladders and steps, by which He might descend from His highest principles to our inmost; but I smiled at its ludicrous conjectures, and often said to it, thou art deceived, but suffer thyself to be taught by thy mind, that descent is given not from highest principles to inmost, but from highest to inferior principles, and from inmost to exterior, where thou residest; be not so dull and unsettled in giving credit to what I say, for we are more concealed from thee because we are there also: our soul, which is in the inmost principles of thy body, from its supreme principles both sees and feels also the most minute things which are doing in its kingdom; but when it descends to thee, or its sight, that thou also mayest see, it descends as by ladders and steps ; what then must be the case with Him who is in its inmost principles ? But He is also in outermost principles; nevertheless unless our mind, like a gate, is opened inward, He does not appear ; for nature is opake, nor is He transparent by His own light itself, unless the hinge be turned. This now is the reason why, when thou retiredst interiorly within thyself, thou wast led to suppose thyself to be wrapt above or out of thyself; but Heaven, which is also called the kingdom of God, is interiorly within us; our minds are such as to be capable of turning two ways, as upon hinges, viz. in

parts of the viscera, and in their windings and pores, so that from the first moment of its life it keeps all and singular things under its auspices, and arranges them according to circumstances. That the sense of all things flows in to the soul, is evident from the harmonies of modes, of which our mind is made sensible alike before and after the perfection of its understanding, as was observed above ; and from the changes of state of all the viscera altogether according to every turn of circumstances, which is rendered manifest in the stomach, the intestines, the liver, the kidneys, and the rest of the viscera ; moreover also from her fibres, which mark the whole organical texture; they are her rays; wherefore, wheresoever they are, she herself also is present, or she sees and feels from her supreme principle : for in those principles she resides in her most simple form, that from them, as centres, she may behold and govern her whole kingdom and all its circumferences. That every fibre, or ray, is an actual substance, formed after the image of its principle from which it flows, will be clearly demonstrated below. When therefore the soul is made sensible of anything from her most simple fibres, she is then made sensible from inmost principles; but when she is made sensible from forms produced out of herself, or her fibre, she is then made sensible, not from inmost principles, but from those which are out of or beneath herself. For all compound forms are substances by themselves, and have their proper predicates, the inmost principles of which are nevertheless occupied by the soul; in this manner she is said to go forth to her sight, or to descend.

wards and outwards, or upwards and downwards ; for there are, as it were, two ways, or places of reception of two guests. Into our minds also two lights flow in, one which is called spiritual, from the Supreme and his love ; the other natural, from the sun of our world and its heat; these lights meet together in our minds, and from their meeting together they become as centres of the whole universe, viz. of heaven and of the world; hence from them, as from centres, it is allowable to expatiate with new vision into all the circumferences of the universe, and to examine each paradise, as it were, with twin eyes. By this way the love of the Supreme has introduced thee to Himself; He only lifted up the little shade, and filled thee with His own love, in consequence whereof thou sawest thyself in inmost principles. But understand also the reason of this, viz. that thus he might accomplish the grand circle of creation, and might draw together to Himself the circles of universal nature, so as to be the.Last of them all, as He is the First; for by our minds universal nature is introduced to her Supreme; wherefore thou art, or thy mind is, the bond and medium, by love, of all things which have been created : thus now heavenly things are joined with earthly, and earthly with heavenly. Thou askedst ajso just now, what was the subject of the discourse between us and the sacred intelligences ? I will now tell thee ; they were ordered, that as often as they descended into thy paradise, they should first always enter thy two-doored Helicon, as a temple or sacred edifice, and not visit the earth until they had saluted us; and when they return, that they should introduce thy intelligences to us; they call us their daughters, their images, but now their sisters; we will unbar the gate. But behold I they already present themselves and approach I Before however he could lift himself up to meet them, they were at hand. Thus this scene was closed, which was the fourth in order.

SECTION THIRD.

CONCERNING THE LOVE OF THE FIRST-BEGOTTEN.

57. While our first-begotten was about to raise himself from his couch, he was drawn back by a kind of spontaneous force ; nor could he yet see those sacred strangers who had been announced ; for his sight still wandered in ambiguous light and shade. But presently having, as it were, wiped his eyes, he beheld himself surrounded by innumerable infant girls, instituting a kind of sport by winding dances; they had all of them beautiful countenances, and were like painted images of laughter ; their hair was made up in knots with golden clasps ; their foreheads were ornamented with bright gems; in other respects they were clad, not with precarious, but native ornaments, for they were naked, divided indeed, but yet conjoined and undivided by whirling chaplets, the border of which was pressed by each in association; their sport was directed into perpetual orbs, by which, like Euripuses, they flowed to their goals : the form itself marked the goal, which sometimes was interior, as it were, concentrating itself, but sometimes more elevated, being prominent, like the figure of an obelisk or pillar; into these goals they insinuated themselves by circuits and a kind of spiral line, both inwards and upwards, always with a rapid motion; and thus again and again, until at length they entered by orderly influx to the very couch itself, where the first-begotten was sitting; and what was wonderful to see, they then suddenly became effulgent like lights or little stars, the rays of which, shooting forth from each, as centres, towards the circumferences, formed a kind of luminous and glittering circuit, like a girdle, around this globe or tuft; and instantly they all embraced each other by one impulse. Sometimes also they seemed to cut off from their numbers some of their company, and when our young man was indignant at it, and wished to restore them again to their harmony, they flowed back again into order of themselves, without his interference ; and that he might not indulge greedily in these sights, lo ! instantly all was at an end; and when in vain he would recall them to sight, and became anxious, he questioned his wisdoms, when he had called them to him, with a quick and tremulous voice, whether they had beheld these infantile sports, entreating them to explain to him, if anything lay more deeply concealed under this jocular show than what immediately struck the sight? In reply to this question, the first of the wisdoms thus answered with a smile : They were the celestial wisdoms and intelligences whose coming we announced, under the appearance of infants; for they put on whatsoever forms they please, and imitate all actions, representing thereby whatsoever we express by the words of discourse; for the discourses of the heavenly beings are merely representations, as are also the discourses of our minds ; thus they insinuate everything with delights, and with life, and give it clearness and permanence in our minds : nor do they give forth the least sign, or stir a

step, in which there is not concealed something sublime and mysterious ; we have beheld this, not with our eyes, but with our minds ; wherefore to remove from thy mind all anxiety of doubt, I will unfold to thee the above sport. Every one of us, as thou sawestfwith a glad and handsome face, under an aspect of love, represented some goodness; for in proportion to the number of goodnesses, inasmuch as they are sweetnesses, is the number of our loves: the gold with which thou sawest our hair tied into a knot, is a badge of goodness and innocence, wherefore the first of ages, or our infancy, is called golden. The sport itself of loves or goodnesses had reference to the truths, which are born from a series of progressive goodnesses; the gems, with which the foreheads were adorned, are also badges of truth. The chaplets which they mutually laid hold of, and by which they were, as it were, chained together, were the bands which bind together, and thus connect in order the forms of truths. The pleasantnesses flowing from the sport itself, or from the harmony of form, are gratifications or happinesses, consequently new goodnesses, which thence finally arise. The bendings to a kind of goal, inwards to- of our minds ; for we can conceive, think, conclude, in a moment of time, more things than it is possible to utter and express by words of speech, or by writing, in the space of a whole day : words are only then of aid when we are disposed to utter, by speech, the things which are thus born: the veriest life of our intelligence is in representations of this sort, wherefore in this respect our minds are like the minds of heavenly beings. But the reason why we cannot so distinctly perceive these things in ourselves, is, because we indulge more and sooner in the activity of our imagination than of our thought; for expressions are represented in the imagination under a species of ideas, and vice versa. Nor could our first-born enjoy any other discourse, since he was yet alone, norjiad any one to converse with ; consequently as yet he had a pure mind like that of heavenly beings, but clothed with a heavy body, that he might be an inhabitant of the earth.

wards a centre, or upwards towards a summit, was the unanimous agreement of all truths directed towards one good, or the best of goods; and the reason why they were suddenly resplendent when they approached to thy couch, originated in the very essential love of the Supreme, or the best, in whose bosom w^re saw thee sitting. The rays flowing forth from each into the circuit, is the common bond which connects each universally, and the universal chorus singularly ; for such is the determination and connexion of every form which is given in nature ; wherefore also they embraced each other by one impulse. But the reason why some of their company escaped from the rest, and returned . again of themselves into harmony, while thou wast indignant, and was endeavoring to recall them, was, that thou thyself mightest discern clearly that nothing flows from thee, but that all things flow together from the Supreme and His love, into their order and union: he excited a certain species of indignation or grief, to the intent that thou mightest learn, that nothing is thine which thou sup- posest to be thine: for we are powers, or organs, and instruments of life, and thus mediations, by which the last goes and returns to the first and the first to the last; consequently, that all things which are created flow to him by

[or through] thee, and thus subsist perpetually as they were made; for subsistence is perpetual existence, and conservation is perpetual creation: this was the very end of the above sport.

58. While he, as it were, immersed his greedy mind in these sayings, being struck with the last remark, that nothing was his own which he supposed to be his own, he began to consider with himself, and to ask, Is this a jocose observation which has penetrated my ear? Is it not my own, that I perceive, that I feel, that I distinguish goodnesses, that I give one a preference to another ? Do not I belong to myself when yet I seem to belong to myself? If these things are not mine, they are all vain names, and like volatile feathers, nor would there be any difference between my life and a shadow, or nothing. While he thus grew conceited with his thoughts, he placed himself nearer to his wisdom, and taking her by the hand, he said, What is this that thou hast told me, that nothing is my own which I suppose to be my own, and that I am only a power? Are you disposed thus to entertain me with a joke? Do not I speak with thee from myself ? And when he began to grow warm, the wisdom, to appease the increasing heat, begged his pardon, and said, I durst not venture to jest with thee, my lord ; but again I repeat that nothing is thine own which thou supposest to be thine own; thou art only a power, which from itself, or from its own, has no activity; but thou art a power more noble than all created powers; thou art a kind of jewel, yea, thou art the delight of Heaven itself; thou bearest its treasures, and leadest its triumphs : but, my lord, do not grasp my hand so hard, for possibly, when thou hast heard all, thou wilt let go my hand; dost thou not know, that no force excites powers, except what flows-in from without? Both Heaven and earth flows-in into thee with their valuables and goods, but they are out

of thee ; thou receivest those things, and actest as from borrowed forces ; does thine ear hear anything, unless the modulated air brings in sounds ? Hence is the force which causes hearing : dost thou taste anything, unless food be brought to thy tongue * Hast thou any smell, unless the volatile particles floating in the air touch the fibres of that organ ? Are the organs of thy body, or the viscera, enabled to perform their offices, unless the influent air alternately expands thy lungs? All those things are only organs and instruments, or are powers which have no activity without a force operating upon them from without.* Consider only

* If we examine the organs and viscera of our bodies, the greater and the lesser, or as many as can be viewed and discovered by the eye or the microscope, it will appear, that no one of them can act or operate, unless something from without flows-in, which gives it the power of acting; for whatsoever flows-in, from the motion of its influx, derives and communicates that active force ; the heart cannot be excited to its systoles and diastoles, except by the blood of the vena cava, which is poured into its right auricle, and by the pulmonary blood, which is poured into the left; the liver is not excited tp its operations, unless by the blood, which is first infused into the vena portan Nor is the stomach excited to its modes of digestion and trituration, except by aliments with which it is loaded through the gullet; also by the spirit, which is infused continually from the cerebellum into its fibres. Our muscles themselves derive motion from a similar spirit infused into’ their fibres, thus not from themselves but from a force applied from without, or extrinsically; it is said extrin- sically, or from without, whether it flows-in from what is superior, or from what is inferior, also from what is interior, and thus is not self- inherent; but when this force is joined or adapted to a power, and the latter is thus acted upon, then it appears as if the power alone acted from itself, for the active force, as a principal cause, being joined to the passive force as an instrumental cause, they both constitute one efficient cause, because they act together; nevertheless that they are separate, and capable of being separated, appears from all that has been said; wherefore all our viscera and organs in themselves^are naked powers, that is, have the power of acting, but not from themselves, for they must cither admit, or invite, their force out of them- the eye how it sees nothing unless it be illuminated : close it up with its eye brows, and thou wilt perceive that the light itself is that active force which enables thee to distinguish its discriminations, or images and objects. But this latter light is of the sun, whereas the other light, which has life in it, is that from which thou hast intelligence and thy very mind; suppose not however that this light is in thee as thy own, and that it is not conveyed into thine understanding as the other light is conveyed into thine eyes: whence are the goodnesses which thou feelest and discernest; are they from thyself or from Heaven ? They are not thine, neither are other things thine, which are thence formed, as from their principles; for one thing is derived by a continual series from another, and He who gives and rules the one, gives and rules the other, for He gives thee to feel that it is brought from Heaven. I will give thee a demonstration of this; I will intercept that light which flows-in through thy mother, or our soul, and thou wilt perceive whence thou hast understanding and will. And presently she seemed as it were, to retire, on which occasion, finding his whole mind overshadowed, he was desirous to cry out, Whither art thou gone, my wisdom ; but his voice was stifled in his lips, and he would have fallen down in astonishment, as in a swoon, unless suddenly she had appeared again. Perceive now, said she, what is thine own, and how far thou differest from the nature of a log ; but I did not remove myself, I prayed only that our selves ; and if they invite, there is another force out of that, which gives them the ability to invite, as the action of the lungs or respiration, or other similar cases ; for one thing hangs from another, as a chain from its links, and all things from their first principle ; nor is anything else moved by itself, not even fire, as will be demonstrated below. But that all powers may be excited suitably to their forms, as many active forces are created as may correspond to these powers, which are passive.

mother, from the necessity of changing the state, might remit something of the effect of that light; hence came the darkness which blinded thy mind. Hast thou not heard from her in her discourses with us, that thou livest under her auspices, and that that light which flows-in into thee, is from her, because by [or through] her ? There is only One who lives, and inasmuch as we live from Him, we also act from the same ; and if we live and act from Him we are in Him.

59. On hearing these words, being a little composed, with his finger applied to his forehead contracted towards the eye-brows, he considered with himself, and, as it were, looked into himself; for to give greater liberty to his mind, he removed the light from his eyes: and when he had compared his reasons, having let the light again into his eye, and removed the wrinkles from his forehead, he addressed his wisdom .cheerfully and courteously : I discover says he, that 1 have rashly claimed each sight to myself, as my own, for it must of necessity be that I live and subsist from the being of Him, from whom I am and have existed, otherwise connexion would be broken, and communication intercepted : nevertheless I seem to myself to be able to will all that which involves any act in mind and body; has He not attributed that to myself as my own, which by His force is communicated to my power, for this appears acquired, inasmuch as it recurs as often as I am pleased to excite it: but I still perceive that the thread is not quite unravelled ; give me, I pray, quickly the clue to it, as thou hast begun. Then his wisdom, by her intuition fixing his sight in herself, addressed him in these words : Thou seemest to be able to reflect on what is communicated to thee, and to recall it, but it does not thence follow that it is thine; dost thou not intend and act all things from an end? Does not the end rule the cause, and the cause the effect ? Our ends in all cases are loves, or the goods which we love; our sportive infants therefore represented goodnesses under the appearance of loves. Didst thcu not observe lately a ringdove on the tops of our trees, how violently he beat the air with his wings ? He beheld his consort dove, and the nest which contained her young; this was the cause of his so rapid flight; it seemed also to him, to be his own power by which he vibrated his wings, and took the shortest way to his nest; but they were his loves, his fledged young, and his mistress, which excited his mind, and his mind which moved his wings ; what therefore rules the cause, this also rules the effect, for the cause of the cause itself is also the effect. The case is similar in ourselves : our loves, numerous as they are, hold the reins, and excite and govern our minds; by them we are drawn, and them we follow; and inasmuch as we follow, we seem to act, because we vibrate the wings of our mind accordingly, and exercise the power of our body ; we also run the shortest way, nor do we turn aside unless something opposes, in consequence of which opposition the shortest way is sometimes turned into a circuitous way : nothing but love excites that which is communicated to our minds : if another love also flows-in from another quarter, we balance between both, and because our reflection is directed to that, which in such case determines our compliance with one or the other, we suppose this to be our own. Love is, as it were, the charioteer, who holds the reins and governs us as horsemen or horses, and darkens our minds, and persuades us that we sit as princes or leaders in the chariot: or if love, like a ready servant, runs before, he hurries us along with him in harness, like biped steeds ; this harness are our desires, which are nothing but love continued, for, like bands, they conjoin us continually to it. But love not only draws us, it also impels; for in universal nature, wheresoever there is attraction there is also impulsion, whence come all equilibriums: fear is behind, which is urgent to prevent our falling away from its aspect and favor : for in proportion to the gratification and goodness which we experience in love, is the unhappiness and misfortune which we feel in its privation, and which we fear according to the essence and degree of love; hence we are bound and chained in the middle, before and behind, and only act as we are acted upon : tell me now what is yours, or the will of yours.

60. On hearing what she had said, when we balance between two loves, he could with difficulty restrain his spirit to the end of her discourse, being urgent and anxious to inquire what those two loves were : and scarce had she finished her discourse, when he interrupted her, and with great eagerness asked her to tell him what that other love was; I am acquainted, said he, with, only one love, to which all the rest, which are called goodnesses, conduct: I never remain suspended between two, nor between a variety of goodnesses, for one instantly appears to me more beautiful and delicious, in proportion as it is nearer to our Only One. To this the wisdom replied, with a sigh of gladness, How I wish, says she, that thou mightest never understand more than one, and that the other had been banished at the utmost distance and forever from our Helicon 1 In this case we would continue ever to return to thee an exchange of the love with which thou lately entreatedst us, with so much sweetness, to favor thee; but allow me first to describe what is the quality of our love; for there is nothing which lies concealed in a shade, that can be made to appear, unless it be piesented in the light; afterwards, if you please, I will proceed to show what is properly our own, what is freedom, and what is free-will.

61. Emerging, as it were, out of a mist, into a clear atmosphere, describe, says he, and if you are able, paint these subjects before mine eyes : I earnestly wish that that thin veil was rent asunder, which you said obstructed my sight; hence I am a little angry with myself, and am envious towards you, because you see these things clearly without me : how comes it to pass that your mind has more of discernment than mine? She replied, with an eye of tenderness, we wisdoms, as to our minds, are under the rule of thy mother, or soul, but as to our bodies, we are in thy Helicon, or under thy rule ; she is not with thee in a terrestrial Paradise, but with the sacred intelligences in a celestial one ; hence she draws the knowledges of goodnesses, which she reflects into thy mind, by [or through] us and the powers of our body ; and as often as anything flows-in through the doors of thy senses, she tells thee what she sees and perceives in heaven conformable to it; then, as like excites like, the idea excites its

this more clearly, it is to be noted, that the operations, or if you prefer the expression, the activities of our rational mind, are only the common activities of our soul in its principles, which also are the beginnings of the fibres, or where is the supreme sphere of our body, and, as it were, the Olympus or Heaven of other spheres. For it is a known thing, that all forms are essential determinations, or that they are determined by those things which are called essences or the essentials of form ; these essentials not only design and produce the form, but also enable it to enjoy its own proper natures and forces, and to act from them, into which those essentials, or essences, flow-in, as principles or reasons into their causes; the activities therefore of the form thus compounded or determined, are called the activities or common operations of a prior principle, and thus may be likened to the forces of any body, which flow, as in us, from the determinations of its own mind or soul. Such also are our minds with respect to the soul, whence it may be concluded what is the quality of the mutual influx of the one into the other. But this also, as being an interesting subject, requires explanation : those very essentials, which are determining, always contrive the form, which they prepare for the reception of similar activities or forces with their own, or if you choose, of similar modes, and thus, as parents, adopt them in such a manner, that they may become powers of receiving similar powers with their own, consequently common forces; for no form conceives and produces another, except accordin' to the type of its own nature ; but whereas all active forces, which initiated that power into its acts, flow-in from without; and whereas those forces flow-in, either by a prior or superior way, that is, by the way of the soul, or by a posterior or infeiior way, that is, by the way of the senses, in all the first- begotton, consequently in Adam, they entered by the way of the soul, or a superior way, in their order ; whereas in us, his posterity, they enter by the way of the senses, or an inferior way ; hence the ground of the distinction, that we do not know and discern goodnesses from our earliest age, or, as it is commonly expressed, that our ideas are not connate. Still by a prior way, or that of the soul, those active forces flow-in in almost all brute animals ; but they are only the forces of superior nature ; wherefore they know, their first nativity, whatever may be agreeable to their nature; and they are born into all the seitype, and afterwards the type its idea ; one thing flows into another in order, and arranges itself, and elevates itself by degrees to those things which correspond ; hence it comes to pass, that, as thou saidest, thou discernest not beauties with the eyes, but their goodnesses and usefulnesses with the mind; the latter are actually represented to thy soul, partly also immediately to thy mind, for nothing is felt, or admitted into the sensation, except from those things which actually are ; from what has no being it is impossible for anything to exist, and out of nothing nothing can be made, still less be sensibly perceived : and do not believe that the lights alone, which flow-in, produce this effect, for by their virtue thou only beholdest what is objected [or made an object] to each sight; for by the benefit of light thou seest the forms themselves which exist, whence comes sensation, and at length* the knowledges of goodnesses ; didst thou not hear love itself telling thee, that in thy Paradise there are the same things as in her’s, yet not in life and in light, but in shade; and that thou mayest enter from thine into her’s ; wherefore also she has left thee to thyself. Therefore, if thou art so disposed, thou mayest not only contemplate her Paradise, but also herself. On hearing these words, exulting with joy, and, as it were, forgetting himself, Grant, says he, O my wisdom, from love, that my mind may be thine, and thus I may enjoy the pleasure of contemplating love itself. But, she continued, thou shalt contemplate both love itself and heaven, for there is nothing given in the universe which does not represent them; I will proceed to unfold this truth, but do not any longer interrupt me.

62. If we unfold, as from swaddling-clothes, thine infant paradise, we shall behold, says she, as in a mirror, ences profitable to their love, which is not the case with us men ; but this subject will be further treated upon in what follows. another paradise, from which it derives its birth, or which it shadows forth: thou art not ignorant that the visible things of the world, and that highly cultivated nature, which by its sports fascinates our senses, derived its first birth-day, and all its other birth-days in continuation, and perpetually derives them, from that great sum which we view with our eyes; for we subsist from the principle which gave us existence, and we are renewed by that which first made us new; that this is the case, is evident from his own light; for if he was again to hide his countenance in a crust or covering, or to dissipate his fires in the universe, or otherwise to extinguish his torches, would not this world and the productions of nature come to an end 1 Would not this paradise be dissolved ? Would not thy body also, which thou carriest about with thee, be reduced to dust, but not dispersed into the air, because there would be no air to receive its ashes? The earth also and its orbit would know neither centre or circumference: these conclusions are rendered obvious from the seasons of night and of winter, for in the night all things fall into shade, and in winter into cold. But to return : all these things demonstrate that everything in this world derives its nature from the sun, as from a parent; and if the sun be a parent, it follows that his offspring, or products, resemble him in some kind of type or image;.his rays themselves, which glance before our eyes, are so many, and, as it were, continued suns; if you concentrate them, you will both

see and feel himself, and at the same time his fire, in a diminutive image ; wherefore he is present where his ray is, and we are consequently under his auspices while we are in his rays. From these exist all things whatsoever which our eyes behold, for if they have their birth from him, they doubtless have their birth from those things by which he exhibits himself present to us. But what is it that is in his rays ? Is it not light, and at the same time heat? These principles are distinct from each other, since he may be present with one, and not in like manner with

is empty or a vacuum, common sense itself dictates ; but they are the most diminutive or purest forms, which receive discreetly the activities or active forces of the sun, and convey them even to the ultimate boundaries of the universe; these diminutive forms or substances, taken together, constitute that aura which is called ether ; and from the most perfect virtue of their elasticity they derive the faculty of communicating whatsoever force they receive to neighboring or contiguous objects, so that they destroy nothing that is received by them, that being the nature of pure elasticity. These powers, which arise from the substances of the sun himself, and are exhaled, as was shown above, from his great ocean, must of necessity act, while they are acted upon, according to the modes or methods of his activity; wherefore they are, as it were, the smallest mirrors, and a kind of receptacles of his powers, when they are actuated ; and thus they not only receive him in themselves, while in their forms, but also convey him to our eyes, almost without an idea of space or time. For unless they were actual substances, objects could not be continued to the sight; nor could the organ of sight, or the eye, be formed to exist according to the nature of its modification, as the ear is formed to exist according to the nature of the modification of the air; still less could a ray be concentrated and divided by optical lenses; neither could it be reflected according to the angle of incidence, and be refracted according to a given law’, still less could those things become heated, on which it glances ; yea, the ray itself so convulses by its touch the organ of smell, as to excite it to a kind of convulsion or sneezing; in a word, unless a ray was a real continuation of the sun by forms, there would not anything exist, which yet is perceived by the very senses to exist from these forms. the other ; his light appears as serene and clear in midwinter, as in mid-summer, but heat is then not present in the bosom of his rays; yet he is still with us, and in like manner illuminates our sight; but since there is no heat in his rays, vegetation is torpid, and the plants of the earth end their days: but as soon as he rises again with his fire, as in the time of spring and summer, all things become renovated, returning into their blossom, and recollecting their former days ; seeds strike root, roots put forth shoots, these produce branches and leaves, and at length beget new seeds, and continue in themselves the very web of creation, and thus by their small circles effigy the great circle of the universe ; for in like manner they rise and set, and in like manner they circumscribe the courses of their life, and by their ages transcribe themselves, as it were, into his summer and winter, or, if you prefer the expression, into his day and shade ; in a word, all things are as small effigies of his great one. But these things, as was said, are not the effects of his light, unless it be also attended with his heat.

63. But let us cover the sight of our eyes with a kind of veil, and let us for a time leave this paradise with its beauties, in the brightness of its light, until we examine the other or celestial paradise, with a purer vision, and thus with another light: those two lights also spontaneously remove and hide themselves from mutual sight, and one places the other, as it w^rere, in a shade : hast not thou thyself experienced, while thou passest from one into the other, that the eye itself, as if conscious of it, deprives itself of its own sight, or that the mind abstracts and withdraws itself from the view of its objects, so that that very light of the great sun is involved, as it were, in darkness ? On the other hand also this light, when thou descendest to the eye and the objects of its sight, obscures the celestial light and its objects ; nor does the former return to its native opacity until the gate being, as it were, opened, the lightning of heaven glances upon the interior chamber of thy sight. This indicates and clearly demonstrates, that there are two lights altogether distinct from each other, and differing in their natures ; and that one does not easily enter the bed-chamber of the other. It declares also, that heaven borrows nothing from the light of the sun to increase its lustre, but only from its own sun, whence it derives its all. And if the lights are distinct, so must also their effects be, for effects make one with their causes, and conjointly mingle together their several properties. Celestial light does not give the faculty of seeing forms, such as the eye transmits, but such as are their uses and goodnesses ; for these are the ends, for the sake of which those forms were created, which ends are not marked in earth, but in heaven. The rays of that light, in like manner, are continuous and discreet suns , or continued streams of their fountain; and whereas we are rendered more intelligent and wise, in proportion as we suffer ourselves to be more enlightened by it, hence it follows that that light flows only from the sun of intelligence and wisdom itself, or from our Supreme; also that all things, which thence derive their origins, in like manner as those

which are derived from solar light, are His types and images, and worship Him as their parent. From the solar rays we are also instructed, what is likewise contained in the rays of this latter sun, viz. that both light and heat are contained, but that the light is spiritual, whence comes intellectual sight, or the understanding of truth, and that the heat is spiritual, or that it is love, whence comes the sensation of good. We learn moreover, that in like manner one can be unfolded in the other, viz. light in heat, and heat in light, in different manners, and in different degrees; for we understand truth, and from this we discern good, but to feel it, or to be affected by it, this is not of light, but of love; without the presence of this latter, that light is like the light of the sun in its winter, and falls into its shade ; but the instant that it is warmed by love it is transcribed, as it were, into its spring, and passes into its day : the circumstances both of one and of the other are altogether similar. Our mind is that soil, or that ground, into which those rays flow with their light and love; seeds are the goodnesses, of which we have a sensible and delightful perception; roots are their first effects, and are called the beginnings of truths and of other goodnesses ; for all things derive from them, as from roots, their secondary birth; for hence arise our truths, as germs, which put forth branches, twigs, and leaves, and blossom after the manner of a tree; hence come new fruits, or seeds, or goodnesses, sprouting forth from the truths of that understanding ; hence again new roots, new blossoms, and new harvests; and as these become fruitful according to the cultivation of that ground, they raise up and bring to perfection, not trees, but a large forest, yea, a species of a kind of paradise : these are the effects, as was said, not of light, but at the same time of heat, that is, of love. From these considerations it is now evident what is the quality of one paradise, and what of the other : every goodness inseminated in thy mind, of which thou hast a perception, is a certain love, for thou lovest that which thou feelest to be good; nor does anything enter the sphere of thy mind except by feeling ; * and whereas every truth in itself bears the image of the best, in like manner every goodness bears the image of the love of that best: for the ray, which is the continued image of the sun, exports that love from its bosom. From these loves, as from so many seeds, thy mind was conceived and born ; for nothing blossomed in it, except what thence derived its root: from which consideration it follows, that thou carriest in thyself an effigy of Him, or that thou art an image of the Supreme Himself by love.t

•

* Nothing enters the sphere of our mind except by a species of sensation; and the things which first enter excite, and inaugurate into the faculty of acting, the organical forms of our mind, which are the beginnings of all the other forms, as also of the fibresthemselves, and thus endue them, as it were, with proper powers of acting; but hence we are endued only with active powers, which are afterwards excited to their act itself, into which they are inaugurated by forces which flow-in from without: those forces either flow-in through the doors of the senses, or from the reservoir of images or ideas, that is, from the memory ; whether they flow-in from the latter or from the former, they still flow-in from without, for the proper activity of the memory is imagination, but not thought. Hence it appears that our minds are formed from without and from within, only by those things which fall into some, kind of sensation; and this in the first- begotten by a prior or superior way, but in us by a posterior or inferior way ; hence comes the difference, that we ascend by a sense of terrestrial goodnesses to a sense of celestial goodnesses, and this indeed slowly and lately, but he descended, by a sense of celestial goodnesses, to a sense of terrestrial goodnesses, by degrees.

t As our first-begotten might contemplate his love from goodnesses and the truths originating in them, so every one may contemplate his love from his own goodnesses and the truths originating in them, on which subject we shall speak presently.

10*

64. But although these two lights and luminaries, together with their two heats, are so distinct from, and so unlike each other, that they mutually shun and put each other to flight, still they do not disagree, but are in accord and unite in a friendly manner with each other, since one is for the sake of the other : but it may be expedient to examine the federal laws of their union or marriage, for hence, as in light, will appear the reasons of disagreement; to discover which reasons, I wish to call to thy recollection, how the soul, our mother, conceived and formed thy mind from its first stamen ; for I saw this with mine eyes, and still see it as present, since it inheres as if it was infixed in me : on this occasion, she first let herself down from her sacred chamber to the eye, now thine eye, for the sake of taking in, and receiving the images or beautiful forms of Paradise, so many effects of that reverberated light : I remember well, because I am the first-born of wisdoms, that in the instant that those images touched the threshold of that door, they themselves wondered at seeing themselves changed into species of ideas from the mere touch and breathing of our mother, being made sensible that she infused something of life from her own : presently she translated those reformed images or ideas even into the court of thy Helicon, which is called the memory: but afterwards she took them up into our sacristy, or Olympus, after calling them forth with a new kiss and embrace; and I recollect, for I could scarce restrain myself from laughter, that those ideas themselves, while they looked mutually at themselves and their companions, could not again distinguish themselves, perceiving themselves transformed into ideas of a superior nature, called rational and intellectual : from these ideas at length, when joined by society, as it were, into one body, new forms existed, called truths, from which, as parents, were produced intelligences, and

when these grew up, and were made wisdoms, they were adjoined to myself as sisters : from these thy mind was formed, which is called intellectual, and which is sapient. Hence I was enabled to conclude in what manner those two lights, and these two heats of lights were conso- ciated, and, as it were, married together, and how one altogether acceded to the conditions and compacts of the other: for I see that both now have one and the same object in view, viz. * that our mother might

* It appears clearly, as before the sight itself, that the images, which are insinuated through the eye, emerge upwards to a kind of sensory set in a more elevated place, or in the brain, and insinuate themselves into the sphere of the understanding. It appears also that the senses of words in discourse change themselves into similar forms or images, and thus being re-formed, introduce themselves into the same sphere; for every expression involves some idea, or part of an idea. In like manner, it is evident, that those images, whether born or made, resulting from the objects of sight, and bearing a resemblance to them, store themselves up in a kind of memory; and when they are called forth from that memory into the mind, they come forth under a species of ideas, but of such as, from their first cradles, while as yet they are, as it were, infants or immature, have the name of material, because they are similar to the objects of sight. At length being rendered more sublime, they put on, as it were, a spiritual species or form, for the limits or boundaries, with which they were before circumscribed, are, as it were, removed, and they begin to shun their own mind itself howsoever purified, in which case they are called intellectual and immaterial; for they are more universal than to be capable of falling under one complex of intuition. By this method our ideas accede nearer and nearer to spiritual nature or essence, and subject themselves to its government: That to these ideas, after a manner imperceptible, are associated ideas which are purely spiritual, and look only at ends, is clear, while we take a more distinct view of the interiors of these ideas; for in the mind they are no longer employed as ideas, but as ends in those ideas; thus what is spiritual enters into marriage with what is natural, or one joins the other to itself, as a kind of consort. But it is asked, from what source this spiritual principle flows-in into this marriage-chamber of the infuse into the images produced from the light and shade of the sun, and afterwards turned into ideas, life from her

mind ? It is very clear that it does not flow-in through the doors of the sight, or by the way of images, for these are only species of solar light, which contain in them nothing of spiritual light, but that these being enlightened and excited by their own light are elevated upwards so as to meet and be conjoined with spiritual light: this also is clear, that this spiritual principle is not conceived in the memory, and hatched by it, for until they were first transformed by the mind into intellectual, they are not remitted into the storehouse of the memory: It is also very clear, that our mind itself is not from itself born spiritual, for in the time of its infancy it is no mind, but grows and becomes adolescent with years and age: hence now it follows that its origin is not to be’sought after in these paths or by ways, but that we must rise within or above this mind, which is called rational or intellectual, and there inquire where and whence that spiritual principle descends with its ends: when therefore we rise a little above this sphere, which is our intelligible sphere, there presents itself to us the first or supreme substance of the body, which is called the soul, which is not only the soul of the body, but also the soul of this mind itself, to which, as was said, our ideas ascend: The essence and form of this substance is spiritual, which only lives in its universal body, and by which everything of the body exerts the activity of its life, each thing according to its form; on which account it may be called, the form of forms of its body: since therefore this substance, whose essence is spiritual, or soul, resides in the supreme and inmost things of its kingdom, it follows, that through this, as if it was from it, that spiritual principle flows-in, which meet the natural principle, that enters by the way of the senses, and receives the same as the body’s guest, and embraces it; the principle in which it is received as a guest is of the understanding itself. From these considerations it now appears in what manner those two lights, viz. the natural and the spiritual, flow-in by different ways, and after a sacred union conceive such an illustrious offspring, which are so many views of ends associated to their mediating causes. But I am aware that a kind of thick darkness can overspread our minds, consequently inject a scruple about the manner in which the rays alone of lights can produce effects so real, when those radiations from objects are nothing but modifications of the intervening aura; this scruple however presently vanishes when those forms are known to us into which they flow-in, viz. when own life, which, as I said, she derived from Heaven ; and afterwards might clothe them by mutual appositions, with a it is known to us that they are real organical forms; for they creep upwards by real fibres, as is well known from the eye and the rest of the sensories; which forms being the first or beginnings of the organical forms, are taught by those modifications, and are afterwards excited to change their states, or to vary their forms, whence arise the real activities of substances, nearly in the same manner as the modification of air falling into the ear, and other modifications falling into their sensories : the modifications of the auras are themselves real active forces, which excite suitable organical forms by their activities ; as in outermost things, so likewise in inmost, with a difference only of perfections. — But what is life ? Does not living consist in viewing ends ? And since this is the property of an intelligent being, it follows, that a life of intelligence is a view and representation of ends ; this cannot be the faculty of a natural being, but of a spiritual one ; wherefore spiritual things are alive, and the fountain of spiritual things is the life of all things that live, and of all lives. But to. the intent that these ends may be brought into effects, and that uses, may exist, there is need of instrumental causes which in themselves are not alive, or from themselves do not view an end, but merely comply and are subservient to life and intelligence, consequently in their, nature are dead : this clearly appears in our actions themselves, which are influenced by both principles; for action itself, without its life, is merely a motion of the muscles, as of a machine, but it obtains the name of action from the end regarded, or from life, and is the more sublime in proportion as it is influenced by more of life, or more of wisdom; wherefore action is not respected from its motion, or from its figure and countenance, but from the intention and will, that is, from the end', in which the action originates. From these considerations it is evident, that natural things were made to serve spiritual, as an instrumental or organical cause ; in like manner, that this whole universe, which is subject to the sum of the world, was created by the Supreme Fountain of Life, to serve as a medium for arriving at ultimate ends. In our mind itself also some type of a similar creation is represented, while it embraces some ultimate end with means; for in such case it intends causes, by which it may promote its contemplated ends; and for this purpose it calls forth nature to its aid, and by it tends to its goal; thus it first constructs to itself a mind or orb, to be the complex of causes and effects, which may convey and bring forth those) species of body, and might gift them with a kind of nature ; thus she transcribed them into intelligences and wisdoms, and this from the forms themselves, which the light and heat of the sun brought forth and reflected by their rays ; for she, as it were, borrowed these things, and transferred them into fibres and muscles, whence come members and their tender limbs, and hence opr bodies, in which she herself acts as a soul; and since by her, through celestial or spiritual light, and its heat or love, we live our life, thou thyself mayest behold this in me: be pleased only to look at my bosom, my breasts, my countenance, and mine eyes, with which I also look upon thee ; dost thou not see how consentaneous, or how singular is the agreement of all things, which we derive from the nature of the world, and from the life of heaven; one light does not here diminish or overshadow the other, neither does one h6at deaden and extinguish the other, but makes one altogether with the other, as also in thy whole body ; life and nature in us are so concordant, that we live, as it were one and the same : from this union our faces, inasmuch as we are the inhabitants of Helicon, appear, as I believe, like beauties, and our acts as delights, which thou once whisperedst in'my ear; but our mother, or soul, inasmuch as she does not look at bodies, but at our minds, calls those beauties goodnesses, and those delights gratifications, for

ends; from little things, by way of comparison, it is allowed to comprehend greater. That those lights also are distinct, is plain likewise from our minds, which, when the sun of our world is absent, as in the night, and in the case of those who are both born blind and become so, are alike vigorous in intelligence, yea, with a purer and more excellent intelligence, in proportion as they are less disturbed by the light of the world: among the ancients also mention is made of Sophi, who are said purposely to have made themselves blind, so as to extinguish the light of the eye, in order that they might be more at liberty to cultivate spiritual light.

she says that nothing is truly beautiful which is not good, and nothing is truly delightful which is not gratifying; and that I may believe this, she appeals also to our parents, or truths : she also further insists, that nothing can be truly good and gratifying, which does not resemble the best himself in effigy and in act; she therefore calls us his images. That it may still more clearly appear how very closely life is united to nature, or how this latter is taken into the marriage-chamber of Heaven itself, * let me call

* There is nothing given in universal nature which does not derive its form, and thus a species of body, from a sort of soul, and this is the case not only with the subjects of the animal kingdom, but also of the vegetable; the souls of these latter are uses, designed by heaven itself as ends ; in conformity to those uses they are generated and grow ; for, as was above observed, effects are only uses unfolded, and let out into the circle of nature; but in our minds uses are called ends, because they are intended by them, and thus live ; according therefore to the number of ends is the number of the parts of the soul’s intuition, each of which, in order to become uses by effects, must put on a species of a kind of body ; for unless ends, as souls, by a clothing of body, are emitted into the circle of nature, they cannot be exhibited and actually represented as uses. This now is the reason why nothing in any case exists in nature which does not in a type resemble its origin, or soul; and as this origin is from heaven (for all uses, as was said, are ends designed by heaven,) therefore things natural and things celestial must of necessity agree with each other, according to the order first induced, or the most perfect order ; and this in such a manner, that it is allowable to take a view of one from the other; for if we unfold natural things, and in their place transcribe celestial or spiritual things, congruous truths result, as maybe seen confirmed by two examples above, to which may here be added one other; for instance, the sun is the fountain of all light and heat in his world, nor is he the cause of shade and of cold; but shade is the privation of his light, and cold is the privation of his heat; the sun is never deprived of light and heat, but terrestrial objects, in consequence of not being capable of being penetrated by his light and heat, also the directions of his rays, produce this effect, whence come darkness and cold. This sentence, by a change in the form of expression, your attention to love itself; it renders itself manifest, and actually comes forth by heat: and its desire, which is the continuous principle of love, by ardor, wherefore also by the expressions of our speech we salute and mark love itself by fire, and its cupidity by fervor or flame; the marriage itself by flambeaux and torches; by corporeal sense also we perceive its delight in heat. These therefore are connubials of life and of nature, of heaven and of the world; that is, the covenants of each paradise by love, of which covenants we wisdoms are the hostages and hymens.

<56. Hence it is as clear as light, that life has ordained nature to be a consort with itself, and to exercise power accordingly: but since they are folded together in their operations, it may be expedient to unfold the manner by which one flows-in into the other, or what is the nature of order, and what the nature and quality of laws according to order : for the Founder of laws and of rights never acts in any case but from the wisest order. That one flows-in into the other, is plainly declared by existence itself, whence judgment is to be collected concerning subsistence ; for as we exist so also we subsist: but although this is evident from all generation, and especially from our own, it is still of concern, with a view to placing truth in its proper light, that I should a little unravel the web, just

presents us with the following spiritual meaning; God is the fountain of all intelligence and love in His own heaven, nor is He the cause of folly and enmity, but folly is the privation of His intelligence, and enmity is the privation of His love: God is never deprived of intelligence and love, but human minds, which do not suffer themselves to be ruled by the light of His intelligence, and by the rays of His love, also the determinations of His rays, that is, of truths and goodnesses, produce this effect, whence come all folly and hatred.

now woven, from its ultimate threads. The soul has taken the images themselves which are the forms of nature and of her light, entering in by the way of the eye, and having breathed her life into them, has conducted them into the chambers of the memory, and in a becoming manner has assigned to each its abode there; and at the same time, has forbidden them to rush into our Olympus or sacristy, without our permission or order ; these she afterwards arranged so harmoniously, according to the temper and nature of each, when she had called them forth, that at length she constructed from them, as from members, a species of society or body; hence we intelligences and wisdoms were born, in that form of beauty which thou beholdest: what therefore we derive from nature, and what from life, that thou clearly distinguishest with thine eyes. Our soul herself seems indeed to have produced this effect, and on that account we acknowledge and venerate her as a pious mother; nevertheless, she herself does not live from herself, being only a power which lives and acts from another : the life itself, as her soul, flows-in into her from the fountain of all things that live, or of all lives, and thus by [or through] her into us, her offspring: therefore we are celestial in our origin, and therefore we are called wisdoms. It was that life, which, by the instrumentality of our soul, went to meet the lights and shades, or forms of nature, and when she had converted them into ideas, through the little cells of the memory, arranged them into classes and tribes, according to genera and species : it was the same life which afterwards called them forth into thy Helicon, whence we derive our birth. Such now was order; and such the influx of life into nature ; according to the same we exist, as I said, and according to the same we subsist, or live and act. From these considerations it is now clear, that nature durst not, in the least instance, introduce herself into the marriage-chamber of our life, unless she was commanded and called forth; but that the Supreme and His love, according to the intuition of ends, that is, according to his own good pleasure, adapted nature, and adapted her forms altogether to those uses which he intended. This therefore is the order from which all our laws of nature and decrees flow, and by which our destinations are governed : all these things are derivative veins from that one single fountain. Supreme things therefore, or things superior in order, flow in into inferior things, and these into ultimate things, but not vice versa; hence inferior things derive their powers and perfections, or thence flow all the qualities and abilities of inferior things. When this order is established, then there is nothing so complicated and abstruse which is not explained and unfolded, for it is the light itself which sees, and the living force itself which acts: by this order lollies themselves are re-formed into intelligences, and insanities

which there is more of shade than of light: and thus the mind [mens ] is to be removed from, and, as it were, to keep watch over the mind [animus] and the grosser objects of the senses. But what is the nature of that order, and what the nature of influx according to that order must be drawn from the doctrines of order and of degrees, also from the doctrines of influxes, which ought to be cultivated. But to give a sketch of the nature of that order, and of the nature of influx, it is to be noted, that prior things are altogether distinct from posterior things, or superior things from inferior, as forms themselves, one of which begets another; that which begets, or is the parent, is called prior or superior, but that which is begotten, posterior or inferior ; or if instead of forms we say substances, the case is precisely similar: the supreme form we called spiritual, the next to it which follows in order, celestial; hence inferior forms, by like generation, result even to the last, which is called angular, properly terrestrial, corporeal, and material, which in like manner is arranged into superior and inferior, on which subject we shall speak presently. Such now is the order of substances, and according to this order the organization of our body is instituted ; wherefore the soul is said to be in the first and highest principles of its kingdom, where the form is spiritual; from this form are derived the rest, which, by successive generations of one from the other, put on the quality of the following forms, which are therefore also called inferior or posterior. According to the order in w^rhich the forms succeed each other, are also the perfections of all qualities and faculties; for those which are superior in themselves and their own nature are infinitely more perfect than those which are inferior in themselves and their nature, which every one may understand from generation alone. But is it asked now, what is the nature of influx ? One form by itself does not flow-in into another, for the prior or parent acts only as the cause of another, or bestows upon it a nature, or gives an ability of acting in this or that manner, according to the influx of active forces ; but all active into wisdoms ; mud is changed into the brightest gem, and dust into shining gold; the innate darkness of nature is resplendent as in light; our acts become pieties and virtues ; and moreover all things succeed according to our wish and sentiment. But it is altogether otherwise if this order be inverted, that is, if liberty be given to nature to break in, without leave, into the higher and sacred recesses of life; for in this case all things spontaneously involve themselves in shades, the torches of life and of love, hating that light, shun it, and become, as it were, evanescent, inasmuch as the laws of order itself, and the appointed principles of life, are rescinded, and everything takes a form from the blow, whereby it becomes an object of dispute, and thus falls into doubt. If you please, let us make the experiment, but let us make it prudently; let us open the doors of the court, and let us suffer our wo- men-servants, or ideas, to flow-in into this palace, from their own imaginary order and instinct, and we shall see with our eyes, from that order inverted, their unruly attempts and acts : on saying these words the locks and bolts

forces, which ought to excite these forms, as bare abilities flow-in from without; as into our first forms, or soul, the life itself flows-in which is the living force of all things ; in like manner into the other, but mediately by the Divine Spirit; for there are as many active forces as there are in us abilities, or passive forces; of which, God willing, we shall treat in their order: these loves are what flow-in, the order of whose influx ought to be altogether according to the order of our faculties, viz. from highest principles to lower, but not vice versa. Nevertheless we may in some measure conceive the influx of the soul into the rational mind, from a similar influx, or the influx of that mind into the muscles, for the muscles are forms adapted to the idea of their mind, as the mind is adapted to the idea of its soul. This is a general account of the subject, but its parts will be particularly considered in what follows, that hence a clearer idea may be presented both of order and of influx by degrees.

were suddenly opened, and leave was given to theid eas to rush from their chambers into Olympus, by a law of their own choosing; instantly having plucked the lamps from the ceiling, and with their hair uncombed, they rushed in crowds into the palace itself, in a graceful manner, according to their fancy; and presently as they entered, they began to investigate with their lamps, where were their mistresses, the wisdoms, for by that light they could not discern them ; and when they had sought them in vain, seeming to themselves as if they were alone, and left to their own genius, they began to dispute sharply with each other, and, as it were, by just conclusions, as it seemed to them, to contest whether this was the habitation of their wisdom; some affirmed, others denied, and several being consociated were desirous to pronounce sentence in an arbitrary and lordly manner like the supreme intelligences, insisting that those wisdoms are nowhere to be found; let us occupy, say they, these empty habitations; possibly they are spectres, which, at the first sight of our light, fly away into the air; let us enjoy our free-will, for we are free ; but what, they added, is wisdom ? What is the soul of which they say they are begotten ? Yea, what is life? And what is that love, which, by their account, is everything ? Where is that sacred fire, of which we were told, but which does not appear in this palace ? Let us light up still more lamps, and examine : but hence arose an altercation, and \Vhen the combat was verging to sedition, the soul being excited from its sacred chamber (for a kind of vertigo began to seize her eyes,) burst into the sacristy, and thrust down that disorderly crew, notwithstanding their murmurings, by force and by threats into their dens ; for not being able to bear the brightness of her light, they even sunk down of themselves, as if deprived of all power and life. At the close of this transaction, the wisdom, turning to her prince, thus addressed him : You see, says she, how deformed they appeared, and how wild was their carriage, with their dishevelled hair on their shoulders, like furies, and with bloody, and at the same time, dark countenances, and yet they seem to themselves as images of the highest beauty; you see likewise, what confusion ensued, and what must ensue, if the order be not observed, which requires that superior things should have the command over inferior, or life itself over nature ; for the Supreme is the order of all orders ; from Him flow ends, from hence the uses of ends, and the effects of uses ; when this order is- observed, first principles proceed duly to their ultimates, and ultimates return to their first principles : let us therefore keep this in view, because we bear it in our very bosom ; by this, life was begotten 'in us, because by this, love was begotten ; in a word, nothing is more inviolable, because nothing is more venerable; therefore nothing ought to be more venerable because nothing is more inviolable. When therefore nature in us is invited and introduced into a partnership of life by this order, we wisdoms behold, as from a high summit, all things which are beneath, and widely subjected to our eyes ; and we see, as from the highest light, in what manner those inferior lives wander in shades, while they walk in their own light; they, on the other hand, do not behold us, and we are to them like shades and spectres; I saw that thou couldst not refrain from laughter, when they, like so many scullions, sought us in the palace in vain by their light; and how they would have fallen headlong into the sacred fire, and thus been burned to death, unless it had been secured and guarded; but we clearly contemplated all their wandering and ludicrous acts, together with themselves, not as ideas, still less as intelligences, which they were desirous to represent, but as insanities.

67. Since therefore our bodies are only the repositories and recipients of life, let us endeavor to discover from the life of our minds, what the life itself is, which we live ; let us receive instruction also on the subject from nature, which makes one and the same thing, as was said, with life, and thus let us contemplate the idea in its type : but that reason may cohere, and we may view truth from its own light, let the life itself now call forth ideas, nor, as of late, let us open the door to our slaves, so as to rush in of their own accord; but let us dictate to them this order, and establish it as an eternal law, according to which they may conformably, and thus uniformly, enter into our sacred temple, from their own small habitations and cottages. For we have above seen that our minds resemble a kind of paradise, but formed from the rays of the sun of life, or of intelligence and wisdom; wherefore for the sake of convenience, let us contemplate the one from the other. This is sufficiently evident to every one of us, that the orchards and gardens of our terrestrial paradise, without the heat of their light, wither away, as under a winter sun, while the leaves of their trees and flowers grow yellow, and the branches are stripped of their honors ; the fruits themselves fall off and everything returns to its dust: but presently, on the restoration of spring, with its new fire, all things rise again out of their tombs into life, and commence and run the career of their pristine ages, from another seed, but from the same life: from which considerations we learn, that all these things are the effects of heat, and not of light alone. Let us pass now from the subjects of vegetable life to the subjects of animal life, or from this paradise of our sight, to the superior paradise of our minds, and in the place of one light, let us only substitute another, or intelligence ; and in the place of one heat, let us substitute another, or love, so far as they exactly correspond to each other, according to what has been said. Our minds, in exact agreement with those fruit and flower gardens, being enlightened by spiritual light alone, yet not warmed by love, in like manner become torpid, their leaves also grow yellow, the branches are deprived of their honors, and the fruits themselves fall off; yea, all things are in such a state of decay, that they no longer appear like minds; for their forces grow cold, and their powers become lifeless, as if paralyzed ; inasmuch as the understanding itself falls into a shade like that of night, and the will into cold like that of winter, the former being darkened, and the latter remaining undetermined, so that both the one and the other suffer alike: but as soon as love, or spiritual heat, arises again, all things are heated again into their new life, and the things which have grown stiff and rigid, being again excited, grow soft again, and return into the flower of their ages; for minds [mentes] instantly begin to desire, and minds [animi ] to lust, and thus again to live; for where there are no desires, and no cupidities, there are also no excitements, or no cherishing principles of life, since if there be no love, we neither desire or lust after anything. Yea, all our states of life depend solely on the state of the love ; for as soon as we indulge our love, the mind is instantly re-visited by its life, and we are urged on by a sort of unusual alacrity, whence come our gladness, merriment, and exultation; yea, from the same source are derived the favor and respect which we bear to each other: but if our love be assaulted by threats or force, we instantly grow inflamed with anger, and attack those who assault us, like foes in battle-array, whence comes our indignation, our anger, and fury, for, according to the danger with which our love is threatened, our bosoms beat, our hearts palpitate, a cold tremor runs through our bones, and the mind, as if overwhelmed with darkne’ss, is half deprived of its life, whence come our fears, terrors, sadnesses, sorrows, and griefs; but presently, while we view, as through a window, the accession or return of our love from afar, the mind again returns, and the life of the mind, and the sight itself sparkles with a kind of joy, whence comes hope, with which we are wont to be suckled: in a word, all the states of our life, as was said, depend upon the state of our love, and we are never affected with anything but what touches our love ; nor is this the case only with the love which is lord or primate, but also with all the servants and attendants, which are infinite : for they cohere like one chain, from which if you take a single link, the whole is moved, together with the weight thence hanging. This is the fire of our life, the derivatives from which vibrate like flames; hence it is discoverable as in clear light, that without love their is no life, and that the life is such as the love is. As she said these words, our first-begotten kissed the hand of his wisdom, which she then elevated, perhaps in consequence of her ardor, that she might signify her meaning by gestures ; at the same time he expressed his satisfaction at her discourse by the flame of exulting life; which being perceived by the wisdom, I now clearly see, said she, that thy love is our love ; it sparkles from the countenance, and especially from the rays of thine eye, for the very eye-brow darts lightning; since according to the desires and joys of the mind, the ministering organs also exult, the sight especially sparkles from the love itself; for there is nothing in the body but what is impelled to similar motions and habits with the love, and obeys the impulse; hence the suavity of thy countenance, and the grateful lightning of thy sight; for love rules the mind, and the mind the body, and thus life and nature, fighting under the same standard, act as one cause. To the intent that we may recall these things into our minds, as often as we abide in Helicon, that sacred hearth is in the palace, liv-

which exist; if they were not real, their effigies would not in anywise be represented in us ; for it is impossible for anything to exist, like to, or resembling that which is not; the type derives all that it has from the idea, according to which it is effigied; where there is no idea, no effigy also of an idea is possible : without the best and the worst, or good and evil, really existing, there would be no perception of good and evil, still less sensation ; consequently no understanding of what is true and false, and no will of what is good and evil; in a word, no mind, consequently no existence of what is our own, and of the things thence flowing; thus we should not be shades and ideas, but absolutely nothing,

mg and burning with its perpetual fire, that it may continually give light to the counsels of our understanding, and moderate the ardors of our will. Didst thou not observe how the ceiling and roof of our palace became refulgent from it, and what thick darkness and deadness seizes us, when it is half extinguished ? That fire repre

sents love itself; its torches and flames, the sacred burnings of our desires; the hearth around constructed of adamantine circles and garlands, the truths, and their intelligences, which, like vestal nymphs, guard the fire ; the burnished gold, with which the focal circles were overspread, goodnesses and their wisdoms, for we are the priestesses and sacred ministers of the nymphs of that vesta: that that hearth by its flaming fire seemed molten, as it were, into adamantine gold, signifies the transparency of goodnesses by truths, and hence the harmony and union of the one and the other: the irradiation of innumerable colors, denotes the perceptions of truths from good, and of good by truth: wherefore also these colors appear in every intelligence according to the position of the eye of every one; for we intelligences and wisdoms are not exactly alike in our faces, nor are we clothed with like bodies, but by the society into which we are joined by love, we constitute one understanding and one will, and thus thy mind : for there is no one thing given in us, nor yet in the nature of things which is not made one by the consent and concord of several things, that is, by unanimity, nor is there any unanimity except by love. From these considerations now it ought to appear evident, that without love there is no life, and that the life is of such a quality as the love is.

68. Since therefore we live the life of love, and from it our own life ; and since we wisdoms and intelligences, who compose thy mind, in the fibres and veins of our bodies do not possess blood but love, infused and continued from essential love,* it is of concern to us to know what, and of

*It is said that wisdoms and intelligences, or what amounts to the same thing, our mind, which consists of understanding and will, possess no other blood or spirit in their veins and fibres, than love, or its life: this indeed is confirmed by the phenomena of all effects ; but that the same may in some degree be made manifest by anatomy, it may be expedient to give some idea of the formation of our mind. No one is ignorant that all our organs, both of sensation and of motion, and also the viscera, derive their contexture from fibres and blood-vessels ; if we pursue these fibres, which all and together compose the blood-vessels, even to their principles, or first origins, by a continual thread, it is rendered manifest that they all close in the cortical glands, in the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the medulla oblongata or spinal, and thus derive their origin from these glands; wherefore those glands themselves, which are the beginnings of the fibres, are also the beginnings of all the operations which are excited and exercised by the fibres; consequently in them are the beginnings, of our minds and the minds themselves, for to them are subjected all sensations, and from them flow all the determinations of the will into its acts, nor is any end or origin elsewhere given; wherefore on the destruction of those glands, or on the [cutting away of fibres which tend to the organs of sensation, or to the muscles, sensations and actions instantly perish. Wherefore if we now consider those glands or little spheres, as the beginnings of all the organical forms of our body, and of their faculties and operations, by calling to our aid the anatomy of the brain in general, also the doctrines of forms, of order, and of degrees, also of influxes and correspondences, we may attain to the knowledge how those beginnings are formed, or how they are composed of the purest fibres, or of fibres emulating those of the body; and indeed evidently to that knowledge, that those little stamina of extreme subtilty, emulous, as was said, of the fibres of the body, or fibres by way of eminence, cannot admit such an essence, or such a fluid, as the fibres derived from them; consequently they cannot admit the animal spirit, still less the red blood, such as is admitted by the vessels, or by the arteries and veins ; but

AND LOVE OF GOD. 133

what quality, that love is, at whose nod the orb is ruled, which we believe to be our own : for there are infinite loves, but there is one which acts the principal part in every mind, and which, as supreme moderator, administers the chief government, and assigns to the rest their respective offices : and since they arc so many in number, our distinct perceptions of them perish ; for their infinity alone, especially when they also disagree, induces darkness on the mind ; and this likewise is the reason why that, which is all in all, escapes our intuition more than the rest; so also the love, which is the all of all in our little world or body, and which, as a deity, or as the soul of our powers, rules its courses and fluctuations by various and uncertain reins : this is one of the causes why we do not easily distinguish one love from another; there is yet another cause, viz. that every love, like a pantomime, by its gesticulation, assumes an appearance of the supreme or best love, and thus entangles the mind in its snares. For one builds a Helicon like another, which also it calls Olympus ; it likewise begets intelligences and wisdoms, and introduces them into it: the palace, too, which it calls mussea and athenoea, it fills with

in the place of such essence or fluid, they admit one in which there is life, consequently one which flows down from the very fountain of life, and to which the animal spirit, and lastly, the red blood in the body correspond, receiving from it also their life; this is the life which actuates and governs our mind itself, or the organical principle; wherefore it is said, that wisdoms and intelligences, in the fibres and veins of their bodies, do not possess blood, but love, that is, its life infused and continued from love itself. These things are confirmed more fully and clearly by phenomena themselves and effects, than by the obscure and round about way of anatomy and philosophy; although by the aid of those sciences, of which mention was made above, the same things may be absolutely demonstrated, but not intelligibly, except to those who are skilled in anatomy and philosophy.

parasites and servants, who may favor, flatter, and effigy its sports by act and gesture : yea, what is more, it also adorns the hearth in the palace, and proclaims festivals, and orders them to prepare frankincense, garlands and sacrifices, with other like things, altogether as in our Olympus. It likewise requires of the attendants and guards, that they call it the best, and laugh at those as insane, who dare to say that anything is prior to itself, or better than the best. It also instructs its servants, that if any other love, inimical to itself, should pretend to dominion, they should excite all disturbance, should vibrate all the torches of life which they carry about with them, should set on fire each blood, should stir up black bile from the gall-bladder below, and thus fill with fury the vessels of the whole kingdom. And when the love has thus instructed and principled its mind, then all things derive their secondary birth from those principles as from roots, and push themselves forward in conformity with its life : thus it excites a certain idea of Paradise, which it calls its celestial Paradise, from which it contemplates the terrestrial as its effigy. Moreover also it strictly enjoins, that they should adorn the possessor of that mind as a prince, with a royal robe, distinguish him, when placed on a throne, with a sceptre and crown, subject all things to his law and arbitration, and persuade him that he alone enjoys sovereignty, and may issue forth his imperial decrees as he pleases; nor do they ever, under pain of exile, whisper in his ear, that he sits on that throne as an illustrious statue, or as an image adorned with gold and gems, but totally void of power. From these considerations thou seest, of what great concern it is, and how much above every other concern, that every one should know his love, and since there are so many loves, and all of them like so many stageplayers, are desirous to personate the best, thou seest of what importance also it is to discern and to discriminate the mixed multitude; for hence we derive the auspices of our life, and all its conditions, fortunes and destinies.

69. But I recollect lately that I gave no small disturbance to thy mind [animus] by the mere mention of more than one love, and that on that account thou brakest the thread of my discourse as soon as I began it: I see clearly and am sensible of the same thing also at this moment, for thou canst not dissemble; the pupil of thine eye does not sparkle with the flame of gladness, nor dost thou present me with a cheerful and placid countenance; but that I may turn the foulness of that fire into brightness I; am desirous to explain to thee what thou art ignorant of, viz. the nature and quality of those loves; it is better to learn this from thy own wisdom, than from experiments and proofs in the thing itself; for that other, which is contrary to our own, is not love, but an enemy, who by singular cunning invents reasons, to impose upon the innocent, and to circumvent and make them his favorers under a pretence of friendship: ensnaring them and putting them off their guard, especially by slight allurements : and that he may prepare to advantage his webs and nets he first injects ignorance of himself, as if no such love existed; nor does he tie his knots more artfully, or to more advantage at any time, than in the shade of our understandings ; for thus he nearly darkens celestial light, and extinguishes sacred fire, in hatred against which he interposes such a shade, that he afterwards establishes and commences his sports ; wherefore he never lives more, and more securely, than with those persons into whom he inspires a belief that he does not live at all. Therefore it is of concern to us that thou be instructed ; for he is never perceivable by his own light, because he veils himself in a shade, nor can his quality be known but by our light. But to come to the point: there is but one only love, the fountain of all goodnesses and truths; but there is given also and there exists another, which, inasmuch as it is the source of all evils, is also the source of all error: but as yet thou knowest not what evil is, and what error : O golden infancy ! This also would escape us, because it conceals its nature from us, but we apprehend it only from what we have heard.- Thou art no longer ignorant that heaven exists and the world, or the nature of heaven and the nature of the world, and that those natures are distinct and differ from each other, as lights themselves, and heats themselves, of which we have so frequently spoken above; wherefore our minds are the centres of both, and suffer themselves to be bended and turned towards one and the other, as if they had joints. God, the architect of both, as well of heaven as of the world, to the intent that all things which are in lowest principles might go and return to his supreme principles, and those which are in outermost principles to his inmost, which principles differ exceedingly from each other, and thus might proceed rightly in their order ; and that the universal world, like heaven, with its uses and delights, might flow-in to our love by each way, viz. from Himself, and at the same time directly, and thus he might arrange all and singular things from the sacred fire of His love, and the temple of intelligence and wisdom, excited a fountain also of life, with its infinite streams, in the very nature of the world ; for without such a spiritual fountain in the world itself, the most perfect order would not have been induced : this was the cause of the creation of several spirits and genii, or of several essences which live here ; and of one prince or leader of all, whom we call the fountain of that life, and the rest the streams of that fountain. This prince was made the God of the world, and his palace like a celestial palace ; he has also his chiefs and rulers, whom he appoints over provinces, and likewise his intelligences and wisdoms, as he calls them, together with infinite ministries, as the enlargement of that kingdom requires ; but its whole concern is reserved in his own power ; for he possesses a great empire, as extensive as this universe, which falls under the view of the bodily eye. The nature itself of the world is void of life made only to be subservient to spiritual essences or living minds, as an instrumental or organical cause, for there is nothing in the universe but what tends to their use; nevertheless our Supreme created the whole universe, both heaven and the world, not for the sake of those essences or minds, but only for the sake of His own love, or Only-begotten Son; wherefore all spiritual essences, and all living minds, are nothing but mediators of life, and thus again instrumental causes, consequently the whole is only a machine of mediums, that the love of the Supreme might be all in all, and by it celestial- things be joined with terrestrial. For this end, this Emperor of such extensive dominion was created : but whereas so great authority and administration was decreed to him by our Supreme, he became so elated with his greatness, and so insolent, that he was desirous to extend his empire over heaven, and to arrogate the power of our love; for when left to himself, he made light of all others in comparison with himself; therefore he entirely revolted from the Supreme by rebellious motions against the Only-begotten : hence the empires or universes were divided ; still he lives from the rays of the life of the Supreme, for hence is the life of all that live, yet not at the same time from the life of his love, but from the dry fire or his own proper love; and moreover although he has revolted, he is bound under that necessity, as by chains, to execute obsequiously all the commands of our Deity; for that was the cause of his existence, and to continue the same, he is strictly restrained from being slain by the torments of his hatred arising from disaffection ; also from publishing any accounts of his own world ; but by lies he would disturb all knowledge of truth had not the Supreme known all and singular things before the creation of the world from Himself, and what would come to pass by infinite other ways. From these considerations it is now evident, that there are two who bear rule in the universe, viz. the love of the best, from the nature of his own love, that celestial things may be united with terrestrial, and the love of the worst, grounded in the nature of hatred, and thus in the love of the disjunction of those things. From this one single origin so many innumerable loves result; for an infinite multitude is born from the revolt alone of one.

70. But whereas thou livest in thy golden innocence, and art ignorant of these destinies of the universe, I am willing to explain myself farther on the subject, lest perhaps thou shouldst fancy that I am telling thee idle tales: let us descend only by a few steps of our ladder into the court of this palace, and with thine own eyes thou shalt take a view of his den, and of himself; also thou shalt contemplate an idea of the universe, the type of which we carry about with us. For our soul represents the Supreme Mind from which the universe was created, since she also in like manner, like the goddess of her little world, or a vicarious deity, resides in supreme and inmost principles, and in her own sacred temple, from which she governs her little universe ; to her also is granted a similar species of Omnipresence, of Omniscience, and of Omnipotence, but within the limits of her own kingdom; nothing also has its life therein, except from her life; for she has constructed, and, as it were, built all things from her own fibres, as from rays derived from the fountain of her life ; yet she has not done this herself, but our Supreme, with His love, by her. But thy mind, with thine understanding and will, represents essential love itself, or the only-begotten of the Supreme, whose image it bears; for the soul first of all begat that mind, as its one only offspring, and afterwards by ideas and truths introduced into its sacristy, formed and produced intelligences and wisdoms, and thus constituted an Olympus altogether like to, and resembling that, which, being subject to the only-begotten of the Supreme, is seen in the very heaven itself. But the inferior or lowest mind [mens], which is also called mind [animus] with its genii, represents that great prince of the world, to whom so great power has been allotted by the Supreme. Nevertheless these are not mere representations, but we really here live and walk as little universes, and carry both heaven and the world, consequently the kingdom of God, in ourselves: The Supreme Deity, our Most Holy Father, is actually in our souls with His life ; His only-begotten, or our love, is actually in the mind itself, which we inhabit. And that prince of the world is actually with his life in the mind [animus], or in this lowest mind [mens], but without disturbance, because he is bound and fettered by our love, which like a door-keeper possesses thy mind, [mens], consequently he is humble, officious, and civil; nor has he there any burning desire to touch our heaven, even with his little finger, because he dare not; in like manner, as thou seest, he is enjoined to make us acquainted with whatsoever befals his little world, and to execute every purpose which we sanction and decree : Thou seest here, says she, the place of residence of those who first receive from the external senses all the images and modes of the visible world, and either bring them to our ears, or represent them to our sight; here again, the residence of those who convey our commands by fibres to the muscles, and thus determine our decrees into acts: If thou art disposed to see the experiment, I will remove either the latter or the former, and thou wilt perceive the truth of the

explained above, with sufficient prolixity and clearness; for such an affinity, not to say, relationship, subsists between them, that he who^-is in the knowledge of the one, is also in the knowledge of the other. That the ancients discerned more clearly than the moderns or Christians, that our body resembles the universe, is owing to the blindness of the minds of the latter caused by the prince of that shade, to prevent his own hell from being contemplated, and still more the heaven, of God.

matter. We, in our sacred abode, look only at ends, and arrange means, which, being next committed to the will, are delivered to that prince, that by his servants they may be brought forth into effects, so as to become uses designed by our heaven, that is, of our love : The will itself, by itself, is nothing but an endeavor to act, from which nothing exists without the aid of ministries. But that mind [animus] or the proetor of our court, inasmuch as he lies chained by our love, lives under the necessity of obsequiously executing our determinations : for thus he sits bound to the rudder, and derives his life from our soul, or through it, from the Supreme : this also you may be convinced of by a single look. That he leads a life altogether different from ours, is evident from the power left to us, whereby we can will, and yet either bring things into act, or check them : also whereby we can keep watch, and remove ourselves from the mind [animus] and withdraw our whole mind [mens] from its delectations and cupidities : for while we are intent, by the views of truth and of good, to prevent anything of the lumen issuing from its torches from overshadowing our light, so long we close and set bars to those gates.

71. But although this servant of ours, inasmuch as he is chained, presents himself to us under so humane and peaceable a character, still he is the most outrageous enemy to our love, and never can entirely discard his innate hatred; he is cunning, and has a genius adapted to all kind of fraud; nor is anything more agreeable to his wishes, or more the object of his endeavors, than to excite civil commotions among all his crew, and to pour them forth, when arranged under his standards, into the palaces of thy mind, so as to cast out us wisdoms from thy Olympus ; the holes, by which he can introduce himself, are several, all of which I have already pointed out to thee ; but as thou well knowest, there are only two ways of access to thy mind [mens], viz. from above, and from beneath ; the way from above is through the soul and its temple ; this way is sacred, and to him altogether impervious, and indeed so strait, that he cannot even insert his little finger through its windings, having a body so fat and gross; this way is open only to the Lord of light, and to His love : but the latter, or inferior way, is the only one through which he can creep and exert his influences; for this way is open, even from the gates of the senses to the lumen and modes of his world, consequently to images turned into ideas, and also towards the walls, which are coated with muscles as with coats of mail, by or through which our ends burst forth into acts, and which are open into his world. But whereas he, by the ingenuity of his devices, knows how to overthrow all machines, we have tnere prudently arranged our guards : ‘ Come along with me,’says she, ‘and recognise them;’and instantly she led him to all the narrow gates and passages, and opened to his view all the shortest paths which could afford him admission ; and at the same time she continued her discourse, during a great part of the day, concerning his contrivances.

72. But we will no longer dwell on the enumeration of his tricks, which are infinite, and exceed all calculation of number. Nevertheless the state of rule, which he induces on the subdued and vanquished mind, ought to be described. For when he has enticed to his side, or rather to his thorns, the intelligences of the lowest sort of any mind, displaying before their eyes the badges and purple ensigns of his power, instantly the gates are opened by them, and his chains are removed ; and immediately he arranges his genii under standards, and invades the palace and sacristy with the torches and lamps of nature, expelling the intelligences and wisdoms inaugurated by our love, which, inasmuch as they are innocences, and thus gentle, and act only from a principle of love, betake themselves to flight, like doyes at the sight of a kite, entering into the consecrated house of their mother, as into a kind of asylum, where they seal up the gate, and there see clearly all the disturbance which he excites : for from a superior station, as from a watch-tower on a rock, all things which are transacting beneath are distinctly viewed, but not vice versa : I will however relate what has been told me: They say, that he imposes on the vanquished mind a similar state of government to that which he had intended to impose on heaven, and similar to the court which he holds in his own universe. For a subjugated mind [mens] he calls his Olympus or Heaven, and as this is an effigy of the kingdom of our love, he is induced to believe, that he has invaded and possessed heaven itself, while he invades and possesses its type, and that in its place he holds the sceptre of the whole ; for he plays the same game in small things which he was willing to do in great: hence it may clearly appear, what would have been the state of the universe, if he had taken to himself the reins of government, for into this little heaven he altogether transcribes an effigy of himself. Hear therefore the order and the form which he introduces : he absolutely procures to himself, in imitation of celestial rule, intelli- ’ gences and wisdoms, on each of which he impresses an image of himself; but which ought rather to be called insanities, as being born and produced from his verities, which are nothing but falsities and malignities; for he divides and compounds ideas themselves into whatsoever forms he pleases, inasmuch as forms derive all their nature from determinations, and from nature their faculty and mode of acting; for every idea, stupid as it is, suffers itself to be adapted to, and, as it were, inoculated in every form, as every color in every painted image, or as every expression in every article of discourse. From those insane intelligences, which live by lights and tapers, and dwell in dusky dens, he forms that mind, and thus an image of himself; here he establishes his heaven, from which he governs all things below. But the rule of his empire, such as he keeps possession of in the world, as I said, he does not establish in that mind, where he resides as the governor of Olympus, but in the court itself, where- are his genii with their affections, over whom he appoints a leader, whom he also calls mind [animus] : to these he- grants all power of acting, according to their motions and instincts of nature ; the mind [animus] itself he declares Lord of the universe, and delivers up to it all the sceptres which he has obtained in his own world, and substitutes it in place of himself, while he proclaims himself among his own as a God; and moreover, he gives it the power of choosing whatsoever loves it pleases, and yet no others than what relate to the body and the world: hence arise so many phalanxes of loves,.that, unless they are divided into genera and species, it is scarce possible to distinguish them from each other; for from the genii of that mind [animus], which are now made, not servants and drudges, but princes of the world, there continually burst forth, as from a furnace, flames of cupidities: it is also a result from their nature, that they have no relish for any other goodnesses than the harmonies and beauties of nature ; nor for any other gratifications than the delights of the body and its senses; nor for any other desires than appetites and cupidities. They swear also by their deity, or by the conscience of their mind, that there are no such things as superior goodnesses and gratifications, which therefore they reject as phantoms or the dreams of Morpheus. The sycophant himself, residing in that Olympus, weaves also no other knots, or is employed about no other ends, than such as gratify that mind [animus], and favor its genii; and by his wisdoms, as he calls them, he arranges all means, and does not break their lusts, or bind them to superior uses, as we do; but sets them on fire, giving reins to the will, that all things may rush headlong into act according to its blind impulses. He provides also, with the utmost solicitude and circumspection, lest anything from an idea should insinuate itself, and bring with it any superior light, which he instantly extinguishes by means of his burning torches. For the most part also he joins prudence to wickedness, as I lately told thee, for by his wellconcerted tricks he knows how to move all machines : the favorers of that light he leads astray through several paths and labyrinthian windings, transforming himself also, like Vertumnus, into various and even celestial images, and by specious representations eluding discovery, until he has transcribed them into their forms, and associated them with their intelligences; and in the [meantime, by his genii, he inspires every sense of natural delights, with the liberty of enjoying them. But what a liberty1 While the mind is reduced under the yoke of slavery 1 For nothing can be truly called ours, but the intellectual mind [mens] and its will; hence we are named men, and are distinguished from the brutes ; it is necessary therefore that the intellectual mind should draw its knowledges, and forms of reasons, from heaven and its light, and by the order above described should rule the mind [animus], and by it call forth ideas from the world, and inoculate them when called forth with the shoots of the seeds of our love; for if it be governed by slaves set at liberty, it is all over with the human principle and with ours; since in such case inferior things flow-in into superior, and the whole order is inverted. .

73. But that villain does not still lay aside fear, dreading every murmur and whisper; he attentively recognises the guards set on both sides: for what alarms does not the consciousness of evil excite ! Audacity is still restrained by fear, for a cold and pale tremor always runs through the fibres, while he is struck with perpetual horror at the thought, that the wisdoms of our love have betaken themselves into the maternal sanctuary; therefore he pricks up his ears with attention, in the hope that he may possibly perceive their discourses with their intelligences, for he well knows that they, although innocences, are still at the same time the highest intelligences and prudences, and that one truth proclaimed from their mouth disperses into the air a thousand of his fallacies, and that one spark of their light extinguishes a thousand of his lamps ; wherefore he also instructs his nymphs, by no means to lay open his contrivances and plots, but constantly to make a pre-

tence of being governed by our veriest loves, and never to appear in public, unless adorned with bright and celestial clothing. Yet sometimes the celestial wisdoms privately rebuke the audacity of those intelligences, especially when they have revolted from their side, and have suffered themselves to be transcribed into his forms; and they recall to their mind their former state from which they have fallen, and also their present and future condition ; in such cases, according to the common saying, they blush with shame, and begin to be tormented, and to beat their bosoms through inward grief, and to suffer extreme pangs, and thus excite disturbances; and to turn the hinge of the mind upwards, that something of lightning from celestial light may burst in upon their companions, in consequence of which the terrified crew fly away to their dusky dens and dark hiding-places, not being able to endure the rays of that light. This also is said to be perceived in the court itself, for it penetrates like lightning, into the cells, not through chinks, but through the gates themselves, which stand open day and night; hence come deep and mournful sighs, which are called stings of conscience. But that enemy, calling together on such occasion all his stores, and opening the treasures of his universal world, and not only setting his slaves at liberty, but also gratifying them with the hope of licentious freedom and dominion, assaults those intelligences which have excited disturbance, and either casts them into exile, or secures them with chains; thus all access to the sanctuary of the soul is closed up by strong bars; the hinge also of the mind [mens] is thus fastened to the post, so that it cannot any longer be turned upwards. When he has accomplished these purposes, he governs all things in greater security according to his lusts, and institutes native sports and pastimes, especially the Apolbiiary, in honor of the serpent Python; and adorns each nymph with laurel, the reward of victory, and creates queens, and calls them Olympiades and Heliconides; but each of the lower crew he calls his Parnassides, or also Aganippides, from that fountain, which the hoof of his victorious horse has burst open; and thus he inflames all with new, desires, and blinds all by his snares and enchantments.

74. But it is of concern to know what is the quality of their life, for they believe that they themselves lead a bright and super-celestial life, and that we lead an obscure life, much inferior to theirs ; for from that vertigo they view all things inversely: wherefore I am not disposed to conceal, because it is worth relating, what I have heard and seen; for I was once associated in company with those celestial wisdoms, which occasionally traverse the whole globe, that they may explore the disturbances and rebellious motions which that tyrant continually foments, and stirs up to act, in his own world : for once in this company we

met a herd of these intelligences, who walked in the market-place, clothed in bright and celestial garments, and who formerly had stood on the side of our love, but afterwards suffered themselves to be enlisted into the number of stipendiaries of the other company; the celestials call them their friends, but we their sisters. When the sacred wisdoms saw at a distance those intelligences, taking the shortest way to meet them, they approached with a friendly aspect, lest possibly they might run away, asking them, how it came to pass that they were so well dressed ? They, at first sight casting their eyes to the ground, and blushing with shame, but afterwards recovering from their fear through their own audacity and the friendly question which was proposed, replied, that they came from their sports, and indeed from the Apollinarian or Pythian games, and at the same time assumed an appearance of cheerfulness, as if their minds were still delighted with those spectacles : but the celestial wisdoms, who are not to be imposed upon by deceitful appearances, but look inwardly into the secret haunts of minds, having expressed their astonishment by a circular motion of the fore finger, exclaimed, O how rusty and funereal is the countenance under which you appear ! Where is the splendor of life, with which we not long ago saw you enlightened like so many stars ? Whence comes that unlovely cloud and sootiness, which now overspreads your face ? At these questions they were amazed, and looking at each other, they replied, Do not you observe how full of life our faces are ? And with what a fire our eyes sparkle, and how the blood exults from inmost joys? Why then are ye disposed to be jocose? Look also at our garments whiter than snow. But the celestial wisdoms thus rejoined, Ah, my friend! if you would contemplate yourselves by the ken of our eyes, as we entreat you to do, ye would see yourselves 13*

in quite another light: allow us then, only to engage a moment of your time, then we may enter into familiar discourse. We are aware that ye are fully persuaded, that ye not only enjoy life, but even the supreme, and the very celestial life ; that love, of which ye are images, produces also this belief; but inasmuch as ye are persuaded that ye are intelligences, ye possibly cannot be ignorant, that life is two-fold, celestial and natural; and that each is life, because each is spiritual ; nor can ye be ignorant that that prior or celestial life flows straight into our minds from no other source than heaven ; the other life indeed is also from heaven, but not directly, coming through another vein, thus mediately, as also into the minds [animus] of wild beasts. When now the door of your minds [mens] is not open into heaven, but only into the world; or when the hinge of that door is so fastened to the post, that the mind [mens] can only look downwards; and when there is not even the smallest chink, through which a passage may be given for the entrance of celestial light, whence then is your life ? Or, through what gate do you admit the rays of your life ? Ye will perhaps say, through that common way, or through the ear and eye. But whence then comes so dark a shade as to things celestial ? And whence come the colds and baitings between two opinions at the mere mention of superior life? Whence is your faith so wavering, and, if ye consult the inmost principle of your lives, so null, respecting our love, respecting its Heaven, respecting a future state of the soul, and respecting its eternity ? All these things would be pellucid, as through the clearest gem, if the other door stood unlocked. Since therefore those things which are of all others most essential, lie buried in so dark a shade of ignorance, and in so intense cold, from what fountain then do ye derive the streams of your life ? Must it not be from that in which there is more of shade than of light, more of cold than of heat, that is, more of death than of life? Confess now (for ye are capable of feeling) whether this can be called living. Recall to your minds, although perhaps ye have rejected all belief in such things, that it has been so ordained by our Supreme, that the life of heaven ought to flow-in into the nature of the world, by means of the one single love, which is with Him in inmost and supreme principles, so that not only light, but also spiritual heat, may excite the lives of our minds [mens], and thus of our bodies. It is also a known thing, that another fountain of life has likewise been made by our Supreme, whereby the life of our love, with its universal heaven, might flow into the nature of the world, and thus celestial things might be conjoined with terrestrial; this inferior fountain of life was made a bond, or instrument of spiritual connexion, to the intent, not only that all things might be held together, but also that they might go and return in their order from highest things to lowest, and from lowest to highest: without it, it would be impossible for our bodies to live in conjunction with their minds [mens], for our mind [animus] is the bond of their union. When now that bond was rent, or the spiritual connexion between our love, and the fountain of that life, or the prince of the world, was broken, what life in such case remains ? Is it not that which flows from it alone ? For it is a known thing, that no life is given without love, and that the life is of such a quality as the love is. When now no life is any longer derived from the love of heaven, tell me, in such case, what life do you lead ? Does it not resemble death rather than life ? But attend a little further ; possibly ye reject these things till tomorrow, that ye may involve the above brightness in shade; for I see clearly, that these things do not penetrate the smoke of your minds, which we contemplate as covered over with pitch ; that blackness itself invites and absorbs the rays of this light, and hides them in its black pores and holes, that not the least ray of light thence reflected appears ; let us pass therefore to those things which enter from beneath, through those large gates, into the inferior region of your minds. Tell me what is life ? Is it not to understand what is true, and to relish what is good? What then are your goodnesses, by which ye procure to yourselves the power of relishing, and finally of understanding, or vice versa? Are they not mere conjectures of the senses, which apperceive all their objects most obscurely, and not even one part of the many myriads of those things which are contained in nature herself? These most dark objects also your mind [animus] introduces as ideas into minds [mens], in which the prince of that world resides, as in his Olympus, and disposes and arranges those ideas according to the desires and pleasures of the mind [animus] and of its genii; hence are formed, and, as it were, begotten truths, which are your parents, O my intelligences; and when no light from above, or from heaven, is admitted into these forms, tell me what understanding of truth, and will of good, in such case is thence born, or what truths and goodnesses thence arise ? Can they be any other than mere fallacies and vanities ? I will return therefore now to the subject with which I began ; if the life of our mind be the understanding of truth, and the wisdom of good, what vein of life in such case is in the intelligence of what is false, and in the wisdom of what is vain ? Must it not be something contrary to the very life of heaven? Tell me now by what title, or by what name ye can mark this contrary something ? Will any other title or name suit it than that what is called shadow, and a species of death? But still I see clearly, that not even this truth penetrates deeply, for the prince of your court, or the mind [animus] instantly involves these things in his shades, and folds them up, when he has so involved them, in the'smoke of his coals, into divers forms, in consequence whereof no other medium and refuge remains for the confirmation of what we have said, and for the sealing of your faith, than that ye contemplate yourselves in mirrors, and thus by a light reflected into your eyes : for we carry along with us little mirrors, by virtue whereof, when applied to the sight, ye may be able to view, not your bodies, but your minds themselves in their own effigy, or according to the quality in which ye appear to the life to us, who are heavenly wisdoms : Having applied therefore those mirrors, they said, look now, and direct your eyes to all parts, and see now what is your quality, whether ye be Venuses or Pallases, and what is the quality of your bright polish, and of your celestial dyes? Instantly they seemed to themselves like chimney? sweepers, or as that class of people who stand continually at furnaces burning with sulphur, altogether like lamps covered over with black rust, and no longer as intelligences, but as insanities and madnesses ; and unless they had moved their limbs, as in perpetual agony, you would say, they were not the effigies of life, but of death. They indeed attempted to remove their sight from that heavenly mirror, but still the image remained deeply impressed on their minds. But, said the wisdoms, we will also accomplish this effect, that your mind [animus] with its genii shall delight you. Instantly they vibrated the light of their mirror, and at the same time opened the gates, that that disorderly crowd, after their accustomed manner, might rush in, with their torches, into the chambers of their minds [mens], saying, enjoy also this spectacle. And instantly all the genii appeared to them as snakes twining and hissing around their heads, and pouring their poison into the veins of their bodies, through ways opened by biting; and they seemed to themselves to be so many gorgon faces: they being terrified were desirous to run away, but from the motion of their bodies those infernal

monious stimuli together with the feverish heat, tend to harden the softer blood and cause it to boil and burn; not only the precordia palpitate, but also the arteries ; yea, fever itself, with its frenzy, manifests itself in a kind of image so that there is not a single part of the body, even the smallest, which is void of anger and heat. Such is the correspondence of the mind [animus] and the body, and of the affections and passions of each ; wherefore if we are disposed to investigate the real origin of the diseases of the body, we must recur to the mind [animus] itself, or the prince of the world, who rules the mind [animus]. Tell me, I pray, of a single disease, which does not spring from intemperance and the predominance of the mind [animus], either in the parent or in the heir, and I will give you credit for all wisdom ; nor are even those diseases to be excepted, which exist from fortuitous accidents, for those accidents would have been avoided, if men had not been under the powerof that prince. Hence it is clear, that there are as many diseases of the body as there are lusts or cupidities of the mind [animus], set at liberty and unrestrained ; also as many as there are mixtures of affections, as is clearly evident from fevers and all species of fevers, and other disorders, as from burning or caustic, nervous, slow, wasting, malignant, intermittent fevers, from diseases of insanity, of melancholy, hypochondria, &c. To consider only the deliriums of fevers, in which the patients have a perverse sensation and perception of all things, dreaming as if they were awake, and seeing things not seen, hearing things not spoken, acting from no cause as from a cause, gathering feathers as if they were present, separating or picking wool, dreading their friends as furies, viewing children as giants, and all things which present themselves as spectres, &c, &c. In a word, all the affections of the mind [animus] form types of themselves in the diseases of the body. It would have been altogether otherwise if the mind [animus] had been kept bound, and under the rule of the mind [mens], that is, of the love of heaven. The cause therefore of death ought to be judged of from the causes of diseases, for as many as are the causes of diseases, so many are the causes of the destruction of the life of the body. Hence it appears how that enemy, who presents himself to us under so friendly an aspect, infects with poison the whole body, as well as the mind, and by discords burst all its connexions.

hairs beat their bosoms and faces; hence they became, as it were, frozen, and the blood ceased to flow: then said the wisdoms, behold now your loves and your hates: give us credit when we assure you, that your spiritual life, which awaits you, will be altogether like this, with infinite variety; for the activities of minds [mens] separate from the body exist, not like those of bodies by actions, through the medium of muscles, and thus of flesh and bones, but by actual representations of their states, or by mere similar actualities represented to the life. Come now, and perceive with your eyes, consequently with your senses, in which ye have so much confidence, that ye carry about you the fatal images, not of life, but of deathi for, in proportion to the number of snakes, is the number of fires, and at length of the furies of your spiritual life, in consequence of which, pestiferous rheums are even communicated to the blood, while ye live here, and are so many causes productive of death. Begone, now, O beautiful flowers ! together with that venom so sweet, which ye conceal in your fibres.

75. These furies, whom I can no longer call intelligences, escaped by devious and shady paths to therr own cottages, but I am persuaded that they could not escape from themselves. Learn hence what is the quality of the state which is introduced by inverted order, while that charioteer of the world directs human minds by his reins, and drives them like horses foaming at the mouth, into such a variety of downward courses. In such case, since the world and heaven are confounded, since light is converted into shade, heat into cold, and all things are so turned topsy-turvy, that those which ought to look upwards look downwards ; not unlike the trunk of a body without a head, which is beaten and bruised, inverted to the earth, with the feet and its well-shod and unwashed soles

lifted up on high ; since this is so, I have been told by the celestial wisdoms, that those minds in their bodies are also represented thus in heaven, viz. turned in like manner topsy-turvy ; for the celestial sphere, which human minds inhabit, and which belongs to the Grand Prince of heaven, with His wisdoms, loves, and concords, is invaded, and is ruled by the prince of the world, with his insanities, hatreds, and discords, to whom the sphere proximately, inferior or natural, has been granted by our Supreme ; thus, where order is inverted, inferior things mix themselves with superior, or natural things with celestial; hence comes ignorance of all things; truths betake themselves to flight, and are to be investigated through infinite windings and through the courses and clefts of several sciences, but still to no purpose ; and although they are investigated, yet all their splendor is not only sullied and tarnished, but is also overspread with sepulchral darkness; thus a twofold image of night succeeds. For which reason the schools of those sciences are called sports, for the more they are sported with, the more clouds are induced, or the darkness is more condensed, insomuch that the light sparkling from heaven itself is extinguished at the very threshold : yea, heaven itself is covered with so terrible and thick darkness, that it is unknown, not only what heaven is, but also what the soul is, what the rational mind [mens], and what the mind [animus] ; whether they are distinct from each other, especially whether they disagree; how far human minds [mens] differ from the minds [animus] of brutes : also whether life be anything else than nature; for intelligence appears to them as madness, wisdom as a spectre: gold is turned into dust, and a diamond into mud. But so far is that deluder from loving the mind which is enslaved to him, that he infects it with his venom, rends it in pieces by hatred, and thus consigns it to his styx; for whatsoever he does, he does from hatred against our love, and still continually makes a show of heaven ; therefore according to attempts made from the beginning, in which he is perpetually urgent, he invades and subdues by his hostility those minds which should be the bonds of things celestial and terrestrial, and by which alone way_sare open in a straight direction from things highest to things lowest, and from these again to things highest ; hence by this way he constantly presses his ancient attempt ; but in those minds, the gate leading to the inmost of heaven is shut, and secured by strong bolts, lest that principle should also be invaded.

76. That so many innumerable loves, as they are called, could spring out of the rending of one, is clear from the snakes which those Medusean heads carried ; for every one represents one torch of life, or one lust, consequently one love: when one also is cut off, another springs in its place; and in proportion to the number of the drops of their blood, which is poison, are the seeds of new ones. Nevertheless that they are not loves, but so many hatreds and disagreements, may be manifest from their discord in every subdued mind, for they wage destructive war with each other, and multiply slaughter ; for they are at continual strife with each other, or murdering each other by abuse; and if the laws of order did not restrain them, they would so terrify each other by their bitter and wicked hostility, as to exceed all the rage and resentment of an ordinary foe. The prince of the world himself attends the combat, excites the minds of the combatants, and thus arms his clients with the torches of furies for destruction ; he stands on each side, and gives his orders for the funerals and funeral pile of each destroyed party, that all the crowd may still engage in deadly warfare without intermission. These are the sports of his loves ; these are his delights and purple pomps. In proportion to the severity of the conflict, and the implacability of anger, that maker of mischief opens his jaws wider, and bursts with laughter : nevertheless he is most indignant, if every one does not venerate these his erichthons as loves.

77. These most deceitful loves, although they are infinite in number, have still only two leaders set over them, one of which is called the love of self, but the other the love of the world, whom the prince himself calls his nobles. To these however are subjected several leaders of less power, satrapas, chiefs of plebeians, centurions, with innum- berable lictors, according with his idea of the great empire in the universe the form of the government of which he everywhere assumes. The empires of their nobles, inasmuch as they are extensive, are distributed into kingdoms, principalities, provinces, and dominions of various kinds, everyone of which still resembles some effigy of the world, or the universe, the limits of the sphere of which are more extended and contracted, according to the proximity existing between it and its chief, by which means are given superior and inferior loves of this farina. Every mind [mens] in effigy constructs, and, as it were, builds some orb and world, in like manner as the Supreme Mind, in which it exerts all the energies of its life; for it takes a view of ends, and from nature, procures to itself means, by which those ends may attain effect. This great world also is nothing else but a complex of means, that the ends and disposals of the Supreme may be brought into acts and uses. These resemblances of worlds, constructed by minds, in like manner run through their seasons, like those of the year and of the day, the former of which they call the fates of their life, for they emulate the spring, the summer, the autumn, and close in winter; but the latter they call their fortunes, which in like manner have a view to their mornings, noons, evenings, and nights, and are in a perpetual vicissitude ; but storms, and the serenity which succeeds when the clouds are dispersed, they call the fluctuations of fortune, and ascribe to chance. They are altogether ignorant that those vicissitudes may be so tempered, as to produce in the mind a continual spring, ora perpetual flower of age; for the sources of their fates and of their fortunes appear to them so confused, that they may be compared to heaps of earthworms, which, when knotted together, either hide their heads in the ground or unfold them in the heap; being altogether ignorant that the universe, consisting of infinite universes, with all those little worlds and orbs of minds, stands under the auspices of one Deity or of our Supreme, and of His love, and is constantly governed by His providence. They assign indeed the government of the universe to some Supreme, but the care of singular things they know not how to allow to any Deity, therefore they adjudge it partly to their own providence, which they call prudence, partly to fortune; not knowing that Divine Providence cannot be universal, unless it be in things most singular, and that from these latter things it alone derives the name of universal; or that what is universal derives its essence and actuality solely from the singular things from which it exists ; wherefore when they affirm the one, and deny the other, they destroy both : and that they may thus destroy both, all their loves persuade them, because their prince suggests it, to the intent that their minds may be led to believe, that all things are either afloat under the impulse of a blind fate, or are carried on by an irresistible fatality without any respite: and thus he stops up every passage to happiness and delight; for he is not ignorant that nothing exists fortuitously and by chance.

78. But I see clearly, that thy mind is anxious to know,

and that thou art wondering at the reason, why our Supreme, who is both acquainted with the most singular of all things, and rules them by His providence, and who alone has omnipotence, has suffered this tyrant so direfully and cruelly to depopulate His world, and thus to induce in the universal orb so execrable a state. But if thou art disposed to give an attentive ear a little longer to my discourse, thou shalt hear things stupendous and heretofore unheard. Our omnipotent one could destroy the universe, with all its universes, by a single nod of His will, and thus thrust down headlong that tyrant himself, with the minds subjected to him, into Tartarus and hell, where the images of that night and shade, together with the furies, perpetually reign. This also He appointed, because His justice itself persuaded and excited Him to it; for if He should recede from His justice, He would recede from Himself: wherefore also he burned with the zeal of the justest anger, and armed Himself with His lightnings, that He might thunder not only upon the tyrant himself, but also upon that universal society. But hear now, while He stood in the very act of striking with His lightning (wonderful to relate !) our love, His Only-begotten, cast himself headlong into the midst of that rage, or among the very furies of the devil, where the stroke of the lightning fell, and embracing with his arms those human minds, suffered himself to be almost torn in pieces and destroyed by that mad infernal dog; on the sight of whom our Supreme laid aside His lightnings, lest at the same time He should devote His Only-begotten to His most just anger : and when He intreated him in vain to depart, the Only-begotten, burning with the fire of love, refused, intreating that he would spare those ignorant and guiltless beings, or destroy himself with them, saying, that he was willing to take upon him the blame of the guilty, and to suffer the penalties of justice ; adding to his supplication, 14*

that he might not be left alone in the world. On this occasion the Most Holy Parent was so affected that He not only abated the flame of His justice, but, before He departed, was compelled, out of love, to promise, that for his sake alone He would indulge that world so long, until it had run through its ages, and being worn out of itself, should fall into its winter and night, like its rebellious crew ; and at the same time He gave power to our love, of binding and loosing, at pleasure, that tyrant, His enemy. Hence his power has been so diminished, that he who before had ruled over royal territories, was now kept shut up within narrow boundaries. Hence also those mortals, from the union of their infants with our love, derived a life naturally mixed with death.

79. On hearing these things our first-begotten, being at first astonished at the great danger to which the universe was exposed, was, as it were, struck dumb: but presently being melted by* so stupendous an instance of love, a secret delight was communicated to the inmost principles of his being ; and therefore sinking into the bosom of his wisdom, he remained there a long time dissolved in tears, being made thoroughly sensible in himself of what true love is, and what is its essence; but after that he had fed with tears of joy on that very tender affection bursting forth from love, reclining on his wisdom, he earnestly intreated her to retrace her footsteps a little to the point from whence she had digressed, and to explain to him in what manner a full opportunity might be given him of enjoying this his love ; He said, that now he had a perception of this truth, that he had no other desire than that he might become not his own, but His, and that this desire, in consequence of the contrariety and opposition of loves apperceived by him, had manifestly exalted itself to the highest degree ; for in proportion as he dreaded the one, in the same proportion he now loved more the other. and, as it were, died to possess it. It occurred also to his recollection what she had before told him, that the life which he lived flowed-in extrinsically ; and this not only from the Supreme, the fountain of all lives, into the soul, which is the power of all powers of his kingdom, and from the Supreme Love, or His Only-begotten, into his mind [mens,] but also from his enemy into his mind [animus] ; and that she pointed out his den, and himself there, and thus lying proximately beneath his feet, at the doors of the palace ; t yet he rejoiced that he saw him bound hand and foot, and that he durst not touch the gate, unless he was ordered ; nevertheless he dreaded to look in that direction, and therefore kept his sight turned another way. To these remarks wisdom replied, I will explain what thou requir- est; from the observations which I have above dropped into thy ear, I find that thou art now sufficiently convinced, that our powers, in order that they may live, must be excited by influent forces ; also that no life is derivable, except from a common spiritual fountain ; consequently celestial life from the love of the Supreme, but natural life from the prince of the world, who was made a mediating fountain copulating the life of nature ; and since the natural soul is delivered to him, all they, who live his life, without the love of heaven, live a natural life, which is appointed to death ; consequently they who worship nature as their supreme deity, adore, by that worship, this most inveterate enemy of heaven. But that his very den, or lurking place, is in human minds [animus], to the intent that in like manner he may connect the nature of our corporeal world with celestial life, he himself indeed conceals, in order that he may more securely play his pranks in the shade of the understanding, or in the ignorance of his nearness and presenceand while he keeps close watch at the doors of minds [mens], may disperse all fears of himself: yet this delights him, that some people, as it were, point at him, but yet do not touch him, viz. they who deny that he exists, but still substitute in his place their own mind [animus], with its lusts and criminal inclinations. Nor is it apperceived that he resides in the mind [animus] itself, except by those, who oppose him, and steer their course against his inverted order, and thus, as it were, spread their sails against the tempest; for they who are carried down the stream, know nothing of the force by which it moves, but it is otherwise with those who strive ao-ainst the current; these are sensible of its resistances, and if they attend diligently, they hear its manifest murmurs; for he excites perpetual combats, and presents a thousand delectations and fascinations, or a thousand thorns and miseries; and either swallows the very bones cast into his jaws, or throws them back again larded, as it were, with foam : These, I say, apperceive that he does not stand abroad, and yet at every turn of thought he injects into minds [mens] ideas proper to minds [animus], for he is the keeper of the ideas themselves, which, having their birth from the modes and images of the senses, are called material or imaginative. From these considerations they also clearly conclude, that the human principle is divided, or that man is partitioned into superior and inferior, or into interior and exterior; for they are made very sensible that something is dictated from heaven, and is contradicted by nature. Hence it is plain, that every one, howsoever distinguished by integrity of life, carries him along with himself, wheresoever he goes, since he inhabits and constitutes that very sphere of life where our mind [animus] acts, together with its genii.

80. There are therefore three fountains of life, which excite and actuate our three powers by their influx, as the light excites and actuates the organ of our vision; for that which gives and acts, is called active force, but that which receives and suffers, is called power; from active force alone without power, as from power alone without active force, no effect results, consequently no use; but active forces adjoined to their passives, or principles to their organical or instrumental forms, or associated by influx, produce efficient causes, whence come effects ; from this very union result the sensations of our goodnesses, viz. that we feel it in ourselves, because He who is the fountain of life, feels it in Himself, and from us by re-action; for whatsoever flows-in from the agent into his compeer and patient companion, this is performed also in the latter, because in the former; altogether according to the essence of love itself, which is the veriest affection of the union of the force of each nature, or of the agents and patients ; which love, when it is ardent, desires nothing more vehemently, or seeks more intently, than such a connexion of its nature, viz. that it may be another’s not its own, and conceiving that only to be its own which is reflected from another into itself. Such an unity, and at the same time mutuality, are presented to view by the close embraces and sweet cordialities of two loves; for by the ardor with which they press each other, they so burn and labor to be mutually conjoined, that when such conjunction is entirely accomplished, they lead one life, although distinguished into two. From these considerations now, added she, you may conclude how full an opportunity is given us of enjoying our love. Since now such is the connexion and conjunction of the influent forces with our powers, the former conclusion is again confirmed, that it is the life of our love which we live, and that the life is of such a quality as the love is.

81. But the first-begotten, still trembling as with fear, continually lifted up his countenance to heaven, that he might turn away his eyes from the couch where that enemy was said to lie : on observing this the wisdom looking at him, said, why is thy mind filled with anxiety, and why dost thou avert thy sight from Paradise? Lay aside all apprehension, because there is no reason why thou shouldest be terrified ; if it please thee, thou thyself shalt see clearly how humble, submissive, and tractable he is, so long as this sacred hearth diffuses such glad flames, and by them a sign is given that our love resides in the throne of this Olympus, for in such case he lies prostrate on the ground, and as a most obsequious servant, is eager to obey his commands and wishes, consequently to perform all the offices of our life. He indeed is wont to change himself into a variety of forms, amounting in number to more than three or four hundred, viz. at one time into a dreadful dragon, at another into a wolf and large dog, at another into a panther and bear, also into flame, and the like; nevertheless under every ferocious appearance which he assumes, he is not able to hurt even our little finger, still less to inflict a wound. Let us make trial, says she, 'and instantly she dragged him out of his den, whilst he struggled to re-enter it, and she commanded this sentinel or enemy, to present himself transformed into his monsters, one after another : And when she saw him turned into a dreadful dog with a huge countenance, the wisdom rubbed his ribs, and thrust her whole hand into his immense jaws, and taking him by the tongue, led him at her will, putting a collar also about his neck : and encouraging the first-born to come near with an undaunted mind, she presently compelled him, and thrust also his arm into the jaw, and even his head, and took it out unhurt; the Cerberus indeed swelled with gall, and burned with desire to give a deadly bite, but his jaws were so restrained that he could not attempt anything. Afterwards she ordered him to assume the form of a lion, on which occasion the wisdom stroked the mane, and played with his teeth and claws, applying them to her cheeks ; she also gave command that he should hug the first-begotten with his shoulders and fore-feet, and let him go again; hence the first-begotten becoming fearless, in like manner as his wisdom, touched and counted his claws and teeth. But when he was changed from this monster into a dragon, the first-born, at the command of wisdom, crept over his fore-feet and shoulders even to the top of his head, and by his crests, scaly spires, and foldings, resembling a helmet, covered his forehead and his temples; not to mention several other sports which he playfed with him : being changed also into flame, it was so mild, that it did not even singe the smallest hair or fibre of a cuticle. When all this was done, Thou now seest, says she, that he is not so horrible and tremendous, so long as our love governs his Olympus in us ; for it is left to his power, as thou hast heard, at pleasure to bind him with chains, or to let him loose, nevertheless he cherishes a deadly wound, and burns not only with hatred, but now also with revenge ; but at this time he is tortured and rent asunder, by his own sharp and virulent gall.

82. When the first-begotten recollected these threats of the wild beasts, and, as it were, dangerous chances, he could not prevent the admission of a sort of gentle horror into his fibres bordering on the skin ; especially at the idea that his wisdom had thrust his head into the gullet of so huge a monster, and yet that dog Cerberus, at the very moment, became so furious, that all his veins appeared swelled with black gall : therefore he asked his wisdom, whether she exposed him at that time to any great danger ? If perchance, said he, at that moment, the fierce brute had closed his jaws, armed with so many rows of teeth, would it not have been all over with my life ? For I do not well comprehend, said he, how the execution of a purpose could be wanting while the purpose remained. To this the wisdom replied,- There are, as thou knowest, three fountains of life, by which our three powers are excited; to the intent that all things may proceed rightly according to instituted order, the life of one fountain must flow into another, or a superior one into an inferior, and so forth; for the Supreme Principle never passes into lower principles, except by its intermediates, which are, as it were, ladders and steps, by which descent is effected from heaven into nature, and ascent from nature into heaven; consequently our love, with his celestial life, never passes into our nature except by that mediating life; for which end this spiritual fountain so frequently spoken of above, was made, and a natural soul given to it, into which both the life of heaven and the nature of the world can be introduced, and thereby each, as with a bridge between, can be held together and operate ; but whereas that connexion was broken, and that bridge, as it were, carried away, our love, as thou hast heard, cast himself headlong into the midst of the furies, that he might claim human minds for heaven : wherefore also power w^ras given him by the Supreme, to restrain and rule that enemy at pleasure ; the same thing is also now and perpetually transacted ; for our love, with the life of Heaven, casts himself into his life, which is natural and appointed to death, and thus actually tames and subdues his very soul, from which all his attempts burst forth into act, consequently tames and subdues him wholly from inmost principles, so that not the least of fury can pour forth according to its violence and ardor; hence all his attempts are checked, and his insanities restrained, and at the same time he is driven by a superior or interior divine force to all his duties, to the performance of which he was bound from the beginning; by this method that connexion is restored, and minds are claimed for heaven, so that our love flows-in with heavenly

life into the universal nature of our body. By this divine benefit the soul of this enemy is subdued, and thus his very head is bruised, and the trunk of his body, together with the other foes similarly affected, viz. his genii, is subjected as a footstool to the feet of our love, who re sides and reigns on the throne of his Olympus. In a similar effigy our love is represented in the Olympuses of our minds [mens,] when the mind [animus] is subjected, for we carry in ourselves the effigy of the whole heaven.

83. I will now also relate his services. That he is serviceable as a spiritual connecting principle between the heaven of our mind, and the world or nature of the body, I know thou art sufficiently aware of, from the discourses which we have already had on that subject; for he presides over all the fibres, which are let down from us into the members and organs of the whole body ; they are his reins, by which he rules this our world, and its n ature : consequently also he presides over the spirit of the fibres, and likewise the blood. He therefore it is who receives with hospitality all the images and modes which creep to our Olympus from this universal world, through the sensory organs, according to the fibres, and who, according to our disposal, gives them their places, and arranges them into order; hence his operation and activity is called imagination, over which our pure thought presides, and to which it corresponds. Therefore from him result, and by him are referred to us, all those delectations which are insinuated from this world through the doors of the senses, and are hatched by the force of his imagination; hence it follows, that all cupidities are his, likewise all appetites, which from their origin are called natural and corporeal; from these result various affections, motions, and passions, which are said to be of the mind [animus]; for they are so many changes of the state of the life of his loves, or cupidities; according to the nature of these latter, he transforms himself into those horrible forms which thou hast just now seen; for all spiritual essences, not clothed with a heavy body, actually represent their states by similar variations of form. Moreover also he determines to act, and executes our decrees by fibres subjected to him.

84. Let us pursue still further the account of his offices, but while he lies prostrate at the feet of our love. For there are three spheres of our body, viz. the sphere of principles, of causes, and of effects. The Supreme with our love governs the principles of our life; but the mind [animus] the principles of nature ; and whereas it presides over the fibres, it presides over causes, consequently over the sphere of effects ; wherefore it transcribes all things, which are intended in the supreme sphere as ends, and are commanded as decrees, into the world, or nature of our body, where those ends, like so many souls, put on a kind of corporeal shape, and pour themselves forth into effects, or sensible acts ; for the spiritual life of our mind [mens] consists in the intuition of ends, which intuition is introduced into our actions ; wherefore action is respected from its end, but not from its motion, or form of countenance ; this latter is contracted, while that life, by the mediation of the mind [animus], is brought down through the sphere of causes into the sphere of effects. Such a correspondence also, and actual established harmony by influx, exists between things spiritual and corporeal, or between things celestial and natural, consequently between those things which are of the mind [mens], and those things which are of the body, so that one thing resembles another as an idea a type, and thus they afford mutual aid, and in their turn assist each other. And that this correspondence may flourish, the reins must be delivered up to our love, who compels the bridled enemy to all his duties; and thus superior things flow rightly into inferior, and effects are presented in which are uses, which answer to ends. While therefore life is derived from heaven, and ends as uses are emitted into the circle of nature, or into the body, in such case the most perfect acts thence exist ; for they derive their inmost essence, consequently their form, from heaven itself; on which occasion the goodnesses, of which thou hast an inmost perception, .while they pass into nature, are expanded into so many pleasures ; the forms themselves of goodnesses are turned into such elegances, that they may be said to descend from heaven; the sacred fire of love is turned into torches, which are heated with pure delights; yea. what is inmost in these gratifications so diffuses itself through the fibres that it is perceived by the very senses. The cupidities and desires of the mind [animus], which were made to be the cherishers and incitements of corporeal life, then become innocent, and promote their native uses and advantages ; consequently they do not break connexions but confirm them ; for they kindle the desires of our will with a gentle flame, and fill them with delight: for our love is in nothing more interested and more earnest than in his intention, that while we enjoy the happiness of his heaven, we may also enjoy the delights of the whole world, since the world was created by the Supreme for the sake of heaven. Thou hast heard above, that our minds resemble a celestial paradise; so also our bodies resemble a terrestrial one : for, as was said, while that enemy lies subjugated in the mind [animus] by our love, then all things obtain effect according to the order induced by the Supreme ; and in every effect there is its genuine life and soul. But it is otherwise if the reins be delivered to the enemy, for in this case all things rush into contrariety ; and all the effects, or acts, which come forth, are like their ends, that is,’their souls, secluded from the life of heaven, and devoted to death.

85. Let us now, if you please, direct the course of our conversation to the very goal itself, for it is now in prospect before us, viz. how full opportunity may be given of enjoying our love, and this forever. All my discourse, scattered as it appears above, is aimed solely at this point, for this is the hinge on which everything turns, or the veriest essentia], which ought to determine and construct all the forms of our life; and the only centre to which the circumferences of those forms converge ; for to enjoy our love is the veriest life itself; what is everything else but flying feathers, chaff, and dung! For into us he has transcribed himself and his universal heaven, in like manner also the world, and even hell; and he has given us, as it were, the option of choosing the one or the other. But in what manner mortals, while they tend towards this goal itself, direct their course through devious and dark roads, sometimes backwards and sometimes forwards, I have seen with mine own eyes, while being joined as a companion to heavenly wisdoms, I have taken a view also of the terrestrial orb : for they everywhere institute and celebrate sacred sports in honor of the Supreme, or the Deity, but with infinite variety. For the most part they set up a kind of goal elevated into the form of a pyramid or obelisk; but the plain itself, where the races, whether in chariots or on horses, or on foot, are to be performed, they cut into several paths. Some form these paths into winding labyrinths, and when the sound of the trumpet is given by the cryer, the crowd, while they set out from the goal, and direct their course through those paths, for the most part lose their way, and when they think that they are going in a right line, and have even reached the goal, they apperceive that they have wandered entirely from that point. Some also with their eyes blinded, rushed on, chained together in a long row, over whom were set leaders, bearing in their hands immense maps and charts, in which the wanderings of the paths were marked by guide-posts and indices; the leaders themselves, with their eyes wide open, appeared like lynxes, but they who were blinded by the love of self, and of the world, seemed to us like those who labour under a disorder called by them a gutta serena, or amaurosis,* and some of them blear-eyed, looking askew ; a troop of lictors followed the crowd, to compel those who had escaped from the ranks, by whips and scourges, to return to the first appointed order. There were some also, who, having measured all the distances of the course, in their prospect seemed to measure even the goal, but then first appeared in the interval a deep whirlpool broken up from the jaws of the mountains, from the other bank of which this column itself of the goal with its decorations and rewards was beheld, and thus at length they apperceived with regret, that they had to measure back the whole of their way, in order that might return into the right path, which, by reason of its narrowness, had not been seen, but passed by. But some, instead of directing their course to the goal, saw themselves introduced into proud edifices, and aerial palaces by the deluder of the human race, where their senses were fascinated by all kinds of fallacious delights and delusive objects; not aware that these were called the sabbaths of that enemy. But it was otherwise with others, yet frequently by roundabout paths, shady scenery, or valleys, they discovered themselves to be led away into errors, but this not till it was late, if ever. .

86. But whereas the evening is now approaching, let us pause awhile, and resume the thread of this discourse some other day, for circumstances are not similar with thee and with us; we are not in the race, we are in the inmost goal, and there sport ourselves : We possess and enjoy our love. In proportion to the number of thine intelligences and wisdoms, is the number also of infancies and innocencies:

A disorder of the eye. Tr. consequently we are so many images of him : We perfect thy mind [mens] ; by means of us therefore thou thyself art his image : We behold thy love with our eyes, and by means of us thou also lookest upon him : As often as he himself enters in and goes out, he salutes thee by or through us ; and lest we should ever be without him, he has given command to his wisdoms and intelligences, of whom he himself is the acting soul, that they should never depart from us ; thus by their kindness we enjoy his perpetual presence and life. Let us therefore all be joined together by an eternal connexion, and let us take up our social abode in thy mind ; let no times or seasons break the covenant of our society ; we pledge ourselves to thee ; we will now enter thine Olympus, as brides enter the bride-chamber ; lo! I see our love himself holds the torch, and his wisdoms utter applause. Thus ended this scene, which was the fifth in order.

PART THE SECOND

CONCERNING THE

WORSHIP AND LOVE

GOD;

TREATING OF THE

MARRIAGE OF THE FIRST-BEGOTTEN, OR ADAM,

AND, IN CONNEXION WITH IT

OF THE SOUL,

THE INTELLECTUAL MIND, THE STATE OF INTEGRITY,

AND

THE IMAGE OF GOD.

BY EMANUEL SWEDENBORG.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Treatise which follows is evidently a continuation of the foregoing one, though published by the Author as a distinct work. It is therefore thought proper to give it the distinct title in the translation which the Author has given it in the original.

PART SECOND.

CONCERNING THE MARRIAGE OF THE FIRST-BEGOTTEN.

87. There was a grove, distant some furlongs from the Paradise of the first-begotten, surrounded with winding streams, and divided into insular forms by meander- ings derived from those streams: the whole likewise was an orchard, in the midst of which also was a most extraordinary tree, which by its size and beauty emulated the tree of life, or the maternal tree of the other grove. There was nothing of pleasantness and of beauty in one grove which did not exist effigied in the other, insomuch that if those two groves had been included in the same plot of ground, they might have been called consorts, or, as it were, conjugial partners. The first-begotten, on a time, directing his course by the winding of the paths, arrived at the spot about twilight, and when he could not retrace his footsteps by reason of the shade of approaching night, he betook himself into the midst of this garden, and lay down under the branching-covering of the abovementioned apple-tree, for the sake of taking sleep and passing the night on a bed and couch a little elevated by flowers which had been gathered together; and when sudden sleep closely embraced and composed his external limbs, and presently their interior fibres, instantly there appeared to him a nymph of a most beautiful countenance and most elegant form, at the sight of whom, from a sort sympathetic feeling, he was so inflamed, that suddenly a soft fire enkindled in the inmost principles of his body ; and when he attempted to enfold the nymph in his arms, she, as it were, like to a bright cloud, fled from him, seeming to elude his touch and endeavor; he, in consequence, being more vehemently agitated, and attempting to catch her in her flight, so irritated the parts about the thorax, that one of his ribs seemed to him to leap out of its place, the nerves being so distended by the operation of the mind, and the blood in the breast being put in commotion by the heart; but after some struggle, he seemed to himself to catch her, on which occasion he gave her frequent kisses, which he impressed successively on her lips and mouth; at this moment, when she appeared still more beautiful by reason of the sparkling of a new flame, he suddenly awoke, and apperceived with grief, that it was only a species of dream; not aware that that appletree, under which he rested, in like manner as his maternal one, carried a similar egg, from which his future con- jugial partner was to be born, and that she it was whose representative image he courted so eagerly in sleep ; and that the branch at his breast, lying in his bosom, was what he embraced in his arms; and that the very egg itself was what he pressed with his lips and his kisses, and thus infused into it a vital soul from his own.

88. Being put on this occasion into much emotion, when he was desirous to retain the delights of his rest, by falling into new sleep, yet always in vain, at the first dawn of day he raised himself from his bed, and measuring back his former steps, he arrived at his own garden of delights, or the birth-day grove, without missing his way : yet it occurred to his mind, that he was driven thither by a divine impulse, and that he saw something offered to him, the event of which he should afterwards be acquainted with,

89. In the meantime, in this little egg thus impregnated, the soul, infused by the first-begotten in the ardor of sleep, began to weave its forms, from the first celestial forms to the ultimate natural ones, and thus from principles to clothe itself with a body, but of softer stamina; and after the periods of their formation, or the courses of primaeval life, to bring the birth to maturity, and by a force acquired to itself to give it exit, and admission thereby into the vernal aura. The foetus, also, when brought forth, was initiated into and passed through the same states as those of our first-begotten, whose life, but in itself distinct, is carried and continued; in like manner also it passed its infancy under the parental care and tuition of the celestials, even to the first flower of age, under whose auspices it grew everyday, as in intelligence, so also in elegance of form and beauty of countenance, even into an exemplar of beauties, and at the same time of the pleasantnesses of the hum ad race. From her face shone forth, not only integrity, but also the veriest innocence, insomuch that she appeared like a sort of celestial grace under a human form ; for a spiritual principle itself communicated an image of itself to her corporeal form, viz. the mind [animus] with its affections and changes of state, influencing the very texture of the muscular fibres, which texture was most tender, and best, adapted to signify the ideas of every emotion ; but the desires of the mind [mens] entered into forms still more perfect and more interior of the same fibres, which moreover represented themselves painted, according to every change, by variegations of white and purple, as by colors; finally, the loves themselves, by similar rays of a kind of vital flame, entered into these forms, which flame darted forth from the eyes as from its centres and focuses, so that from the very face itself, as from a kind of written tablet, the meaning of all her ideas and thoughts might, at one view, be beautifully comprehended and read by the eyes of another. In so pure and sound a state of the soul, the image of all the interior faculties must of necessity be produced in the form of the body, and especially in the countenance, which is also called an effigy of the mind ; for there was nothing intervening which could invert and disturb the characters of such transcription ; for the mind [animus] lay altogether obsequious under the government of the mind [mens], in which the love itself of heaven reigned. By this method this first-begotten pair, when they were about to enter upon conjugial life, were enabled long to converse together without the aid of language and the assistance of the ear.

90. This most beautiful damsel, when she was in the first smile and sport of her age, and every delightful object imparted gladness, by chance, in walking, turned her course to the water of a certain fountain, like pure crystal, transparent even to the' bottom, which was opaque ; into which water when she cast down her eyes, she was amazed at seeing an image floating under the surface of the water, and at times emerging as she put herself in motion, just as if it was alive ; but presently, when she observed that the same form expressed similar little motions with herself, and when she looked nearer, that she acknowledged her own bosom of ivory whiteness, and her own arms and hands, she returned in astonishment into herself, as from shade into light, apperceiving that it was a reflected image of herself. But when, from the pleasure of the novelty of the thing, she had awhile delighted herself, with this effigy of herself, she was struck with another amazement, which now fixed her versatile ideas, viz. that she recognised in the countenance whatsoever she.revolved in her mind, even her astonishment itself, and acknowledged her wandering ideas about it, wandering that thus all the passages of her mind stood open and unlocked. When she was unable to disperse this cloud which astonishment induced, as she had done the former, she betook herself with a quick step to her celestials, asking them to explain to her, if they were so disposed, whence it came to pass that in her countenance were represented all the little affections of her mind, and series of ideas thence excited, for, she said, that she had discovered in the fountain, that her face indicated and revealed whatsoever she inwardly revolved ; and that on this account it was impossible for her to conceal anything. In reply, one of the celestials, who led the chorus, said, if thou hadst known, my little daughter, in what manner the interior and exterior powers and faculties mutually succeed each other, and according to that order mutually act upon each other, thou wouldst have ceased to wonder; but in order to make thee acquainted with these things, I will briefly open them to thy view. Thy supreme and inmost power is the soul itself, which is all in all of thy body, for from it all the fibres derive their birth and beginning of their determination. A second power or faculty is called the intellectual mind [mens], first of all excited and begotten by the soul, as by its parent, wherefore it calls it its love and only-begotten. A third is the inferior mind [mens] which is also called mind [animus]. From these three principles the fibres of the whole body, with the inclosed spirit, proceed, and from the fibres vessels are constructed which convey the blood ; from these vessels, and their ramifications, all the organical webs whatsoever, which are visible in the compass of the body, and inclosed in that compass, and which are called sensories, muscles, viscera, or members, are formed and woven together; such is the composition of all things in general. But let us now retrace our steps, by explaining in what manner the one acts and flows-in into the other. The soul, in its supreme principles, is clothed with a form, which is called surper-celestial, and refers its life to our

Supreme Deity, as a gift perpetually received from Him, But the mind [mens] called intellectual, gained its form from the soul and its rays of life, emulous of the most simple fibres, which form is called celestial, and derives its life, while from the Supreme, at the same time from His love or only-begotten; for those forms or substances are only powers, or the first of organical powers, which derive living action from the rays of their life. But the inferior mind [mens], or mind [animus] having gained its form, which is called infra-celestial, or the supreme natural, from the former, derives its life from a certain spiritual fountain, which was made the connecting chain of heaven and the world. From these three distinct forms, as from their principles, flow forth now all the corporeal or material forms, which correspond to purely natural forms, and which constitute the inferior spheres, or the body itself, consequently also the operation of their forms, changes of state, and methods of acting. But as to the correspondence itself by the influx of the operation of one form into another, it is first to be noted, that the parent or superior form respects the next inferior form as its offspring, consequently as its image, there being no difference between them but in regard to simplicity and perfection : hence there exists and flourishes such a harmony between the forms, by the mediation of active and living forces, that a change of the state of one, which is effected by a variation of form excites a like change in the other correspondently ; for a perpetual agreement reigns by mediate active forces, between like forms, especially when all things flow rightly in their order, or when the supreme form, which is the most perfect of all, acts into the next inferior one, and this latter in like manner into the following one, and thus successively ; in which case all those changes of state, which are excited in the two supreme forms, evidently present themselves, by corresponding similar forms, in ultimates. This now is the reason why thy soul and mind [mens] transcribe themselves into the gestures, speech, and other external activities, but especially into the countenance ; and why there is not the smallest particle in the whole body which does not undergo a change similar to their affection ; for as those forms rule in supreme principles, they rule also in the inmost of all principles. It is also a mark of thine integrity and innocence that this beams forth so plainly from thy countenance. The celestial intelligence, by living representations, exhibited all these things so manifestly to view, that they fell like so many painted images into the sense of this damsel who was endowed with ingenuity as perfectly as with beauty.

91. When the young damsel applied all the attention of her ears and her mind to these words, and collecting their scattered senses into one, according to an eminent mode of connexion not unlike what is natural, viewed them in their own light, as she herself was wont to call it, she had some hesitation about the close of what was said, viz. that a representation of the affections of the mind in the countenance was a mark of integrity and innocence, not knowing as yet what the want of integrity could mean ; wherefore in humble prayer she intreated them not to desist from favoring her with instruction, and that they would proceed to place in a clear light, what and whence was a state of integrity 1 The celestial goddess, rejoicing not a little at this inquiry, replied as follows : From what has been lately told thee, I am aware that thou seest clearly that three faculties in us mutually succeed each other, and act mutually into each other, viz. the soul, the intellectual mind [mens] with its will, and the mind [animus] or the inferior mind [mens] and that in like manner there are three fountains of life, by which those faculties, or powers, are excited to their life, one of which in like manner acts and flows-in into the others, and thus conjointly into the nature of thy little corporeal world, even to its extremes. Such is the order which our Supreme foresaw and provided from eternity, and thus established from the beginning of creation ; and such an order He has marked and established in thee, my daughter. We celestials judge of integrity by virtue of order itself from things highest to things lowest, or if you prefer it, from things inmost to things outermost, thus from things most simple to those which are ultimately compounded. For our sight does not dwell on the surface, but penetrates into the very marrows of things, and looks at the principles of principles, and from these follows the thread in continuation to the ultimates of texture, whence we form conclusions concerning goodness and integrity. For whatsoever is perfect in the extremes, is in no case derived from any other principle but that where perfection itself is, nor by any other order but that which the Supreme has derived from Himself, and introduced into His own heaven and world, and in like manner into thy microcosm. Let us unfold therefore this order itself, from first to last and backwards. Our Supreme, to the intent that from His most holy sanctuary and inmost heaven, consequently from His throne, He might rule the universe by His nod, and at His disposal, as in first principles, so also in ultimate nature, and might thus found a celestial kingdom begat from eternity, or before the creation of the world, the first-begotten of all living th mgs, by whom He might connect and unite with Himself things spiritual and things corporeal, or things celestial and things natural, that is, things living and things void of life ; for without love nothing conspires to unity and concord, or lives and is acted upon continually by one spirit, and thus has a tendency to one end, but disagrees and falls to pieces. He therefore was born to be a uniting medium between things superior and things inferior, or immediately between the

Supreme, his parent, and heaven itself, that is, the inhabitants of heaven ; wherefore it is he alone by which all order is instituted and perfected, or by which a way is made from the Supreme to the ultimates of nature, and back again, thus forwards and backwards; but he, inasmuch as he is the soul of the whole heaven, a divine essence and life purely spiritual, could not descend immediately into natuie void of life, without a bond again spiritual, or mediating life, into which the nature of heaven and the nature of the world might enter and be connected ; for what communion of life and nature can exist, except by such mediation 1 But this spiritual inferior life, in consequence of the disorderly heat of man’s own proper love and ambition, broke the connexion ; wherefore now he lives, not the life of heaven, but of nature ; and does not breathe love, but hatred, consequently not union, but disagreement ; nevertheless by him our love will enter the nature of the world, or of our body, and by his divine power, in order to prevent the lapse of all things, will connect again- what had been broken and rendered unconnected, and will recall the world to heaven as to its continent; to effect which purpose, the enemy, the violator of the covenant, must be put by our love under the yoke, his fierce assaults must be broken, his destructive forces must by dissipated, his mischievous life must be devoted to death, and thus all his acts must be restrained within the sphere of attempts alone, and by this method he must be driven by force to the discharge of the duties imposed on him. This now is the very order itself, according to which a passage is made from the Supreme into nature. A similar order is also inscribed on the faculties and powers of our life. Our soul is ruled by the Supreme Himself; the intellectual mind with its will by the love of the Supreme ; but the mind [animus] by this lowest mediator. To the intent that all things may flow according to this order instituted by the 16*

most wise, the love of the Supreme, which resides in our minds, as in His own Olympus, will arrange the mediums of all ends flowing-in by Himself or by the soul, and will inspire and fill with the life of His own love, and by the mind [animus], or its mediating life, first subdued and brought into obedience as thou hast heard, will flow-in into the nature of our bodies, viz. into the fibres and their spirit, and form this latter into the blood, in each of which nature is admitted into a partnership of life, consequently into our universal little animal world, as well without as within : for nothing essential is given in the whole body and its natures, but a vessel and fibre with its blood and spirit, according to the various determinations of which arise all organical forms, fabrications, or textures, provided for every use, and necessity of life ; thus the life of the love of heaven flows-in into the universal system of our body from highest principles to ultimates, and lives and reigns all in all therein. This now is the order by which we exist, and by which we subsist ; and so long as we subsist by it, so long we perpetually exist, or as we are born, are perpetually re-born, or as we are made, are perpetually re-made, and as we are connected, are held together in connexion ; creation itself is continued in us, and is called perpetual conservation ; or integrity a perpetual renewal of integrity and thus we pass a perpetual spring, or live the flower of our age, since what is divine rules in our natural principle, and what is heavenly in our corporeal principle; for He who instituted and establishes this kingdom in us, is perfection itself, because He is the Supreme, and is union and harmony itself, because He is the love of the Supreme. The state therefore induced by this order is what is called a state, of integrity_y conjoined with a state of infancy and innocence, consequently with a state of immortality.

92. But let us unfold this point of so great moment from its principles, so as sensibly to be affected by it. For this purpose let us compare the rays themselves emitted from the three principles with the purest fibres, although they are not to be called fibres, except by analogy or eminence, but for the sake of understanding, let us borrow common expressions when others are not at hand; for a fibre of the body itself is born from these conglomerated fibres so called of principles, as their ultimate offspring; hence from the nature of affinity, permission is also given of signifying one by the name of the other. Every fibre whatsoever, which reigns in the universal body, derives its birth from the soul, for by its fibre it is the soul of its universe, and present, powerful, conscious, provident, and living in all its parts ; wherefore its ray or most eminent fibre, is the one only substantial principle in things compounded, or the one only simple principle in things aggregate, that is, in the fabrications or organical forms of the body. Its form in supreme principles, or inmostly in the very principles of the fibres, is called super-celestial; its determination, or fluxion, according to fibres, through the inmost principles of the body, everywhere also emulates a similar form; this latter is of such purity and simplicity, that it bears in its bosom the supreme essence of life. For this super-eminent fibre, viewed in itself, is only recipient of, or capable of receiving that living essence, wherefore also the soul is called the power of powers, or the form of forms. From these most simple rays, which emulate fibres, is produced another beginning of a fibre, by a wonderful mode of a kind of infinite circumgyration, the form of which in supreme principles, or the very beginnings of the fibres, is called celestial, which also is the form of our intellectual mind; through the most subtle pore of this fibre, (for in the universal animated body, from first principles to last, there is nothing but what is permeable and conspirable) again a certain purely spiritual essence, which is the life of heaven itself, or of the love of the Supreme flows through in like manner as the fibre itself, born from the prior or supreme fibre. From these is now produced a third beginning of a fibre, the form of which in highest principles is called infra-celestial, and the pore or canal of which fibre is only pervious to that spiritual essence mediating between the life of heaven and the nature of the world. These are the veriest essences and most real substances, for the derivatives from them, and those things which are at length the object of sense, derive all their actuality and reality from them and their connexion with themselves. From these three principles thus connected together in their operation, is now produced every fibre, which flows down by the nerves into the provinces of the body, and conveys down the white and purer blood, commonly called the animal spirit. From these latter are ultimately compounded vessels, called arteries and veins, for the conveyance of the red and grosser blood, from which, and also from the said fibres, all the organs and viscera of the body are fabricated, and live by the life of each blood flowing in from those principles, and the fibre being there three-folded. From these considerations it may now be manifest what is the method of all composition, and what is the successive order itself in principles, and the simultaneous order in the fibres thence derived, also what is the influx according to that order.

93. But I see clearly, my little daughter, said she, that still a kind of light cloud is floating in thy light, which also thou art desirous to have dissipated, for I observe that thou dost not yet thoroughly see what is the quality of those forms which act in each other according to that order; for the better clearing up of this subject, I will begin again and review it from supreme principles, or from the first stamen. Those forms, which are actual substances, and by changes of state perform their wonderful functions when mutually subordinate to each other, are circumstanced as follows: The first form of all proper to our soul, is called super-celestial: but the second, which is of the intellectual mind [mens], is named celestial: the third, which is of the inferior mind [mens], or of the mind [animus], is called infra-celestial. To these now succeed forms purely natural, which, if they are to be denominated from the nature of their fluxion, are to be named as follows ; the first of them is to be called spiral, conspicuous in the corporeal fibres themselves: the second, circular or spherical, conspicuous in the bloodvessels: the third, angular, properly terrestrial and material, serving the fluids and the blood itself, and also the spirit of the fibres, for corporiety. But what the quality of the nature of each form is, must be learned from what is made evident to the understanding by the aid of the senses, consequently from the last, or from the angular and spherical form. The former, or the angular, from the determination of all essentials opposed to each other, derives this quality, that it is heavy and inert matter, of itself unadapted to all motion. The other or spherical, is more perfect than the former in this, that its superficies resembles an infinite angle, and respects only one fixed point, opposite to all the points of the surface, which is called the centre, therefore accommodated to motion and variations of form. The third, or spiral, from its determination, derives still superior perfection, for it again puts on a kind of perpetuity or infinity, for its radii, inasmuch as they are spires, press circularly, not immediately to any fixed centre, but to the superficies of a certain sphere, holding the place of its centre ; thus it is still more accommodated than the former to motion, and to variations of form. The fourth, or infra-celestial, derives still superior perfection from a kind of new perpetuity or infinity ; for its spires, like a vortex, flow into such gyrations, that by them are marked greater and lesser circles with poles, as in the great sphere of the world; and the flexure and inflexure of its spires have respect to the spires of the foregoing form as the points of its perpetual centre ; hence its power of varying itself, or of changing states, increases immensely above the other. The fifth, or celestial, puts on a new perpetuity or infinity above the rest, for this again regards, as its relative centre, the infra-celestial form, and all its determinable points ; wherefore the ideas of its fluxion are not to be marked by lines and words: from the ratio of this infinity, its faculty of changing states rises eminently above the foregoing. But in the sixth form, or the super-celestial, there is nothing but what is perpetual, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, the order, law, idea of the universe, and the essence of all essences. Such now is the ascent and descent of forms or substances in the greatest, and in our least universe; similar also is the ascent and descent of all forces and powers which flow from them. But all their perfection consists in the possibility and virtue of varying themselves, or of changing states, which possibility increases according to their elevations, thus by multiplication into itself by infinities, so that in number it exceeds all the series of calculations unfolded by human minds, and still inwardly involved in them ; which infinities finally all become what is infinite in the Supreme. Our ideas are mere progressions by variations of form, and thus by actual changes of state.

94. If thou couldst discern, my beloved, how distinctly and ordinately these forms are arranged and connected with each other, and according to connection act and flow-in into each other, from the mere aspect and infinity of so many wonderful things conspiring into one, thou wouldst fall down, from an inmost impulse, with sacred astonishment, and at the same time pious joy, to perform an act of worship and of love before such an architect.

I will only briefly and simply open in what manner those forms cohere in the little type of thy world, or microcosm. For they all of them co-exist and co-operate in every smallest particle which falls under the observation of the senses, exactly according to the order in which they press and follow each other; for nothing is together in any texture or effect which was not successively introduced ; and everything is therein, according as order itself introduces it; wherefore simultaneous order derives its birth, nature, and perfection from successive orders, and the former is only rendered perspicuous and plain by the latter. Hence we celestials judge of states of perfections, whether they be beauties, or goodnesses, or pleasantnesses. In order that this may be rendered still clearer, it is to be observed, that what is supreme in things successive takes the inmost place in things simultaneous; thus things superior in order super-involve things inferior, and wrap them together, that these latter may become exterior in the same order; by this method first principles, which are also called simple, unfold themselves, and involve themselves in things posterior or compound; wherefore every perfection of what is outermost flows forth from inmost principles by their series ; hence thy beauty, my daughter, the only parent of which is order itself. But to return to the before-mentioned forms, and show in what order in thy microcosm they mutually follow each other and moreover unite.

95. To the intent, my darling, that thou mayest enjoy with me this curious and delightful spectacle, I will open to thee my breast, and from the body will bring forth arguments of experience ; this is to me no difficulty, for I assume the human form when I please, and again lay it aside ; behold now, said she, this nerve alone, consisting of infinite parts, may serve for a mirror ; thou seest it girded with a double, yea a triple zone, and concluded in a form almost the last, or the spherical form, and thus brought to its last or outermost forms. But I will remove now this thin covering that I may unfold the forms involved in their order; having drawn aside therefore the zones or little coats, behold, says she, the fascicular composition of this nerve, which thou seest is made up of little nerves, and these again of fibres adjoined to each of them ; these fibres, being disjoined from their bonds, are folded into spiral flexures, and are permeable to a kind of lymph, which is called the animal spirit, into which is infused life from its principles, which life it conveys into the streets and towns of the whole kingdom,and sprinkles on the blood itself. But lest the sight of so many things may render the ideas confused, let us simply examine only a single fibre which admits its lymph, separate from connexion with the neighbouring fibres, which fibre also, according to my art, I will present to thee in an enlarged form. Look now, said she, and see by how many permeable fibres this little capillary tube is encompassed, and in what manner these fibres are again and again encompassed by others, into each of which flows-in distinctly its own life from first principles: such is the manner by which they are jointed together. But to the intent that we may examine the forms themselves, and the connexion of one with another, and finally the influx of one into another, let us pursue this thus circumscribed fibre, pressed gently with the finger, and set at liberty from its companions, even to its beginnings, which are conspicuous in the compass or crown of the hemispheres of the brain and at the same time in the marrows of its axises, and are called glands, from their situation cortical, and from their color cineritious, and are spherules of an oval figure, in the bosom of which is stored up not only whatsoever is in the fibre, but also whatsoever is acted and felt by the fibre. Wherefore, to prevent the rays of our vision from being scattered into several objects, let us look only at one spherule selected from the society, and unlocked in order from outermost principles to inmost; having withdrawn therefore the membranes, the first object presented to view was a kind of new brain, but in a diminutive form, again with infinite spherules, or little spheres, arranged into the infra-ce- lestial form, all of which had a fixed view and respect to greater and lesser circles, and to their poles altogether as in the great sphere of the world. It was also rendered visible, in what manner this form taken from little spheres, by the variations of itself and changes of state, produced ideas called material ; and in what manner each little sphere sent forth a diminutive fibre with its little duct and covered it with a small coat; and how natural life was infused into it from the lowest spiritual fountain which inhabits that sphere with its genii, and excites its organical principles ; also in what manner all these fibrils, permeated by this vital essence, by circumgyrating, formed together a common fibre, or the nervous fibre of the body. Having examined these things, she next unclosed and opened one of these little spheres, and inwardly in it she again brought forth to view innumerable new verticals, the small habitations, as it were, most, ornamented, of so many intelligences and wisdoms winding into a celestial form, which vorticals, by their infinite bendings and circles, and most becoming order of them all, represented in a little effigy a kind of Olympus, or the Heaven of our love : she showed also in what manner the Olympiades, the inhabitants of this heaven, by the variations of that form, or changes of state, conceived and employed the ideas of our intellectual mind; also in what manner each wove a most pure stamen emulous of a fibre, and infused into its little pore celestial life, or the life of our love ; and from stamina as numerous as were the little vortexes or the small habitations of the intelligences, contrived the superfices of the 17

above-mentioned fibril, which is permeable to natural life. Again, one of these little vortexes or little stars being laid open, there appeared the supreme of all forms, called the super-celestial, from which darted those rays, or by supereminence fibres, which being permeable to the life of the Supreme penetrated into Olympus. This now is the inmost Heaven, says she, or the sacred habitation of our soul, from which all things that live, act, and that are, and thus exist in that little corporeal world, derive their being ; for from infinite, as it were, points of infinite purity arranged into the super-celestial form, radiate and shoot forth continually infinite lines of the same purity, from which are woven together the first of all permeabilities, animated by the supreme life, which being transcribed into a celestial form, conceive that emulous beginning of stamens produced in the second heaven from the wefts of the Heliconides ; from these permeabilities is prepared that beginning of a fibre, which is inspired with celestial life, or the life of love, and is brought forth to form the third beginning of a fibre, from which ultimate principle, in which prior principles dwell together, the corporeal fibre is compacted, being drawn into a spiral form; and from this latter at length, flowing round into a spherical form, is unfolded the last channel, or blood-vessel, in which all things now exist together in a simultaneous series. Such is the generation of the organical forms of the body, from which, as in a mirror, the essential order instituted by the Supreme is presented for contemplation. This order is in our Supreme Himself, and in the rays of His life, together from Himself, and is produced from Himself; for, as thou may- est recollect, the Supreme Form, in itself, respects those which follow in order, even to the last; wherefore the essential order, which thence comes forth, and is, as it were, unfolded, is of infinite perfection, because it is of the Infinite Himself. That these things are so, thou, my daughter, who art born into this essential order, and the light of its life, although thou art still young, yet, as I see, thou clearly comprehendest; but it is otherwise with those whose wisdom is grounded only in the delusive lumen of nature ; they suffer themselves to be convinced by nothing, but the testimony of the external senses ; and what is wonderful, they reject from their belief the clearest agencies and effects, unless they see them also in a substance; wherefore when they look into truth from this connexion and order, the chain snaps asunder, at its first link, and thus their view remains fixed in mere earthly objects, or in matters which are born from the ultimate form.

95. But do not yet withdraw thy attention; again fix thine eyes steadily, and look into the common centre oj this little sphere, which, being placed at the top of the fibre, is its active principle and head ; in its centre, as thou seest, is a little fountain, into which all those vitalities, through their little veins, continually and beautifully flow in the same order; here thou seest the fountains themselves, which, as being very minute, can only be viewed by the pupil of the eye alone, while the too abundant and wandering light is dispersed from it by the eye-brows; this little fountain is called the fountain of life, for its lymph,' thence called animal and spirit, being animated by these essences of life, flows down as a little stream into the containing fibre, even to its boundaries. But what is still more wonderful, those vital essences abide together in every smallest part of thislyurp’i, being joined all together in th'i[ society, in which they mutually succeed each other, uniting with themselves at length, from the circumfluent world, the most simple elements, introduced by emissaries ; these things I see cleaily with my eyes, wherefore from what is seen by me I relate them to thee ; for nothing is perfected but from the same order, as in greatest things so also in least; it is only determination, which, by varying the form, varies the cause, and thus the effect, correspondency with its end or use. This spiritual lymph, conveyed down through its little channel, is at length brought into the blood itself and its globules, and finishes therein its last gyration ; but to the intent that ultimate things may return to first principles, this blood is resolved, and through its little fountain oflife is conveyed back into the fibres, and thus performs a perpetual circulation ; from its connecting principles thus continually rejected, hunger and thirst, or the want of refreshment by food and chyle, are produced.

97. These forms being view^red in their substance and order of succession, let us now take into consideration their mutual influx into each other, and the very essential order of action thence resulting. But- whereas that order penetrates, like lightning, from the highest citadel of heaven to the very bottom of nature, and, like an orbit in rapid motion, carries along with it the rays of vision itself and prevents all discrimination, so that there exists only one and the same perpetual image, therefore thy mind must so stand upon its hinge that its view may be open at the same time into each nature, viz. of heaven and of the world. Having so said, she opened the doors, and while the damsel was looking around, Behold now, said she, in what manner the forms mutually excite each other to action, the first its second, the second the third, and the third the inferior ones, even to the last, almost as an axis excites a wheel, and the wheel its powers, even to the last, which bring into effect the exertions of all, and this with such unanimity, that everything successive unites in one general conformity, although each, by its own agitation, exercises its proper functions apart. But as the soul employs its states, so the superior mind [mens], as being alive, from itself exercises its activities, and from this again the inferior mind, and so forth, with perpetual condescension, determined by conformity itself, and at the same time b.y the method of connexion and of influx; for every one was born and made to be obedient to its next superior, thus all to compliance with the Supreme (form), which is All in All, and the Only Source of the action of all.

98. This now is the order, says she, established by the Supreme, and determined by His love into act, in which there is nothing but what is divine, perpetual, and infinite; for such as it is in the Supreme Himself, and in His only- begotten, such it is in its orb, which flows and reflows in eternal gyration from first principles to last, and from last to first; and whereas God is in it as in Himself, this order resembles God Himself. All those infinities of respects, which, as thou hast heard, concentrate themselves in forms, being unfolded into this order, so conspire to one only end, as perpetual circles to the centre of their centre. Wherefore in it nothing is given which is not full of Deity, and everything glitters from it, as from a sun, and puts on celestial life; even nature herself is thence resplendent, and being, as it were, animated, becomes alive ; for by [or through] her there is a path to the ultimates of ends, and from these the first is looked back upon. As the damsel, from an infinite delight, was intent for along time on these things, something like lightning glanced upon the sacred light of her mind, and by its influence, sliding, as it were, into an interior heaven, she there beheld all things in idea itself which she had heretofore viewed in a type.

99. When this new inhabitant of heaven had for some time fed the inmost principles of her mind with rapturous delights, suddenly relapsing, as it were, she briskly wiped her eyes with her finger, that her mind might recover its former ken, and thus again looking upon her celestial companion, Proceed, I pray, says she, and instruct me by your skilful eloquence, whether or no this order presents itself perspicuous in an effigy, for as it descends from the centre into perpetual spirals, and in its descentexpands itself and 17*

grows, and infolds and unfolds itself in the ultimate forms of nature, so possibly it unfolds itself with such clearness as to become wholly manifest to sense. To this the goddess, touched with the love of this desire, If you please, says she, these your wishes also shall be granted : look at my face, or, in the water of thy fountain, look at thy own ; both thy face and mine carry that order in effigy; for whatsoever is the subject of thy mind’s interior consideration, and whatsoever ideas are conceived and brought forth by thy desires, or are the objects of thy love, we read them all as copied out in thy countenance. We celestials discern this clearly, as just now, in what manner this discourse of ours excites thy delight and approbation. For those forms, lately unfolded in the beginnings of the fibres, in each fibril of thy countenance, one within the other, vary their states so elegantly, as even to instruct of themselves those who are ignorant of this order, what they inwardly mean, and in what manner they flow-in into each other ; let us therefore unswathe them in their order, that thou mayest more clearly comprehend the signatures of the changes of state. The outermost form, or the common form of thy face, is, as it were, a tablet, on which are inscribed proofs of the rest of the forms, and it corresponds to that form which is called spherical. But the other, or the superior natural form, called spiral, from the wonderful orb of the fluxion of the moving or muscular fibres about the lips of thy mouth, and the eye-lids of each eye, by the variation of connexions and situations, delineates conspicuously every progression of thy gladness as it unfolds itself into pleasure in that plane, and at the same time unfolds it into laughter. But the third form, called the highest natural or infra-celestial, proper to the mind the orb of their fluxion is performed around the lips of the mouth, and the eye-lids of each eye, may be manifest from the following short description of them. If we explore the muscles of the face according to their directions, that muscular flesh is to be considered as divided into three regions ; the first of which descends from the upper part of the forehead even to the eye-lashes of the upper eyebrows, the muscles of which are the frontal, the corrugators of the eye-brows, the pyramidal of the nose, the constrictors orbiculars of the upper eye-brows, and the elevators of the same. The second commences from the eye-lashes of the lower eye-brows, and closes in the orbicular of the upper lip, the muscles of which are called elevators of the upper lip, vulgarly, the laughing muscles, the incisorii, the canine, the zygomatic, the myrtiform, which is ascribed to the nose, also the buccinator, and further, the semi-orbicular of the upper lip. The third takes its beginning from the semi-orbicular of the lower lip, to which are added the triangular muscle and the quadrate ; not to mention the lesser muscles discovered by various writers, and which may be discovered every day, inasmuch as the face of one man has never similar muscles as to situation, magnitude, quantity, direction, to that of another, by reason that there are as many countenances as there are minds [animus], and as many minds as there are heads, or men. That there are three regions, appears from this circumstance, that the muscles of one region can be excited to motion, or contracted and expanded, separately without the muscles of another, as may be clearly seen, and thus known from experiment in a mirror. The muscles of the first region are common, less common, particular, and most particular, arranged altogether for use, according to the rules of the doctrine of order, of degrees, and of society. For their most common muscles are the frontal, the less common are the corrugators of the eye-brows, which latter arise from the pyramidal muscle of the nose. So that those three muscles are subordinate to the most general frontal muscles, with which also they communicate, being connected by fibres. To the corrugators of the eye-brows are subject the orbicular or semi- orbicular muscles of the superior eye-brows; but to these are subject or subordinate the elevators of the superior eye-brows; all these muscles are allotted principally to the bringing of external aid to the eyes, and thus to assist the sight, for they are all determined towards the superior eye-lash. That the muscles of the middle region con- [animus], and its genii, which immediately rules the fibres, and by these the vessels mediately, makes and declares itself evident by the purple and white and the middle tinctures between each, with which it paints, as with colors, those variegated webs ; for it brings the blood into brighter textures, in agreement with its delight, and thus presents to the view somewhat spiritual mixed with what is natural. But the fourth form, or the celestial, which is that of our mind [mens], and of its loves, insinuates inwardly into these colorings the rays of a kind of flame, and elevates and kindles the picture with a kind of celestial and spiritual fire, insomuch that the gladness, from the abundance of desire, is so livingly brilliant, that every’one seizes it at first view, without the aid of teaching and science. Into these the supreme form, or that of our soul, infuses super-celestial light, that is, life ; or vivifies all the little points of thy face with its light, or illuminates with life, whilst the second impresses and communicates to it Spiritual heat, and the third adjoins nature to life, and altogether according to the vibration of that flame, tinges the face elegantly, as a flower, with red and white. But the fourth draws and designs the lines themselves; whilst the fifth exports or brings out to view all these conformities, as in a veil. Look now from this mirror, and see what is the quality of essential order, and in what manner the spiritual principle shines forth from the natural, and the divine from the corporeal, consequently the whole of order ; and since this resembles our Supreme and His love, therefore we celestials, who are His images, whilst we are clothed with a body, cannot assume any other than a human face like unto thine ; for from this we are acknowledged as to

spire to the aid of the inferior eye-lash, and at the same time to the superior lip, every one may discover by making the experiment in a mirror by a living act of sight.

our origin. All these things refer themselves to fibres ; for whatsoever is done in the fibres manifestly imbues the countenance, and unfolds itself in that order in which it exists in the beginnings of the fibres, and finally in the fibres themselves, viz. the life of the Supreme from inmost principles; celestial life, or the life of His love, from principles proximate to them; also mediating or natural life; finally nature herself, who carries that order in herself, consequently in effigy; thus altogether according to the series of the folding together of the lately-inspected fibre, and of the involution of its principles. Hence also it is evident how, according to that order, prior things infold themselves in posterior, and again unfold themselves from these latter; and thus in what manner they establish their circulation from first principles to last, and from last to first, for first principles infold themselves in things posterior, as centres in circumferences, or as in the inmost principles of a nut in the husk and shell, and in like manner unfold themselves, but backwards, like swaddlingclothes, that they may return from things outermost to things inmost. Thus, and no otherwise, the circulation • provided from eternity and established at first creation, is perfected.

100. But this order, viewed in substance and effigy, that is, in the face, is called beauty and handsomeness, the perfection of which results from the agreement of all essentials, from inmost principles to outermost, viz. from the correspondence of life with its spiritual heat or fire, and of the brightness thence arising from its coloring tincture, by which the flaming principle itself becomes pellucid, and lastly, of this flower, with the designation of lines by fibres according to the laws of the harmonies of nature ; all which things ultimately must present themselves visible in a plane handsomely winding. But the agreement of all these things cannot possibly exist without a spiritual prirv ciple of union, or love in the veriest rays of life ; from that principle alone beauty derives its harmony, its florid and genuine complexion and life, its day-dawn and vernal freshness: wherefore love itself shining forth from elegance of form, from its hidden and innate virtue, elicits mutual love, and as an index reveals the vein of beauty.

101. While the damsel snatched at these words with a greedy ear, and, as it were, sucked them in with her whole mind, she retired a little into herself, to take a view of herself, for she began to consider of some ideas which were newly conceived; and while she in some degree restrained her respiration lest it should interrupt the thoughts of her mind by too deep reciprocations, she again, with a soul, as it were, set at liberty, gently accosted her celestial companion in these words: I will discover to you the idea which has newly insinuated itself into my mind, in consequence of what you have been saying, viz. that the beauty of the face, arising from that order of the Supreme, is only a perfection of the body, but I see clearly, that a perfection still more illustrious and more excellent flows from the same order, to wit, perfection of the life itself, which properly or principally involves the state of that integrity, concerning which you so kindly promised to instruct me ; I intreat you therefore to add one favor to another, by instructing me, what and of what quality is perfection of life ? To this question the celestial intelligence replied as follows : I perceive, says she, that our ideas, thine and mine, like consociate sisters, tend to the same point; for my discourse of itself already slides into the subject of thine enquiry, since one perfection involves another, inasmuch as another and another is born from the same order. The perfection of the body is the perfection of form in its substance, from which, as from its subject, sprouts forth the perfection offerees and of life ; for nothing predicable exists which does not take its actuality from this circumstance, that it subsists, that is, from its substance : from what is not something it’is impossible that anything can result; the forces themselves and changes of life, inasmuch as they flow from a substance, become efficient. V/here fore a similar order has place in thy forces and modes of forces, as in thy fibres, regarded ns substances. Hence it follows, that perfection of life presents itself visible in perfection of the body as in its effigy. And whereas perfection of body, especially beauty, is an object of sense, but perfection of life, like a mist, shuns human ken, unless it be viewed from a sublime principle, therefore I was desirous of presenting a mirror of the latter in the former, for the sake of gratifying thy wish.

102. But lest the ideas should wander in doubt, and should afterwards, like things scattered and dispersed, be under the necessity of being gathered together again, or of being introduced by a back way into the point under consideration, I feel desirous to explain simply, at this outset of our speculation, what perfection of life is, that it may appear naked to the understanding. Every one, while he lives his life, lives the order of his life; for life itself is nothing but the order which is lived ; nevertheless amongst the infinite orders which mortals live, there is only one which leads to life : the rest go away in a different direction, and bend themselves to what is contrary to life ; that only one order is the order which the Most Wise, who alone is and lives, has prescribed and instituted from Himself, such as it is in Himself. This order reigns both universally, and most particularly, in thy and my little world of life, insomuch that not even the smallest particle belongs to thy body on which that order is not inscribed, from its first principle to its last; as thou lately sawest in the little fibre, the small head of its beginning, and in the individual parts of the lymph, which runs thropgh the little fibre, and in the rest of the things which enter into and compose any texture. Hence also it is in the universals of particulars, for the greatest things derive their order, consequently all the laws of their order and of their form, from their least things, as things compounded from their parts. Since now it is in all those things which constitute substance, it is also in those things which thence result as acts ; wherefore this order lives its life, and rules in thy smallest actions as in the greatest; for it continues an effigy of itself, as through so many mirrors, from things smallest to things greatest; therefore such as the order is, such is all that which in act is lived, and in life is acted. But I will now explain myself briefly : The above order is such, that super-celestial life flows-in into celestial life, and this latter, by a meditating life, flows-in into the sphere of nature, even to its boundaries, from the last of which it revolves back again to its first principle by acts of putting off, as in its descent by acts of putting on. Super-celestial life is the life of the Supreme Himself. Celestial life is the life of His only-begotten or love ; mediating life is the life of him, who, being made the connecting medium of life and and nature, afterwards revolted ; but nature is what has no life. In this one single and simple mirror, look at that single and simple order, and refer to it, as to an exemplar, all the orders whatsoever which flow about and occupy the breasts of mortals.

103. To the intent that thou mayest perceive the above order in thyself, my daughter, it is of concern that thou shouldest be taught what each power, in the little world of thine own life, is intended to do. The soul, which lives the super-celestial life, regards ends; but the rational mind [mens], which lives the celestial life, arranges means that ends may be turned into uses ; while the natural mind [mens] or the mind [animus], which leads an animal and mediating life, brings into effects the means of uses, which

effects may correspond exactly with ends. Thus ends are the souls of all effects, and effects, which uses mediate, are the bodies of all ends. In this manner the divine princi- ple^ from the highest, in its descent clothed itself continually with the forms of nature, almost as a centre with orbicular spires, even to the last boundary of nature, on which, in such case, all things remain most becomingly inscribed. Such now is every smallest motion of thy body, which derives and obtains its animal life from effects, its celestial life from uses, and its super-celestial life from the ends of uses, whence that smallest motion puts on a human habit, and is called action, in the smallest principles of which, as in the greatest, thy mind [mens] dwells entirely, and thy soul inmostly, perfecting and renewing its state.

104. But this semi-gyration, to the intent that it may perform an entire gyration, as it involves itself from the first principles of life to the last of nature, so it must continually again revolve [unfold] itself from the ultimates of nature to the first principles of life, viz. it must put off the forms of its body and of nature, and sliding back into the interiors of itself, must put on celestial forms, together with the super-celestial, in which forms alone dwells the life of this order. For heaven can enter into nature, but in no case can nature enter into heaven; death has no access to life, nor shade to light; unless death and shade are separated there is no possiblity of enjoying heaven. Wherefore in thy body, the ultimate effects of nature, let in through the doors of the senses, are committed to the custody of mediating life, which is that of the natural soul, under a species of ideas. In this their custody, under the view of the intellectual mind, they do not appear as effects turned into ideas, but as uses, without the clothing of nature ; for it is contrary to this order, that anything clothed with body shall enter from beneath into the sphere of uses, or the celestial sphere. Finally, these uses, under the view of the soul, are not inspected as uses, but purely as ends, which being thus gifted with the veriest essential life, tend together to that one single end, or to the glory of the Supreme. Thus, and no otherwise, what is last flows back to its first principle, and nature to its life.

105. Butthat I may collect now these scattered remarks into one point, I would observe, that the circle of this order is thus described, viz. from the Supreme, who is the most essential life, through His only love, and thus through celestial life, and from this through natural life into nature herself; and then back again from nature, through the same natural life to celestial life, but by continual puttings- off, and thus through the only love to the Supreme or to the very essential life. Thus the hinge of all things is turned, and the door is opened from life and to life, and the circle of this order is perpetuated by the only love, or only- begotten of the Supreme, by whom, and for the sake of whom, are all things.

106. But before I close this general observation, I am desirous to adjoin, in the way of a concluding remark, a description of the happy life of those who live this order ; for they live the same life with us the inhabitants of heaven, but a human life, because they are clothed with body; thus they are sent into the earth that they may enjoy the gratifications of the ultimate world, while at the same time they taste the satisfactions of heaven itself, which being joined together beget full delights, and declare the pleasantness of the whole order to all the senses ; for with their soul they have a relish of divine ends, and with their minds of use, and with the body of effects : but they perceive only the pleasure of effects in the goodness of uses, and the goodness of uses in the happiness of ends; for they so live in the body that minds live under a species of body. With the inhabitants of heaven, or with us, they hold perpetual consort, for we associate with them in mutual discourse;

we are to them oracles, while we are consulted, and deliver to them- plain messages from heaven. In fine, they live in a light which no shade interrupts, into which light nothing but truths descend, which beget the understanding proper to their minds ; and into the rays of which light nothing but goodness enters, which excite the voluntary principle of their mind : thus they act under perpetual inspiration. For the supreme way stands unclosed in them, from the soul into the mind [mens], and vice versa, from the mind into the soul, through the love of heaven ; and is continually open to the light of its intelligence, and to the fire of wisdom. But the other way, or the inferior, from the mind [animus] into the mind [mens], is so barred and shut, that no entrance is open for nature, even through a chink. For that door from the mind [mens] is only turned outwards, to the intent that celestial light may flow-in into natural light, and natural light may never flow back, and thus be mixed with celestial. For in them the intelligence of truth and the wisdom of good, flow down into nature from their fountain, through one only and pure channel ; but they never return from nature to the same channel, and thus to their fountain, unless purged from all defilement. .

107. But directly contrary is the lot of those who in practice do not follow this order, which is of life, but the inverted order, which is of death; these, in outermost principles, appear indeed to have bodies with human faces, but when viewed with our eyes within the bark and external covering of nature, they resemble the inferior animals in countenance; for they live the life of their mind [animus], that is, animal life, or the life of the body, in other words, natural life, and not at the same time mediating or celestial life, which conjoins the life of the Supreme to natural life; wherefore all genii, who also influence the inferior animals, burst forth from their work-houses into the sphere pf their mind [mens], and put to flight the human genii, by nature celestial, or thrust them down into their prisons ; thus they wholly invert order; wild and fierce slaves, se€ at liberty, seize upon the sceptre of the kingdom ; the prince of the world, the most incensed enemy of heaven, who influences the mind [animus], and presides over the body, with the torches of his nature, and the phalanx of his loves, rushes into heaven, and there displays his conquering troops, and thus confounds highest things with lowest; hence so dark a shade* spreads itself over the sphere of

* In what manner a shade is induced on the intellectual mind, ■when order is inverted, may be shewn to apprehension from the principles explained above, n. 95 ; for, as is there maintained, there are three forms, which succeed each other, one above or within the other, viz. inmostly the super-celestial, intermediately the celestial, and exteriorly the infra-celestial, or the supreme natural; all of which, according to the description, conceive and produce fibres, by eminence so called ; from the connexion of which together is composed the corporeal fibre, which conveys the lymph called the animal spirit; for the corporeal or nervous fibre cannot derive its birth from other most pure principles, which transmit purer essences, than such as is the animal spirit; which essences can be no other than the vital ones, from which that spirit itself derives its life ; those vital essences must also of necessity be as many in number as are the faculties of life itself, which are the soul, the intellectual mind [mens], and the mind [animus] ; and^-yet all derive their life from the Supreme, who is the life of all living things; they also roll in the circles of their order, and re-roll, according to the ratio of influx and of the correspondence of its life ; besides many other things, which may be drawn more plainly from the description itself. Conceive now that the infra-celestial form, or the outermost form of life, in the principles above explained, is proper to our mind [animus] ; and the interior or middle form, is proper to the intellectual mind [mens] ; and that one is excited by the other to the changes of its state. If now the interior or celestial form, that is, the intellectual mind [mens] excites to the operations of its functions the exterior or infra-celestial form, which is of the mind [animus], in such case all things succeed according to order; but if the exterior form excites to operation the interior or superior, in this case the order is inverted, for thus what is more imperfect acts upon what is more perfect, tha.t their mind, that their lives are living dreams, and like persons asleep, they are in deep ignorance of what heaven is, what the soul, what the intellectual mind [mens], and what the mind [animus], consequently what order is; for lower things thus mix themselves with higher, like mire with waters of the clearest fountain, with which they make eye-salve and anoint their eyes, so that they see all things but understand nothing ; wherefore they fly about like owls which hate the light, and wander like an ignus fatuus from fen to fen; concerning the love of heaven, concerning us

is, natural life upon celestial. Hence it comes to pass, that those little vortexes, which are called the diminutive habitations of wisdoms, and constitute that form, are absolutely jumbled together, and become almost evanescent; for on the flight of celestial life, by which they are animated, they fall away and perish; hence all communication is destroyed between the supreme life and natural life ; and the changes of state, or the intellectual ideas, become of a nature so imperfect and gross, as to correspond only to the changes of the state of the inferior form, or to material ideas and their sports, or genii or minds [animus]; the consequence of which is, that mere shade takes place of light in things purely spiritual or celestial; a similar state also occupies the universal fibre, resulting from these three principles, and at the same time its essential spirit; for a fibre derives from its principles all the condition and nature of its life ; that fibril, so called in the way of eminence, which conveys celestial life, becomes, as it were, a half-dead and impervious tendril, because it is without support in itself; and thus natural life alone reigns, in which nevertheless is the life of the Supreme, but -without mediation ; this now is the veil which is interposed, so that what is celestial cannot at all manifest itself; and hence results a similar perverted order, as well in the smallest as in the greatest exercises cf life, because it is in all the fibres, from which, as substances, all forces, modes of forces, or actions, are derived ; altogether as was related above. By these means the superior way is closed, which effect takes place when the inferior way is open inwards, or the gate of nature thither opens. Effects themselves confirm this truth with such perspicuity, that every one who is endowed with any power of genius, and any spark of experience, cannot but acknowledge it; for truth, when, published, manifests itself by its own light.

intelligencies, concerning celestial life and its mediation^ concerning divine inspiration, and concerning the double way into the mind [mens], in a word, concerning all things above nature and its life, they prattle like parrots, without understanding, and thus are occupied in cold operations without will. For by inverted order theyinmostly conceal nature, and reject divine things to the circumference; wherefore also in their public and private engagements, they pretend to be governed by the love of heaven, and regard the Supreme as the end of all they think and do, while inwardly, as in centres, they conceal the love of self and of the world; and fearful above all things lest these latter loves should burst forth from their covering, they assume deceitful aspects, from a consciousness that the life which they live is that of inverted order, in other words, that ultimate effects are their uses, and these uses are their ends, and ends commence in nature, and when they have performed a certain revolution, close also, in nature, consequently in the shade of its night, and the cold of its winter, and thus in those habitations below which are called Erebus and Orcus.

108. From this representation of order now in both its effigies, it may plainly appear to thee what perfection of life is, for such as order is such is life, as well in its most minute principles as in the compounds of all minutiae. That order of ours, which is divine, infinite, and immortal, like the brightest light, is never transparent, unless it be viewed as to its quality from that other order, which is natural, finite, and mortal; in like manner, as thy image, in the limpid water of a fountain, is never seen as to its quality, unless it be reflected to thy sight by the opacity of the bottom of the fountain ; fiom the aspects of two opposites, both the one and the other is discerned, nor does truth itself appear, unless in the mirror of what is false ; thus neither does our lucid and bright order appear, ex-

cept from the above shady and dusky order, which therefore I was desirous to present to thy view, to the intent that thou mightest learn what is meant by what is perfect and entire. The order of this life, or the life of this order, induces that state which is called the states of integrity. And whereas that order in itself, is of a quality such as it is in the Supreme Himself, therefore whosoever lives it bears His image. Receive now the key, by which, if thou openest the gates, thou mayest both look into, and enter the sacred abodes of heaven itself.

109. But thou, my daughter, art the only one, together with him who is the only one with thee in this orb, who lives this order, and bears its image. That only one is not far off from thee, he stands in the centre of thy grove, and looks at thee with a look of satisfaction; we observe him, but he is ignorant of it; do not turn thy face in that direction, but let him come to thee, and court thee with humble intreaty; thou art to be the partner of his life, and the partner of his bed ; he is assigned to thee by heaven; this also is the day appointed for your marriage, and the hour is at hand in which you are to be united. Instantly the connubial celestials tied up into a regular knot her hair, which covered her neck in ringlets, and inserted it in a golden circlet; and at the same time they fastened with their fingers a crown of diamonds set on her head; thus they adorned her as a bride for the coming of her husband, adding ornaments to her native neatness and simplicity, and to the natural perfection of her beauty. The damsel, still ignorant of her destination, and of what was meant by marriage, and by partnership of the bed, while the celestials were thus employed, and possibly while, by turning her eyes in that direction, she at the same time got a glimpse of him, had such a suffusion on her cheeks, that life sparkled from the inmost principles of her face into the flame of a kind of love, and this flame assumed a purple hue, which beautifully tinged her, like a rose; thus she was changed, as it were, into the image of a naked celestial grace.

110. While the first-begotten led a solitary paradisiacal life, and fed his mind at ease with the delights of the visible world, he recollected a thousand times that most beautiful nymph, who, during his sleep, was seen by him in this grove : wherefore a thousand times he retraced his steps thither, but always in vain ; the idea of her, which was in consequence excited, kindled such a fire as to inflame the inmost principles of his life, and thus to turn its tranquillity into care and anxiety. This ardor increased even to this day, in which it was appointed, by the Divine Providence, that' his wound, which then lurked in his inmost veins, should be healed by enjoyment; wherefore while he now again meditated on the same path, he came even to the entrance of this grove, which was the only entrance, wi.hout mistaking his way; rejoicing intensely at this circumstance, he hastened instantly to the midst of it, to the very tree, under which he had once so deliciously rested; and seeing the couch there, the idea of sleep so revived, that he spied, as with his eyes, her very face. And while he was wholly intent on her image, and extended his sight a little further, lo! he saw and acknowledged the nymph herself, in the midst of the choir of intelligences; at this sight he was in such emotion, and so filled with love, that he doubted a long time whether his sight did not deceive him; but presently, when the crowd of his thoughts was a little dispersed, it occurred to his mind, that he was brought hither of the Divine Providence, and that this was the event, of which previous notice was given him in sleep ; and that she it was whom heaven had marked out for him as a bride and a conjugial partner. I see clearly, said he, that she is mine, for she is from my own bosom, and from my own life. But we must proceed according to order, that what is divine may be in what is honorable, and what is honorable in its form, or in decorum; she must therefore be intreated and courted with supplication. While he was intent on these and several other purposes, the celestial intelligence beckoned to him with a nod to make his approach ; and while he was leading the bride in his hand, this scene was ended, which was the sixth in the theatre of the orb.

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