As the rational mind functions by means of the cortical substance, so the lower mind or animus functions through the "common sensorium," or cerebrum, Swedenborg says. He calls it "an inferior or middle kind of intellect." It can imagine external objects and sensations, and therefore it is the seat of desire for pleasant sense impressions. It has passions of joy, anger, sadness, fear, envy, "and the like," but not as the thoughtful, purposeful mind has them.19
The bodily sensations (of the fourth degree, or the material world) Swedenborg regards as distinct from "internal sensations." The only question, he says, is as to how the external communicate with the internal, and this he has already explained as taking place by influx through intermediate degrees (levels of organization).
That the sensations of the body are independent of those of the internal sensations of the lower mind is proved, he says, by the fact that when the external impressions are cut off in sleep the imagination is still able to present sense images, thus showing that the internal are awake.20
And that the lower mind or animus is distinct from the higher or rational mind is shown in sleepwalkers, "in whom . . . the corporeal machine is set in motion without any light flowing in from the sphere of reason."—"So also in many who may be compared to somnambulists as being led solely by the instinct of the animus and by little or no instinct of understanding." Then, after such people have rushed into action blindfold "from mere lust or cupidity," they "appeal to the mind as judge, and bring reasons from it to justify themselves to themselves and to others from the charge of irrationality." 21 (As we should say, they "rationalize.")
But the mind then may, if "by practice and cultivation" it has kept a channel of communication open to the influx and light from the soul, refuse to justify the animus, may "combat with the animus as with an enemy," and fight for victory.
That the mind is distinct from the soul is evident, Swedenborg says, from this conflict of the mind with its lower self, "also from a certain intimate consciousness that twinges and solicits from principles unknown, very often in merely natural things, originating deeply from self-love."
"One thing is clear," he grimly admits, "there is in us an internal man that fights with the external; a manifest proof that as the
