whose vital influence or direction as it were, digestion, nutrition, circulation, and all the functions of the animal economy are carricd on. Next in rank and office are the viscera of the thorax and abdomen, embracing the whole respiratory, circulatory, digestive and nutritive apparatus. These are less delicate in their structure than the brain, and endowed, so to speak, with a lower degree of life. They include, however, all the means whereby, under the direction of the brain and nervous system, the various tissues are supplied with their appropriate nourishment and sustained in healthy action. But the extremities are still lower in rank, farther removed from the centre of life, less refined and less delicate in their structure. They consist for the most part of coarser and harder materials, such as bones, muscles and cartilages—yet all admirably adapted to the uses they were intended to perform.
Now, corresponding precisely to these relative degrees of vitality, refinement, delicacy of structure, etc., in the principal constituents of these three parts of the body, are the relative degrees of life enjoyed by the angels of the three heavens, according to Swedenborg's disclosures. For he says that the angels of the third or highest heaven, who are also the most interior, are the most innocent and perfect, and in the highest degree of life, because spiritually nearest the Lord, the Fountain of life—that is, most like Him; that the angels of the middle heaven who are less interior, are in a lower degree of good and truth, less perfect, and farther removed from the Lord; and that those of the lowest heaven who are in the most external state, are still
