receptacles of love and wisdom first exist with man at his conception and birth. That from those forms by a continuous principle are brought forth and produced all things of the body from the head even to the soles of the feet. That those productions are effected according to the laws of correspondence, and that therefore all things of the body, both internal and external are correspondences." "That no angel or spirit is given nor can be given who had not been born a man in the world."[1] Moreover this spiritual organic form, which man is, is a series of forms in discrete degrees. There is an internal mind with its two receptacles, the will and understanding; an external mind, corresponding to the internal, with its will and understanding; a spiritual body with its brains and its heart and lungs, corresponding to the will and understanding; and a physical body corresponding to the spiritual body and to the minds within it.
This is somewhat more specific and thinkable than the metaphysical abstraction suggested by the Doctor's phrase, "A thought of God." Swedenborg teaches everywhere, that "the will and the understanding is not any
- ↑ Divine Wisdom in Apoc. Exp. II. and VIII.
