Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/141

This action and re-action takes place in the natural or external mind, which is therefore the recipient of two opposite influences: heaven with its love and wisdom flowing in by the spiritual mind; and the natural world with its conditions and appearances perceived in the plane of the senses. These two influences acting and re-acting upon one another serve to keep man in a state of equilibrium, or of freedom of determination and action. So far as the natural mind re-acts upon the influx from the spiritual mind it is in a state of correspondence; and is capable of development in the direction of the acting force, or the inflowing Divine love and wisdom. But so far as it re-acts against the spiritual mind the spiritual is closed and the natural mind develops in the direction of the acting force from below, or the affections and persuasions of the senses. The natural mind as a recipient form is thus capable of acting in correspondence with the spiritual mind, by which the one only life, love and wisdom flow in, or of acting in opposition to that influx; in which case the recipient form is not destroyed but perverted into its opposite. In this equilibrium and consequent freedom of willing and thinking is at once the condition