THE GENERAL DOCTRINE.
With the opening of Swedenborg's spiritual senses there was presented to his mind a new field of induction. There was spread out before him a new world, with facts to be studied and laws to be discovered. It was immediately evident that there are two worlds, distinct from each other; one in which all things are spiritual, and the other in which all things are natural. It was also evident that spirits and angels in their own world are in bodies in human form, for he saw them and talked with them. It was also evident that their world was in all respects a world, and not an idea; for he beheld its firmament and landscape, its sun and all proceeding from it, related to his spiritual senses as really, and in all respects similarly, as this world to his bodily senses. It was also evident that the two worlds are perfectly distinct, for he was in both at the same time. He beheld the two worlds and perceived that they answered to each other, as cause and effect. Then it was that his philosophical doctrines of Degrees and Correspondences
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