Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/42

sensible phenomena; but it is not therefore a material paradise here or there in the expanse of space. It is within the natural world, not as one box is within another, or an ether in a vessel, but as the man is within his body. The mind, which is the man and in the human form, is while in this world within the physical body; and they correspond part to part to part and function to function. So the spiritual world is within the natural world, and they correspond thing to thing, relation to relation and force to force. This difference Swedenborg expresses by the term Discrete degree, because the two worlds are entirely separate from each other and "must be discerned in distinct separation." The relation and bond between them he expresses by the term Correspondence, because it is the relation of cause to effect. Broadly speaking, the spiritual world and the soul are one degree; the natural world and the body are another degree. And because they are distinct and yet correspond, the spiritual can clothe itself with the natural, and by influx fill and actuate it. Correspondence as the law of relation and influx, "depends with absoluteness upon the separation of the two corresponding sides, spirit and nature, upon their discon-