Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/61

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THE TWO BODIES.
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receiving order and law from the soul or brain-man, and transplanting them into its mundane economy. Yea, and the brain is its natural universe, its wide spread landscapes, its illimitable ocean, its royal library, studio, theatre, church, and whatever else is a place of universal light and contemplation. And lastly, the skin is the dress of the soul in every kind, convenient, beautiful, official; and it is also the very mansion itself; for our houses are but the largest suits, admitting our domestic movements.

"By this artifice of holding out our bodies before us, we illustrate in a plain way, the connection or Correspondence between the soul and the body; and though there be other motives of connection, it is sufficient to remark for the present, that by the foregoing signs, it is because the body is so replete with exquisite convenience, that it is the domestic establishment of the soul. Given a tenement of the kind, so royal with apparatus, and it is impossible that the soul, to whose wants it answers, should not live in it, and use, that is to say, animate it. If the soul were not a tenant on such invitation, it would be stupider than the birds and beasts, which are drawn by far lesser affinities to their own convenient lairs."