Angelic Wisdom about Divine ProvidenceSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Providence and government of God -- Christianity
[6] Fourth: _Those who believe in instantaneous salvation and unmediated
mercy do not know that affections, which are of the will, are nothing
other than changes of state in the purely organic substances of the mind;
that thoughts, which are of the understanding, are nothing other than
changes and variations in the form of those substances; and that memory
is the persisting state of the changes and variations._ Everyone
acknowledges, on its being said, that affections and thoughts exist only
in substances and their forms, which are the subjects; existing in the
brain which is full of substances and forms, they are called purely
organic forms. No one who thinks rationally can help laughing at the
fancies of some that affections and thoughts do not have substantive
bases, but are exhalations given shape by heat and light, like images
apparently in the air or ether. For thought can no more exist apart from
a substantial form than sight can apart from its form, the eye, or
hearing apart from its form, the ear, or taste apart from its form, the
tongue. If you examine the brain, you will see innumerable substances and
fibres, also, and see, too, that everything in it is organized. What more
is needed than this ocular proof?
[7] But one may ask, What are affection and thought then? A conclusion
can be reached from each and all things in the body. In it are many
viscera, each fixed in its place, and all performing their several
functions by changes and variations of state and form. It is well known
that they are engaged in their own activities--the stomach, the
intestines, the kidneys, the liver, the pancreas, the spleen, the heart
and the lungs, each in its particular activity. All the activities are
maintained from within, and to be actuated from within means that it is
by changes and variations of state and form. It may be plain then that
the activities of the purely organic substances of the mind are similar,
the one difference being that those of the organic substances of the body
are natural, but of the mind are spiritual; plainly, also, the two make
one by correspondences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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