[3] _An image of the infinite and eternal is manifest in the fructification and multiplication of all things,_ in the vegetable kingdom in the capacity implanted in seeds, and in the animal kingdom in reproduction, especially in the family of fishes. Were the seeds to bear fruit and the animals to multiply in the measure of ability, they would fill all the world, even the universe, in a generation. Obviously there is latent in that ability an endeavor after self-propagation to infinity. And as fructification and multiplication have not failed from the beginning of creation and never will, plainly there is in that ability an endeavor after self-propagation to eternity also. 57. The like is true of human beings as to their affections, which are of love, and their perceptions, which are of wisdom. The variety of either is infinite and eternal; so, too, is their fructification and multiplication, which is spiritual. No person enjoys an affection and perception so like another's as to be identical with it, nor ever will. Affections, moreover, may be fructified and perceptions multiplied without end. Knowledge, it is well known, is inexhaustible. This capacity of fructification and multiplication without end or to infinity and eternity exists in natural things with men, in spiritual with the spiritual angels, and in celestial with the celestial angels. Affections, perceptions and knowledges have this endless capacity not only in general, but in every least particular. They have it because they exist from the infinite and eternal in itself through what is infinite and eternal from itself. But as the finite has in it nothing of the Divine, nothing of the kind, not the least, is in the human being as his own. Man or angel is finite and only a receptacle, by itself dead. Whatever is living in him is from the proceeding Divine, joined to him by contact, and appearing in him as if it were his. The truth of this will be seen in what follows. 58. Divine providence regards what is infinite and eternal from itself especially in saving mankind because its object is a heaven from mankind (as was shown, nn. 27-45), and therefore it is man's reformation and regeneration or salvation to which it especially looks, since heaven consists of the saved or regenerate. To regenerate man, moreover, is to unite good and truth or love and wisdom in him, as they are united in the Lord's proceeding Divine; to this especially, therefore, providence looks in saving the race. The image of the infinite and eternal is not to be found elsewhere in man than in the marriage of good and truth. This marriage the proceeding Divine effects. Men filled by the proceeding Divine, which is called the Holy Spirit, have prophesied, as we know from the Word; men enlightened by it see divine truths in heaven's light; above all, angels sensibly perceive the presence, influx and conjunction, though they are aware that the conjunction is no more than can be termed adjunction.