Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine WisdomSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom
Swedenborg, Emanuel
God (Christianity) -- Love; God (Christianity) -- Wisdom
Those who confirm themselves in favor of the Divine give attention to the
wonders which are displayed in the production of animals; to mention here
only, in reference to eggs, how the chick in its seed or beginning lies
hidden therein, with everything requisite till it is hatched, also with
everything pertaining to its subsequent development, until it becomes a
bird or winged thing of the same form as its parent. And if one observes
the living form, it is such as to fill any one with astonishment who
thinks deeply, seeing that in the minutest as in the largest living
creatures, even in the invisible, as in the visible, there are the organs
of sense, namely, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch; and organs of
motion which are muscles, for they fly and walk; also viscera surrounding
the heart and lungs, which are set in action by brains. That even the
commonest insects enjoy such organisms is shown in their anatomy as
described by some writers, and especially by Swammerdam, in his Biblia
Naturae. Those who ascribe everything to nature, see all these things,
but they merely perceive that they exist, and say that nature produces
them. They say this because they have turned their minds away from
thinking about the Divine; and those who have done this are unable, when
they see the wonderful things in nature, to think rationally, still less
spiritually; but they think sensually and materially; and then they think
in nature from nature, and not above nature, just as those do who are in
hell. They differ from beasts only in having the power to think
rationally, that is, in being able to understand, and therefore to think
otherwise, if they choose.
352. Those who have averted themselves from thinking about the Divine
when observing the wonderful things in nature, and who thereby become
sensual, do not reflect that the sight of the eye is so gross as to see
many little insects as an obscure speck, when yet each one of these is
organized to feel and to move, and is accordingly furnished with fibers
and vessels, also with a minute heart, pulmonary tubes, viscera, and
brains; also that these organs are woven out of the purest substances
in nature, their tissues corresponding to that somewhat of life by which
their minutest parts are separately moved. When the sight of the eye is
so gross that many such creatures, with innumerable particulars in each,
appear to it as an obscure speck, and yet those who are sensual think and
judge by that sight, it is clear how dulled their minds are, and therefore
what thick darkness they are in concerning spiritual things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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