Heaven and its Wonders and HellSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Future life -- Christianity -- Early work to 1800; Heaven -- Christianity; Hell -- Christianity
108. That all things in the world spring from the Divine, and are
clothed with such things in nature as enable them to exist there and
perform use, and thus to correspond, is clearly evident from the
various things seen in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In
both there are things that any one who thinks interiorly can see to
be from heaven. For illustration a few things out of a countless
number may be mentioned; and first some things from the animal
kingdom. Many are aware what knowledge there is engrafted as it were
in every animal. Bees know how to gather honey from flowers, to build
cells out of wax in which to store their honey, and thus provide food
for themselves and their families, even for a coming winter. That a
new generation may be born their queen lays eggs, and the rest take
care of them and cover them. They live under a sort of government
which all know by instinct. They preserve the working bees and cast
out the drones, depriving them of their wings; besides other
wonderful things implanted in them from heaven for the sake of their
use, their wax everywhere serving the human race for candles, their
honey for adding sweetness to food. [2] Again, what wonders do we see
in worms, the meanest creatures in the animal kingdom! They know how
to get food from the juice of the leaves suited to them, and
afterward at the appointed time to invest themselves with a covering
and enter as it were into a womb, and thus hatch offspring of their
own kind. Some are first turned into nymphs and chrysalides, spinning
threads about themselves; and this travail being over they come forth
clad with a different body, furnished with wings with which they fly
in the air as in their heaven, and celebrate marriages and lay eggs
and provide posterity for themselves. [3] Besides these special
instances all creatures in general that fly in the air know the
proper food for their nourishment, not only what it is but where to
find it; they know how to build nests for themselves, one kind in one
way and another kind in another way; how to lay their eggs in the
nests, how to sit upon them, how to hatch their young and feed them,
and to turn them out of their home when they are able to shift for
themselves. They know, too, their enemies that they must avoid and
their friends with whom they may associate, and this from early
infancy; not to mention the wonders in the eggs themselves, in which
all things lie ready in their order for the formation and nourishment
of the chicks; besides numberless other things. [4] Who that thinks
from any wisdom of reason will ever say that these instincts are from
any other source than the spiritual world, which the natural serves
in clothing what is from it with a body, or in presenting in effect
what is spiritual in the cause? The beasts of the earth and the birds
of the air are born into all this knowledge, while man, who is far
superior to them, is not; for the reason that animals are in the
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