From the commencement of his illumination, Swedenborg was very particular as to his diet; and his Diary contains many references to his food, and to the spiritual association which various kinds of nutriment induced. In one place we read under the heading of “the Stink of Intemperance,” “One evening I took a great meal of milk and bread, more than the spirits considered good for me. On this occasion they dwelt upon intemperance, and accused me of it.” Indeed, on the first opening of his spiritual sight, in London, in 1743, when being very hungry from much exercise, he ate with great appetite, the spiritual stranger who appeared, saluted him with the words, “Eat not so much.” In his treatise on Heaven and Hell, n. 299, he writes: “It has also been granted me to know the origin of the anxiety, grief of mind, and interior sadness, called melancholy, with which man is afflicted. There are certain spirits who are not yet in conjunction with hell, being yet in their first state, who love undigested and malignant substances, such as food when it lies corrupting in the stomach. They consequently are present where such substances are to be found in man, because these are delightful to them; and they there converse with one another from their own evil affection. The affection contained in their discourse thence enters the man by influx; and if it is opposed to the man’s affection, he experiences melancholy, sadness, and anxiety; whereas if it agrees with his affection, he becomes gay and cheerful. Hence was made manifest to me the origin of the persuasion entertained by some who do not know what conscience is, by reason that they have none, when they attribute its pangs to a disordered state of the stomach.” Of the killing and eating the flesh of animals, he writes thus in the Arcana Cœlestia, n. 1002. “Eating the flesh of animals, considered in itself, is something profane; for the people of the most ancient time on no account ate the flesh of any beast or fowl, but only grain, especially bread made of wheat, also the fruits of trees, pulse, milk, and what is produced from milk, as butter. To kill animals and to eat their flesh, was to them unlawful, and seemed as something bestial; and they were content with the uses and services which they rendered, as appears also from Genesis i. 29, 30. But in succeeding times, when man began to grow fierce as a beast, yea fiercer, then first they began to kill animals, and to eat their flesh. And because man was such, this was permitted, and at this day also is permitted; and so far as man does it from conscience, so far is it lawful, for his conscience is formed of all those things which he thinks to be true, and so thinks to be lawful: wherefore also, at this day, no one is by any means condemned for this, that he eats flesh.” Swedenborg took snuff, as was the custom in his day. Some of his manuscripts yet bear traces of the dingy powder.