Divine Love and Wisdom (Harleys) n. 417

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417. Now since love corresponds to the heart, and the understanding to the lungs, the above statements can be confirmed by their correspondence; thus, how the understanding can be raised above its own particular love even into wisdom; also, how the understanding is drawn back from its elevation by that love, if this is merely natural. Man has a twofold respiration, one of the body and the other of the spirit. These two respirations can be separated and can also be conjoined; with merely natural men, particularly with hypocrites, they are separated, but rarely with spiritual and sincere men. Consequently a merely natural man and hypocrite, whose understanding has been elevated and in whose memory, therefore, many things of wisdom remain, can talk wisely in company by thought from the memory; but when he is not in company, he does not think from the memory, but from his spirit, thus from his love. In like manner also he breathes, because thought and respiration act correspondently. That the structure of the lungs is such that they can breathe both by blood from the heart and by blood from outside the heart has been shown above.


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