Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 3347

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

3347. I have heard angels speaking concerning human minds, and concerning their thought and the derivative speech. They compared them to the external form of man, which comes forth and subsists from the innumerable forms that are within-as from the brains, the medulla, the lungs, the heart, liver, pancreas, spleen, stomach, and intestines, besides many other organs, as those of generation in both sexes from the innumerable muscles encompassing these organs; and lastly from the integuments; and from all these being woven together from vessels and fibers, and indeed from vessels and fibers within vessels and fibers, from which come the ducts and lesser forms; thus that the body is composed of things innumerable; all of which nevertheless conspire, each in its own way, to the composition of the external form, in which nothing appears of the things that are within. To this external form they compared human minds, and their thoughts and the derivative speech. But angelic minds they compared to those things which are within, which are relatively illimitable, and also incomprehensible. They also compared the faculty of thinking to the faculty that belongs to the viscera of acting according to the form of the fibers, saying that the faculty is not of the fibers, but of the life in the fibers; just as the faculty of thinking is not of the mind, but of life from the Lord flowing into it. When such comparisons are made by angels they are at the same time exhibited by means of representatives, whereby the interior forms above spoken of are presented visibly and intellectually, in respect to their smallest incomprehensible parts, and this in a moment; but comparisons made by means of spiritual and celestial things, such as take place among the celestial angels, immeasurably surpass in the beauty of wisdom those made by means of natural things.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church