399. (1) Love or the will is man's very life. This follows from the correspondence of the heart with the will (considered above, n. 378-381). For as the heart acts in the body, so does the will act in the mind; and as all things of the body depend for existence and motion upon the heart, so do all things of the mind depend for existence and life upon the will. It is said, upon the will, but this means upon the love, because the will is the receptacle of love, and love is life itself (see above, n. 1-3), and love, which is life itself, is from the Lord alone. By the heart and its extension into the body through the arteries and veins it can be seen that love or the will is the life of man, for the reason that things that correspond to each other act in a like manner, except that one is natural and the other spiritual. How the heart acts in the body is evident from anatomy, which shows that wherever the heart acts by means of the vessels put forth from it, everything is alive or subservient to life; but where the heart by means of its vessels does not act, everything is lifeless. Moreover, the heart is the first and last thing to act in the body. That it is the first is evident from the fetus, and that it is the last is evident from the dying, and that it may act without the cooperation of the lungs is evident from cases of suffocation and swooning; from which it can be seen that the life of the mind depends solely upon the will, in the same way as the substitute life of the body depends on the heart alone; and that the will lives when thought ceases, in the same way as the heart lives when breathing ceases. This also is evident from the fetus, from the dying, and from cases of suffocation and swooning. From which it follows that love or the will is man's very life.