Divine Love and Wisdom (Ager) n. 400

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

400. (2) Love or the will strives unceasingly towards the human form and all things of that form. This is evident from the correspondence of heart and will. For it is known that all things of the body are formed in the womb, and that they are formed by means of fibers from the brains and blood vessels from the heart, and that out of these two the tissues of all organs and viscera are made; from which it is evident that all things of man have their existence from the life of the will, which is love, from their first principles, out of the brains, through the fibers; and all things of his body out of the heart through the arteries and veins. From this it is clearly evident that life (which is love and the will therefrom), strives unceasingly towards the human form. And as the human form is made up of all the things there are in man, it follows that love or the will is in a continual conatus and effort to form all these. There is such a conatus and effort towards the human form, because God is a Man, and Divine Love and Divine Wisdom is His life, and from His life is everything of life. Any one can see that unless Life which is very Man acted into that which in itself is not life, the formation of anything such as exists in man would be impossible, in whom are thousands of thousands of things that make a one, and that unanimously aspire to an image of the Life from which they spring, that man may become a receptacle and abode of that Life. From all this it can be seen that love, and out of the love the will, and out of the will the heart, strive unceasingly towards the human form.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church