Coronis (Whitehead) n. 30

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

30. The spiritual man is an erect man, who with his head looks to heaven above him and about him, and treads the earth with the soles of his feet. But the natural man separated from the spiritual is either like a man bent downwards, who nods with his head, and continually looks at the earth, and then at the steps of his own feet; or, he is like an inverted man, who walks on the palms of his hands, and lifts up his feet towards heaven, and by shakings and clappings of these performs worship. The spiritual man is like a rich man, who has a palace in which are dining rooms, bed chambers, and banquet halls, the walls of which are continuous windows of crystalline glass, through which he sees the gardens, fields, flocks, and herds which also belong to him, and with the sight and use of which he is daily delighted. But the natural man, separated from the spiritual is also like a rich man, who has a palace containing chambers, the walls of which are continuous planks of rotten wood, which sheds around a fatuous light, wherein appear images of pride from the love of self and the world, like molten images of gold, in the middle, and of silver at the sides, before which he bends the knee like an idolater. Again, the spiritual man, in himself, is actually like a dove as to gentleness, like an eagle as to the sight of his mind, like a flying bird of paradise as to progression in spiritual things, and like a peacock as to adornment from spiritual things. But on the contrary the natural man separated from the spiritual is like a hawk pursuing a dove, like a dragon devouring the eyes of an eagle, like a fiery flying serpent at the side of a bird of paradise, and like a horned owl beside a peacock. These comparisons are made that they may be as optical glasses whereby the reader may more closely contemplate what the spiritual man is in itself, and the natural man in itself. But the case is altogether different, when the spiritual man by its spiritual light and spiritual heat is inwardly in the natural; then both constitute one, just like effort in motion, and will (which is living effort) in action, and like appetite in taste, and like the sight of the mind in the sight of the eye, and still more evidently like the perception of a thing in cognition, and the thought of it in speech.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church