380、对此，我补充两个记事。记事一：
我曾一度困惑，为何那么多人将创造，因而将太阳之下和之上的一切事物都归于自然界。每当看见某种东西，他们都会发自内心承认说：“这难道不是大自然的杰作吗？”当被问及他们为何说是大自然的杰作，而不是神的时，尽管他们有时随从人们的普遍看法，说是神创造了大自然，因此说他们所看到的事物是神的杰作，就跟说它们是大自然的杰作一样。但他们会用几乎连自己也听不到的声音嘟囔说：“神不就是大自然吗？”自然创造宇宙这种谬念和似乎出于智慧的这种疯狂使得他们都如此自高自大，以致他们视所有承认神创造宇宙的人如爬在地上、踩着破旧老路的蚂蚁，视一些人为空中飞舞的蝴蝶。他们称其信条为梦幻，因为这些人看见了看不见的东西，他们说：“谁曾见过神？谁没见过大自然？”
当我惊讶于这类人如此众多时，站在我旁边的一位天使对我说：“你在想什么？”我回答说：“我在想为何这多么人相信自然创造宇宙。”于是天使说：“整个地狱都是由这类人组成的，他们在那里被称为撒旦和魔鬼。撒旦是指那些确认支持自然，从而否认神的人；魔鬼是指那些生活邪恶，从而发自内心拒绝对神的一切承认的人。不过，我会带你到西南地区的场馆，这类人就在那里，只是尚未下入地狱。”于是，他牵着我的手，引导我；我看到一些小房屋，场馆就座落其中，中间一幢建筑似乎是主建筑。它是由沥青石砌成的，外面覆盖着薄薄的玻璃板，看上去如同闪闪发光的金银，尤其像所谓的冰长石或云母，并且处处嵌有发光的贝壳。
我们走到这幢建筑前敲了敲门，马上就有人开门欢迎我们。他急忙走到一张桌子前，给我们拿来四本书，说：“这些书都包含智慧，现今在大多数国家备受推崇。这本书包含许多法国人所青睐的智慧，这本书包含许多德国人所青睐的智慧，这本书包含许多荷兰人所青睐的智慧，这本书包含许多英国人所青睐的智慧。”他继续说，“如果你们想看，我会让这四本书在你们眼前发光。”于是，他倾泄出自己名声的荣耀，笼罩在这些书上，因此它们立刻放出光芒。不过，这光很快就从我们眼前消失了。然后，我们问：“你现在正在写什么？”他回答说，此刻他正从自己的宝库中提取并展示智慧的核心。这核心可以概括为：
⑴是自然缘于生命，还是生命缘于自然。
⑵是中心缘于扩展，还是扩展缘于中心。
⑶关于自然和生命的中心和扩展。
说完这话，他又坐到桌子旁，我们便在他这所很大的场馆内四处逛了逛。他在桌子上点了一根蜡烛，因为这里没有阳光，只有夜间的月光。令我惊讶的是，这根蜡烛似乎四处移动，从而投射出光来。但由于烛芯未剪，所以它发出的光极其微弱。他在写作时，我们看到各种形状的图像从桌子飞到墙上。在夜晚的月光下，它们看似美丽的印度鸟。但当我们打开门，白日的阳光照进来时，它们看似长有网状翅膀的夜鸟。因为它们是表面真理，但他通过引证巧妙地把它们联结成连贯系列，从而使其变成虚假。
看到这一切后，我们走到桌旁，问他正在写什么。他说：“我在写第一个问题，是自然缘于生命，还是生命缘于自然？”对此，他说，他能证明任何一个，使之看似真理。不过，由于内心深处涌动着莫名的恐惧，所以他只敢证明自然缘于生命，也就是来自生命，不敢证明反面，即生命缘于自然，也就是来自自然。我们委婉地问他潜在的莫名恐惧是什么。他回答说，他害怕神职人员叫他自然主义者，甚至无神论者，还害怕被平信徒视为丧失理智。因为无论平信徒还是神职人员，都要么出于盲目的信仰相信这一点，要么从确认者的眼光来看待它。
出于对真理的热情，我们有些气愤地对他说：“朋友，你大错特错了。你的智慧无非是些文字技巧罢了，却迷惑了你，你对名声的渴求引诱你去证明你所不信的东西。难道你不知道人的心智能被提升至感官事物，也就是说，身体感官所产生的思维之上吗？一旦被如此提升，它就能看见在上的生命之物，也能看见在下的自然之物。生命不就是爱与智慧吗？自然界不就是爱与智慧的接受者，是它们借以产生结果或功用的一个工具吗？除了一个为主因，一个为工具因外，这二者还能以其它任何方式成为一体吗？光与眼睛，或声音与耳朵能是一个吗？这些器官的感觉若不来自生命，还能来自何处？它们的形体若不来自自然界，还能来自何处？人体不就是接受生命的一个器官吗？它的各个部位被有机组织起来，不就是为了产生爱所意愿和理解所思考的结果吗？人体器官不是源于自然界吗？爱与思维不是源于生命吗？这些岂不是彼此完全不同吗？将你心智的敏锐性稍稍提高一点，你就会明白，情感和思维是生命的属性。情感出于爱，思维出于智慧，这二者都出于生命；如我们所说的，爱与智慧构成生命。你若将你理解力的官能再稍稍提高一点，就会明白，爱与智慧若非在某个地方有一个源头，就不可能存在；而这个源头就是爱本身和智慧本身，因而是生命本身。这些就是神，自然界来自祂。”
此后，我们与他谈论了第二个问题，即：是中心缘于扩展，还是扩展缘于中心。我们问他为何讨论这个话题。他回答说，是为了使他能就自然和生命的中心和扩展这二者究竟谁是谁的源头得出一个结论。当我们问他持何观点时，他的答复一如从前，即他能证明其中任何一个；不过，因为害怕丧失名声，他只证明扩展缘于中心，也就是来自中心。“尽管如此，”他说，“我仍知道有某种东西先于太阳存在，这种东西遍布整个穹苍，并凭自己将自己归入次序，从而制造一个中心。”
对此，我们再次出于愤慨的热情对他说：“朋友，你疯了！”一听这话，他将座椅从桌子向后撤了撤，警惕地看着我们，然后微笑着竖起耳朵。于是，我们继续说：“还有比说中心缘于扩展更疯狂的吗？我们理解你所说的中心是指太阳，扩展是指宇宙；因此，你认为宇宙是在没有太阳的情况下生成的，是吗？难道不是太阳产生了自然界及其一切属性吗？它们不是唯独依靠从太阳发出并经由大气传播的热和光吗？至于在有太阳之前它们在哪里，我们会在后面的讨论中解释它们的起源。地上的大气和万物不就像表面，它们的中心不就是太阳吗？要是没有这太阳，所有这些会怎样呢？它们还能存活片刻吗？在有太阳之前，它们都是什么呢？它们能持续存在吗？持续存在不就是不断生成吗？既然自然万物依靠太阳持续存在，那么可知，它们必依靠太阳才能生成。谁都能凭亲身经历明白并承认这一点。
“在后者既然凭在先者存在，岂不也凭在先者持续存在吗？如果表面是在先者，中心是在后者，岂不成了在先者凭在后者持续存在了吗？然而，这是违背次序法则的。在后者如何产生在先者？或外在之物如何产生内在之物？又或粗糙之物如何产生精纯之物？那么，构成扩展的表面如何产生中心呢？谁看不出这有违自然法则？我们凭理性分析提出这些论据，是为了证明这个真理：扩展凭中心存在，而不是反过来；对此，凡正确思考的人，即便没有这些证据也能看出来。你说，扩展一起自动流入产生一个中心。那么，一切事物流入如此奇妙和令人惊叹的次序，以致一物为了另一物而存在，并且每一个事物都是为了人及其永生而存在，这一切难道是碰巧发生的吗？自然界能出于任何爱藉着任何智慧提供这类事物吗？能使人变成天使吗？能形成天使天堂吗？做这样的假设和思考，你那自然凭自然存在的观念就会土崩瓦解。”
之后，我们问他对第三个问题，即自然和生命的中心和扩展，原先是怎么想的，现在又是怎么想的，是不是以为生命的中心和扩展等同于自然的中心和扩展。他说，他犹豫不决，他原先以为大自然的内在活动就是生命，本质上构成人生命的爱与智慧由此而来；这太阳之火凭它的热和光通过大气这个媒介产生它们；但由于听说了有关人永生的情况，所以他现在产生怀疑，这种怀疑使他的心智忽上忽下。上升时，他承认他先前丝毫不知的那一个中心；下降时，他看到的是那个他先前以为是唯一中心的中心。因此，他现在情愿认为，生命来自他先前丝毫不知的那个中心，而自然来自他先前以为是唯一中心的那个中心；并且这两个中心各自都有一个围绕它的扩展。
对此，我们说，这样也好，只要他也愿意出于生命的中心和扩展来看待自然的中心和扩展，而不是反过来。然后，我们教导他说，天使天堂之上还有一轮太阳，它是纯粹的爱，表面上像尘世太阳那样炽热；天使和人类从这太阳所发之热获得意愿和爱，从所发之光获得理解和智慧；属于生命的事物被称为属灵的，而从尘世太阳发出的事物则是生命的容器，被称为属世的；此外，生命中心的扩展被称为灵界，灵界凭自己的太阳而持续存在；自然的扩展被称为自然界，它也凭自己的太阳而持续存在。“由于爱与智慧没有时空的属性，取而代之的是状态的属性，故可知，围绕天使天堂太阳的扩展并不是一种扩展，而就在尘世太阳的扩展和那里的活物中，并且照着它们的接受而在其中，它们的接受则取决于它们的形式。”
“但是，”他问道，“尘世或自然界的太阳之火从何而来呢？”我们回答说：“它来自天使天堂的太阳，这太阳不是火，而是从作为爱本身的神最直接发出的神性之爱。”他对此感到吃惊，于是，我们将这一点论证如下：“爱就其本质而言，是属灵之火。正因如此，就圣言的灵义而言，火表示爱。所以在圣殿，牧师会祈祷天上的火充满他们的心，他们所说的火是指爱。以色列人会幕中的祭坛之火，还有烛台之火，无非代表神性之爱。血的热，也就是人类和动物一般的生命之热，唯来源于构成其生命的爱。因此，当人的爱上升为热情，怒气和愤怒时，他就被点燃、发热并燃烧起来。所以，属灵之热，也就是爱，在人里面产生属世之热，甚至点燃并燃烧他们的脸和肢体；从这一事实明显可知，尘世太阳的火唯独凭属灵太阳的火，也就是神性之爱而存在。
“如我们前面所说的，由于扩展由中心产生，而不是反过来；生命的中心，即天使天堂的太阳，就是从神最直接发出的神性之爱，神就在这太阳中间；还由于该中心的扩展，也就是所谓的灵界由此产生；并且属灵太阳产生尘世太阳，由此产生其扩展，也就是所谓的自然界；所以很明显，宇宙是由那独一神创造的。”说完这些话，我们离开了；他陪我们来到场馆区以外，并出于新的聪明才智与我们谈论天堂和地狱，以及神性的眷顾。
380、在此作两段陈述，首先：
我曾经对人们将万物归于自然而感到吃惊。当他们看到什么东西时就会说：“这些不是自然的产物吗？当问他们为什么将其归功于自然而非神时。他们就会说：自然不就是神吗？”
他们会变得极为自大并且轻视那些信神的人。他们会说：“谁见到过神？谁没见过自然呢？”
当我对有如此多这样的人而吃惊时，有一个天使出现了，并问我：“你在想什么呢？”
我答道：“在想有如此我的人认为是自然创造了宇宙。”
天使说：“地狱中都是那种人。他们被称为魔鬼。他们确信自然而否定了神，完全拒绝神并且活着时过着非正当的生活。我将带你到西南边的地方，那里这种人聚集着，但是还没有下到地狱中。”
天使拉着我的手走下去了。我看到许多小屋，中间似乎首是它们的中心。是用松脂石建的，上面是玻璃样的金、银片，看上去耀眼。不时有牡蛎壳也闪着光。
我们走过去敲了门。有人开门并说：“欢迎。”他然后跑到一个桌子旁取回四本书说：“这是许多国家都高度推崇的智慧之作。这本是法国的，这本是德国的，这本是荷兰的，这本是英国的。”
“若你想看，我就会让它们在你眼前发光。”于是他用自己的名誉想让书发光。但是那光马上就在我们眼前消失了。
此时我们说：“你现在在写什么呢？”他说我正在全力归纳要点，这些要点如下：（1）自然是生命的产物还是生命是自然的产物。（2）中心是扩张的产物还是扩张是中心的产物。（3）这如何运用于自然和生命的中心和扩张。
说完后，他又坐在桌边。我们在大厅中走了走。他桌上放了支蜡烛，因为在那屋子里没有阳光，而只有月光。令我吃惊的是看到许多东西从桌上飞入到墙上。在那光中看上去象是印度的美丽的鸟。但是我们打开窗让日光进来后，它们看上去象是长着网状翅膀的夜间出动的鸟。他所写的是些谬误，他在尽力将其编成合乎逻辑的一系列。
看到这些后，我又问他在写什么。
他说：“我在思索自然是生命的产物，还是生命是自然的产物。”他说他可以让二者都是真的，但是他心中有些畏惧，因此只证实了自然是生命的产物，即它是来自于生命的。
我又和气地问他在畏惧什么。
他说，神职人员有可能将他列为自然主义者，或理性不健全的人，因为神职人员是些相信盲目信仰的人。
出于对真理的义愤我们说：“朋友，你被蒙骗了，你的智慧让你走上了斜路。荣耀使你相信你所不信的东西。你难道不知道人的头脑能够超越躯体的感觉吗？当人的头脑上升到这一高度后，就能看到生命之上和自然中的事物，生命不就是爱和智慧吗？自然不就是这些的载体，通过载体而实现其目的吗？二者能不能合二为一呢？光能不能与眼睛一起存在呢？或者声音能不能与耳朵一起存在呢？除了来自于生命以外，这种能力还会存在哪里呢？而它的形式不是来自于自然吗？”
“人的躯体不就是生命的器官吗？它的每一元素不是一起实现着爱所愿的和理解力所想的吗？躯体不是来自于自然而爱和思想来自于生命吗？这些不是彼此不同吗？
“再提高一层看，你会看到要产生 效果以及所进行的思考都是生命的体现，产生效率的能力来自于爱，进行思考的能力来自于智慧。这两者的共同来源就是生命，这些就是神，由神而产生了自然。”
之后我跟他讲了第二点，即中心是扩展的结果，还是扩展是中心的结果。我还问他为什么谈论这一问题。
他回答说，他这样做以便得到，得到自然和生命的中心及扩展问题，进而知道二者的来源。当我们问他，他对这一问题怎么想时，他的回答与从前一样。他可以确定两种说法，但害怕这样做后会失去名声。他说他自己也知道在太阳之前有什么东西存在，宇宙中的一切自动形成其秩序和中心。
出于他对真理的违背的义愤，我们又说：“朋友，你是发疯了。”
听到这以后，他有些不高兴，后来他又转向我们并且开始大笑。
我们又接着说：“还有什么比说中心是来自于扩展更荒谬的呢？我们认为你所说的中心是指太阳，你所说的扩展是指宇宙。这样说来宇宙是在没有太阳的情况上形成的。难道自然及万物不是来自于太阳吗？万物都依赖于太阳的光和热而存在。我们会告诉你他们是来自于何处。
“大气以及地球上的一切——它们不是象表面，而太阳是其中心吗？没有太阳这些事物将会怎样呢？他们会存在吗？继续存在不也就是不断地存在吗？这不是与规律相反吗？”“后者怎么可能产生前者呢？或者说外在怎么会产生内在呢？或者说粗糙者产生出精细者？表面怎么会产生中心呢？谁不会看到这是与自然规律相反呢”
“我们已经论证了扩展是来自于中心而反之则不然。”
“你说扩展自己形成一个中心。它是偶然性这样的吗？难道一个事物是为另一个事物而存在，并且万物都是为了人及其永恒的生命而存在也是偶然性的吗？自然本身能够出于某种爱通过某种智慧而产生这样的结果吗？自然也能使人成为天使并将天使送入天国吗？想一想，你就会知道你所说的自然来自于自然的想法是不对的。
当我们问他从前以及现在对第三点是怎么想的，即关于中心扩展，自然和生命。是否他认为生命的中心和扩展与自然的中心和扩展是一回事儿。
他说他犹豫过。他从前认为自然界和内在活动就是生命。由那种活动产生爱和智慧并且它们构成了人的生命，并且是太阳通过其光和热，通过大气而实现了这点。现在他处于一种不定状态中。这种不定状态有时使它的思想上升，有时使其下降。所以有时他会理解他从前一无所知的中心，有时他会只看到他从前所知道唯一的中心，还会想到生命来自于他从前一无所知的中心，并且自然是来自于他从前，认为是唯一的一个的中心。
听到这后，我们说很好。只要你认为中心和自然的扩展是来自于中心和生命的扩展，而并不是相反。
我们又告诉他，在天使的天国之上有一个太阳，它是一种爱。看上去也象世间的太阳一样发着火一样的光。由于来自那一太阳的温暖，天使和人们有了意愿和爱，由于来自于那一太阳的光，天使和人们有了理解力和智慧。我们还告诉他们说这种与生命有关的事物是被叫做精神性的。来自于世间的太阳的作为生命的载体的事物是被叫作自然性的。另外生命中心的扩展被称作精神世界，因为那里的太阳而存在。自然的扩展被称为自然世界（即尘世），它因为那里的太阳而存在。
因为爱和智慧不能用空间和时间来形容。所以天国的围绕其太阳的扩展是没法用尺度来衡量的。但是却能在自然界的扩展中体现出来，并根据对其接收和形式而体现在活着的事物中。
这时他问我们是什么产生了自然界中太阳的火。
我们回答说它来自于天使的天国的太阳，这个太阳并不是一团火，而是来自于神的神圣的爱。神也就是爱。因为他对此感到吃惊，所以我们又做了以下的解释：
“在本质上来讲，爱是一种精神之火。所以在《圣经》中的火是指它的精神含义，即爱。这就是为什么牧师们会祈求让人们的中心充满精神之火，即爱。在以色列人的圣坛中，祭台上的火和烛火代表着神圣的爱。血的温度，以及人和动物中的热量也是来自于那种爱，它构成了他们的生命。这就是为什么人在他的爱受到激发时人会象燃烧着的火，会发热。当充满激情或气愤时会发火，因为精神的热或者说精神的爱造成了人身上自然的热，甚至能点燃人的面容和肢体。由此可见自然的太阳之火是来自精神的太阳，即神圣的爱。
“因为扩展是来自于它的中心，而反之则不然。正如我们从前所说的。生命的中心，也就是天国中的太阳是来自于神的神圣的爱。因为由它而产生中心的扩展，即精神世界，因为由那个太阳产生世间的太阳，从这产生它的扩展即自然世界，所以很明显宇宙是由神创造的。”
之后我们离开了，那个精灵陪伴着我们，他现在有了一种新的才智。
380. I shall add two accounts of experiences, of which this is the first.
Once I was amazed at the huge number of people who regard nature as the source of creation, and therefore of everything beneath or above the sun. When they see anything, they say, and they give it heartfelt acknowledgment, 'Surely this is due to nature.' And when they are asked why, they say this is due to nature rather than to God, although they still sometimes follow the usual view that God created nature, so they could just as well say that what they see is due to God rather than to nature; they reply, muttering almost inaudibly to themselves, 'What is God but nature?' This false belief that nature created the universe, a piece of madness they take for wisdom, makes them so puffed up that they look on all who acknowledge that God created the universe as ants, creeping along the ground, treading a worn path; and some as butterflies flying around in the air. They call their dogmas dreams, because they see things the others cannot, and they say, 'Who has ever seen God? We can all see nature.'
[2] While I was wondering at the immense number of such people, an angel came and stood beside me, saying, 'What are you thinking about?' I replied, 'How many people there are who believe that nature is the creator of the universe.' 'The whole of hell,' the angel told me, 'is composed of such people; there they are called satans and devils. Those who have formed a firm belief in nature and consequently denied the existence of God are satans; those who have spent their lives in crimes and thus banished from their hearts any acknowledgment of God are devils. But I will take you to the high-schools in the south-western quarter where such people who are not yet in hell live.'
So he took me by the hand and guided me. I saw some cottages containing high-schools, and one building in their midst which seemed to be their headquarters. It was built of pitch-black stones coated with glassy plates giving the appearance of glittering gold and silver, rather like those called mica. 1Here and there were interspersed shells with a similar shine.
[3] We went up to this building and knocked. Someone quickly opened the door and made us welcome. He hurried to a table and brought us four books, saying, 'These books contain the wisdom which the majority of kingdoms approve today. This book contains the wisdom favoured by many in France, this by many in Germany, this by some in Holland, and this by some in Britain.' He went on, 'If you would like to watch, I will make these four books shine before your eyes.' Then he poured forth the glory of his own reputation and enveloped the books in it, so that at once they shone as it were with light. But this light immediately vanished from our sight. We then asked, 'What are you writing now?' He replied that at the moment he was bringing out of his stores and displaying the very kernel of wisdom. This could be summarised as: (i) Whether nature is due to life, or life to nature; (ii) Whether a centre is due to an expanse, or an expanse to a centre; (iii) About the centre and expanse of nature and life.
[4] So saying he sat down again at the table, while we strolled around his spacious school. He had a candle on the table because there was no daylight from the sun, but only moonlight as at night. What surprised me was that the candle seemed to roam about and cast its light; but because the wick was not trimmed, it gave little light. While he was writing, we saw images of various shapes flying up from the table onto the walls. In that night-time moonlight they looked like beautiful birds from India. But as soon as we opened the door, in the sunlight of daytime they looked like nocturnal birds with net-like wings. They were apparent truths turned into falsities by adducing proofs which he had ingeniously linked into coherent series.
[5] After seeing this we approached the table and asked him what he was now writing. 'My first proposition.' he said, 'Whether nature is due to life or life to nature'. He remarked that on this point he could confirm either proposition and make it appear true. But because of some lurking fear, which was not explicit, he dared only prove that nature is due to life, that is to say, comes from life, and not the reverse, that life is due to, that is, comes from nature.
We asked politely what was the lurking fear he could not make explicit. He replied that it was the fear of being called by the clergy a nature-worshipper and so an atheist, and by laymen a person of unsound mind, because both parties are either believers from blind faith or people who see that a thing is so by studying supporting arguments.
[6] Then our zealous indignation for the truth got the better of us and we addressed him thus, 'My friend, you are quite wrong. Your wisdom which is no more than an ingenuity of style has led you astray, and your desire for reputation has induced you to prove what you do not believe. Do you not know that the human mind is capable of being raised above the objects of the senses, that is to say, the thoughts engendered by the bodily senses; and when it is so raised it can see the products of life at a higher level and the products of nature below? What is life but love and wisdom? and what is nature but a receiver of love and wisdom, a means of bringing about their effects and purposes? Can these be one, except as principal and instrumental? Light surely cannot be one with the eye, nor sound with the ear. What is the cause of these senses if not life, and what is the cause of their shapes if not nature? What is the human body but an organ for receiving life? Are not all its parts organically constructed to produce the effects willed by love and thought of by the intellect? Surely the body's organs spring from nature, but love and thought spring from life? Are these not quite distinct from each other? Raise the view of your mind a little higher and you will see that emotion and thought are due to life; that emotion is due to love and thought to wisdom, and both of them are due to life, for, as has been said above, love and wisdom constitute life. If you raise your intellectual faculty a little higher still, you will see that love and wisdom could not exist unless somewhere they had a source, and this source is [Love itself and] 2Wisdom itself, therefore Life itself. These are God, who is the source of nature.'
[7] Afterwards we talked with him about his second proposition, whether the centre is due to the expanse, or the expanse to the centre. We asked his reason for discussing this subject. He replied that it was in order to enable him to reach a conclusion about the centre and expanse of nature and life, which one was the source of the other. When we asked his opinion, he made the same reply as before, that he could prove either proposition, but for fear of losing his reputation he proved that the expanse was due to, that is to say, was from the centre. 'All the same,' he said, 'I know something existed before there was a sun, and this was distributed throughout the expanse, and this of itself reduced itself to order, so creating centres.'
[8] The zeal of our indignation made us address him again, saying, 'Friend, you are mad.' On hearing this he drew his chair back from the table, and looked fearfully at us, but then listened with a smile on his face. 'What could be more crazy,' we went on, 'than to say the centre is due to the expanse? We take your centre to mean the sun, and your expanse to be the universe; so you hold the universe came into existence without the sun, do you? Surely the sun produces nature and all its properties, which are solely dependent on the heat and light radiated by the sun and propagated through atmospheres? Where could these have been before there was a sun? We will explain their origin later on in the discussion. Are not the atmospheres and everything on earth like surfaces, the centre of which is the sun? What would become of them all without the sun? Could they last a single instant? And what of them all before there was a sun? Could they have continued in existence? Is not continuing in existence perpetually coming into existence? Since then everything in nature depends upon the sun to continue in existence, it follows it must do so to have come into existence. Everyone can see this and acknowledge it from personal experience.
[9] 'Does not what is logically later remain in, as it came into, existence from what is logically earlier? If the surface were earlier and the centre later, would not the existence of what is earlier depend upon what is later? Yet this is contrary to the laws of order. How can the later produce the earlier, or the exterior produce the interior, or the grosser the purer? So how could the surfaces which make up the expanse produce the centres? Anyone can see that this is contrary to the laws of nature.
'We have drawn these proofs from rational analysis to show that the expanse is produced by the centre, and not the reverse; although everyone who thinks correctly can see this for himself without these proofs. You said that the expanse of its own accord came together to produce a centre. Did this happen by chance, that everything fell into such a wonderful and amazing arrangement, so that one thing should be on account of the next, and every single thing on account of human beings and their everlasting life? Can nature inspired by some love and working through some wisdom provide such effects, and can it turn human beings into angels, and make a heaven of angels? Make this supposition and think, and your notion of nature coming into existence from nature will collapse.'
[10] After this we asked him what he had thought and still did about his third proposition, about the centre and the expanse of nature and life. Did he believe that the centre and expanse of nature were the same as the centre and expanse of life?
He said that here he hesitated. He had previously believed that the inward activity of nature was life, and that love and wisdom, which are the essential components of human life, came from this source. It is produced by the heat and light coming from the fire of the sun and transmitted through atmospheres. But now as the result of what he had heard about people living after death he was in doubt, a doubt which alternately lifted up and depressed his mind. When it was lifted up, he acknowledged a centre which had previously been quite unknown to him; when it was depressed he saw a centre which he thought to be the only one. Life was from the centre previously unknown to him, and nature from the centre he thought to be the only one, each centre being surrounded by an expanse.
[11] We said we approved of that, so long as he was willing to view the centre and the expanse of nature from the centre and the expanse of life, and not the reverse. We taught him that above the heaven of the angels there is a sun which is undiluted love; it appears fiery like the sun in the world, and the heat radiating from it is the source of will and love among angels and human beings, and the light radiating from it produces their intellect and wisdom. The products of life are called spiritual, and those of the sun of the world are containers of life, and are called natural. The expanse coming from the centre of life is called the spiritual world, which is maintained in existence by its own sun, and the expanse of nature is called the natural world, which is maintained in existence by its own sun. Now because space and time cannot be attributed to love and wisdom, but their place is taken by states, the expanse surrounding the sun of the heaven of angels is not a spatial extent, though it is in the extent of the natural sun, and is present with living subjects there depending on their ability to receive them, and this is determined by their forms.
[12] But he then asked, 'What is the source of the fire in the sun of the world, the natural sun?' We replied that it was from the sun of the heaven of angels, which is not fire, but the Divine love most nearly radiating from God, who is love itself. Since he found this surprising, we gave this explanation. 'Love in its essence is spiritual fire; that is why fire in the spiritual sense of the Word stands for love. That is why priests in church pray that heavenly fire, meaning love, may fill their hearts. The fire on the altar and the fire of the lampstand in the Tabernacle of the Israelites was nothing but a representation of Divine love. The heat of the blood, or the vital heat of human beings, and of animals in general, comes from no other source than the love which makes up their life. That is why people are fired, becoming warm and bursting into flame, when their love is raised to zeal, or is aroused to anger and exasperation. Therefore the fact that spiritual heat, being love, produces natural heat in human beings to such an extent as to fire and inflame their faces and limbs, can serve as a proof that the fire of the natural sun arose from no other source than the fire of the spiritual sun, which is Divine love.
[13] 'Now because the expanse arises from the centre, and not the reverse, as we said before, and the centre of life, which is the sun of the heaven of angels, is the Divine love most nearly radiating from God, who is in the midst of that sun; and because that sun brought into being the sun of the natural world, and from it the expanse which is called the natural world, it is obvious that the universe was created by the one God.'
After this we went away, and he accompanied us out of the courtyard of his high-school, speaking with us about heaven and hell, and about Divine guidance, showing new powers of sagacity.
380. To this I will append two narrative accounts. Here is the first:
I was once in a state of amazement at the great number of people who attribute creation to nature, attributing to it therefore all things under the sun and all things above the sun. Whenever they see anything, they say with an acknowledgment of the heart, "Is this not a product of nature?" When they are asked then why they attribute these things to nature, and not to God, even though they sometimes say with everyone else that God created nature, and so could just as well attribute the things they see to God as to nature, they reply in a muffled, almost inaudible tone, "What is God but nature?"
As a result of their persuasion regarding the creation of the universe from nature, and that insanity masquerading as a product of wisdom, they all give the impression of being vainglorious, so vainglorious as to scorn all who acknowledge the creation of the universe as being from God, regarding them as ants crawling on the ground and treading the beaten path, and some as butterflies flitting about in the air. They call their dogmas dreams, because they see what they themselves do not see, and they say, "Who has seen God? And who has not seen nature?"
[2] As I was in a state of amazement at the multitude of such people, an angel stood beside me and said to me, "What are you meditating on?"
So I replied, "On the multitude of those who believe that nature created the universe."
Then the angel said to me, "The whole of hell consists of people like that, and they are called there satanic spirits and devils - satanic spirits, those who have convinced themselves on the side of nature and for that reason have denied God; devils, those who have lived wickedly and so have rejected from their hearts any acknowledgment of God. But I will take you down to forums located in the southwestern zone, where such people gather who are not yet in hell."
The angel then took me by the hand and led me down. And I saw cottages in which the forums were housed, and in the middle of them one that seemed to be the headquarters of the rest. It was built of pitchstones, which were overlaid with thin glass-like sheets of gold and silver, seemingly glittering, like those which are called isinglass 1; and interspersed here and there were oyster-shells, similarly glistening.
[3] We went over to it and knocked; and presently someone opened the door and said, "Welcome." Then he ran to a table and brought back four books, saying, "These books are the wisdom which a number of countries are applauding today. This book or wisdom here is applauded by many in France; this one by many in Germany; this one by some in Holland; and this one by some in Britain."
He then went on to say, "If you care to see it, I will cause these four books to shine before your eyes." Whereupon he poured out and projected around them the glory of his reputation, and soon the books shone as though with light. But the light immediately vanished from before our eyes.
At that point we asked, "What are you presently writing?" And he replied that he was presently extracting and elucidating from his stores of knowledge points which were matters of the most interior wisdom, being in summary the following: 1. Whether nature is a product of life, or life a product of nature. 2. Whether a center is the product of an expanse, or an expanse the product of a center. 3. How this applies to the center and expanse of nature and life.
[4] Having said this, he sat down again at the table, while we walked around in his forum, which was quite large. He had a candle on the table, because there was no daylight from the sun in the room, but a nocturnal, lunar light. And what surprised me, the candle seemed to move all about there and so cast its light - although, because the wick was not trimmed, it provided little illumination. Moreover, as he wrote, we saw images in various forms flying from the table on to the walls, which in that nocturnal lunar light looked like beautiful birds of India. But when we opened the door and let in daylight from the sun, behold, in that light they looked like birds of the evening, having net-like wings. For what he was writing were semblances of truth, which by his confirmations became fallacies, which he had ingeniously woven together into logical series.
[5] After witnessing this, we went over to the table and asked him what he was writing now.
"I am dealing," he said, "with the first point, as to whether nature is a product of life, or life a product of nature." And he remarked in regard to it that he could confirm either one and make it to be true; but that because he harbored something in him that made him afraid, he dared to confirm only that nature is a product of life, meaning that it is derived from life, and not that life is a product of nature, or derived from nature.
We asked amiably what it was that he harbored within to make him afraid.
He replied that it was the possibility of his being labeled by the clergy an adherent of naturalism and thus an atheist, and by the laity a man of unsound reason, since both clergy and laity consist of people who either believe in accordance with a blind faith or see in accordance with the sight of those who defend it.
[6] However, being moved then by a certain indignation out of zeal for the truth, we addressed him, saying, "Friend, you are greatly deceived. Your wisdom, which lies in the ingeniousness of your writing, has led you astray, and the glory of your reputation has induced you to confirm what you do not believe. Do you not know that the human mind is capable of being elevated above sensual appearances, which are appearances in the thoughts from the bodily senses, and that when it is elevated, it sees such things as have to do with life above, and such things as have to do with nature below? What is life but love and wisdom? And what is nature but a vessel of these by which they work their effects or ends? Can these two be one other than as a principal and instrumental cause? Can light be one with the eye? Or sound with the ear? Where do the powers of these senses come from except from life, and their forms except from nature?
"What is the human body but an organ of life? Are not each and all elements in it organically formed to produce the effects that love wills and the understanding thinks? Are not the organs of the body from nature, and the love and thought from life? Are these not entirely distinct from each other?
"Raise the sight of your genius yet a little higher, and you will see that to be affected and think are properties of life; and that the capacity to be affected derives from love, and to think, from wisdom, and both of these from life - for, as we said, love and wisdom are life.
"If you raise the faculty of your understanding a little higher still, you will see that no love or wisdom is possible unless somewhere it has an origin, and that its origin is love itself and wisdom itself, thus life itself; and these are God, from whom comes nature."
[7] Afterwards we spoke with him about his second point, as to whether a center is the product of an expanse, or an expanse the product of a center. And we asked why he was discussing this.
He replied that he was doing it in order to draw a conclusion concerning the center and expanse of nature and life, thus concerning the origin of the one and the other. When we asked then what his thinking was, he answered in regard to this in the same way as before, that he could confirm either one, but that for fear of losing his reputation he was confirming that an expanse is the product of a center, or in other words, derived from the center - "even though I know," he said, "that there was something prior to the sun, and this everywhere in the universe, and that these things flowed of themselves into an order, thus into centers."
[8] But then again out of an indignant zeal we spoke to him and said, "Friend, you are insane."
And when he heard it, he pushed his chair back from the table and regarded us timidly; after which he turned to us his ear, but laughing as he did so.
Nevertheless we continued, saying, "What is more insane than to say that the center comes from the expanse. We interpret your center to mean the sun, and your expanse to mean the universe, thus that the universe came into being without a sun. Does the sun not produce nature and all its properties, which are dependent solely on the heat and light emanating from the sun and conveyed through the atmospheres? Where were these before? But we will tell you where they originated later on.
"The atmospheres, and all things on the earth - are they not like surfaces, and the sun their center? What would all these things be without the sun? Could they for one instant endure? So, then, what would all these things have been before the sun? Could they have endured? Is not continued existence a continual coming into existence? Consequently, since the continued existence of all things of nature depends on the sun, it follows that their coming into existence does, too. Everyone sees this and acknowledges it from his own observation.
[9] "Does not something subsequent as it comes into existence also continue in existence from something prior? If the surface were prior, and the center subsequent, would not the prior then subsist from the subsequent - which is, however, contrary to laws of order?
"How can subsequent things produce prior ones? Or outer ones inner ones? Or grosser ones finer ones? How then can surfaces which form an expanse possibly produce centers? Who does not see that this is contrary to laws of nature?
"We have advanced these arguments from an analysis of reason, to confirm that an expanse arises from a center, and not the reverse, even though everyone who thinks rightly sees this without these arguments.
"You said that the expanse flowed together into a center of itself. Was it by chance, then, that it flowed into such a marvelous and astounding order that one thing exists for the sake of another, and each and all things for the sake of man and his eternal life? Is nature able to act from some love by means of some wisdom to produce such effects? Is nature also able to form men into angels and angels into a heaven? Contemplate this and think about it, and your idea of nature's arising from nature will fall to the ground."
[10] After that we asked him what he had thought and what he thought now in respect to the third point, regarding the center and expanse of nature and life. Did he think the center and expanse of life to be the same as the center and expanse of nature?
He said that he hesitated. He had previously thought that the inner activity of nature was life; that from it originated the love and wisdom which essentially form a person's life; and that it was the fire of the sun, acting through its heat and light by means of the atmospheres, which produced these. But now, he said, from what he was hearing about people's eternal life, he was in a state of vacillation, and this vacillation carried his mind sometimes upward, sometimes down. When it was carried upward, he acknowledged a center of which he had previously known nothing; and when down, he saw the center which he had believed to be the only one; thus thinking that life is from the center of which he had previously known nothing, and that nature is from the center which he had before believed to be the only one, each center having its own expanse surrounding it.
[11] To this we said, well and good, provided he was willing also to regard the center and expanse of nature as being from the center and expanse of life, and not the other way around.
We then told him that above the angelic heaven there is a sun which is pure love, fiery in appearance like the sun of the world; and that it is owing to the warmth emanating from that sun that angels and men have will and love, and owing to the light from it that they have understanding and wisdom. We said, too, that such things as are matters of life are called spiritual, and that such things as emanate from the sun of the world are vessels of life and are called natural. Furthermore, that the expanse of the center of life is called the spiritual world, which subsists from its sun, and that the expanse of nature is called the natural world, which subsists from its sun.
Now, because love and wisdom cannot have spaces and times ascribed to them, we said, but instead of these states, the expanse surrounding the sun of the angelic heaven is not dimensional, but yet is present in the dimensional expanse of the natural sun, and in living objects there according to their reception of it, and this in accordance with their forms.
[12] However, at that point he asked what produced the fire of the sun of the world or of nature.
We replied that it originated from the sun of the angelic heaven, which is not a ball of fire, but the Divine love most immediately emanating from God, who is love itself. Then because he wondered at this, we demonstrated it as follows:
"In its essence, love is spiritual fire. So it is, that fire in the Word, in its spiritual sense, symbolizes love. That is why priests in temples pray that heavenly fire may fill people's hearts, by which they mean love. In the Tabernacle among the Israelites, the fire of the altar and the fire of the lampstand represented nothing else but Divine love. The warmth of the blood, or the vital heat in people and in animals generally, is from no other origin than the love which forms their life. It is in consequence of this that a person is set on fire, grows hot, and bursts into flames whenever his love is roused up into zeal, anger and rage. Since it is spiritual heat, or love, which produces the natural heat in people, even so as to ignite and inflame their faces and limbs, it can accordingly be seen from this that the fire of the natural sun arose from no other origin than the fire of the spiritual sun, which is Divine love.
[13] "Now because an expanse arises from its center, and not the reverse, as we said earlier, and the center of life, which is the sun of the angelic heaven, is the Divine love most immediately emanating from God, who is in the midst of that sun; and because from it arose the expanse of that center, which is called the spiritual world; and because from that sun arose the sun of the world, and from this its expanse, which is called the natural world, it is apparent that the universe was created by God alone."
After that we departed, with him accompanying us outside the grounds of his forum. And he spoke with us about heaven and hell, and about the Divine superintendence, with a new sagacity of acumen.
Footnotes:
1. I.e., laminae of mica.
380. I add two stories. The first is this:
I was amazed, once, at a huge crowd of people who gave nature the credit for creation and therefore everything under the sun - and above the sun. When they saw anything, they said from a heartfelt belief, "Isn't this nature's work?" They were asked why they said it was nature's work and why not God's work, when, for all that, they sometimes say, as most people do, that God created nature, so they can equally well say that the things they see are God's work as that they are nature's. But they answered in an almost soundless inner voice, "What is God but nature?"
They all seem so conceited, from their persuasion that nature created the universe, and from taking this insanity for wisdom, that they regard everyone who accepts God's creation of the universe as ants that creep on the ground and wear a highway, and sometimes as butterflies that fly in the air. They say these people's dogmas are dreams, because they see what they don't see, saying, "Who sees God? And who doesn't see nature?"
During my astonishment that there was crowd like that, an angel stood by my side and said to me, "What are you thinking about?"
"About such a crowd," I said, "who think that nature created the universe."
The angel told me, "People like that make up all of hell, and they are called satans and devils there. Satans have confirmed themselves on the side of nature, so they deny God. Devils lived viciously and so they threw all acceptance of God out of their hearts. But I'll take you to the school in the southwestern zone, where there are people like that who are not yet in hell.
He took my hand and led me away. I saw small houses with schools in them, and among them one that was like the headquarters of the rest. It was built of pitch - black stones, overlaid with something like plates of glass, sparkling sort of like gold and silver, like the ones called glacies Mariae [sheets of mica], with shells among them here and there, that sparkled the same way.
We went up and knocked, and soon someone opened the door and said, "Welcome," ran to a table, brought four books and said, "These books are the wisdom that many, many in today's kingdoms applaud. Here's the book - the wisdom - that many applaud in France, here's the one they applaud in Germany, this one some applaud in the Netherlands, and this one some applaud in Britain." He went on, "If you want to see something, I'll make these four books shine before your eyes!"
Then he poured out a flood of praise for his own reputation, and soon the books gleamed. But this light instantly vanished before our eyes.
Then we asked, "What are you writing now?"
He answered that he was now extracting and expounding things of deepest wisdom from his treasures, "which, in brief, are these: first, whether nature is due to life, or life to nature; second, whether the center is due to its surroundings, or the surroundings are due to the center; third, about the center and the surroundings of nature and life."
After saying this he sat down on a chair at a table, but we strolled around in his school, which was roomy. He had a candle on the table, because there was no daylight from the sun, but the light of night from the moon. And what surprised me was that the candle seemed to move around the rooms, giving light. But it wasn't trimmed, so it did not give much light. As he wrote, we saw images in various shapes fly from the table onto the walls. In that nocturnal moonlight they seemed like beautiful Indian birds.
But in daylight, when we opened a door, they looked like bats, with webbed wings, for they were likenesses of the truth that were turned into falsities by being confirmed. He connected them ingeniously in a series.
After we saw these we went to the table and asked him, "Now what are you writing?"
He said, "About the first one - whether nature is due to life or life to nature," and about this he said that he could establish either thing and make it true, but that something he was afraid of lay hidden inside, so all he dared establish was that nature is due to life - i.e., from life - and not that life is due to nature - i.e., from nature.
We politely asked, "What are you afraid of that lies hidden inside?"
He said it was that the clergy might call him a naturalist, and thus an atheist, and laymen might call him a man of unsound reason, "since ministers and laymen either believe by blind faith or else they see through the sight of the ones who assert a thing."
But then, out of some displeasure due to zeal for the truth, we spoke to him and said, "Friend, you're very much mistaken.
Your wisdom, which is ingenuity in writing, misleads you, and the renown of your reputation leads you to confirm what you don't believe. Don't you know that the human mind can be raised beyond things having to do with the five senses - things that in your thought come from the body's senses - and that when raised it sees that things having to do with life are above and things having to do with nature are below? What is life but love and wisdom? And what is nature but a vessel for them where they work their effects or the things they do? Can life and nature be one except as a cause and its instrument? Can light be the same thing as an eye? Sound as an ear? Where are their sensations from, but from life, and their forms, but from nature? What's a human body but an organ of life? Aren't all the things in it formed organically to bring about what love wants and intellect thinks out? Don't the body's organs come from nature and love and thought from life? Aren't they totally distinct from each other?
Raise the keen sight of your skill a little higher, and you'll see that feeling and thinking come from life, and that feeling is from love and thinking from wisdom, and both are from life, for, once again, love and wisdom are life. If you raise your ability to understand a little higher still, you'll see that love and wisdom can only come from some source, and that their source is Love Itself and Wisdom Itself, and therefore Life Itself. And these are God, whom nature comes from."
Then we talked with him about the second question, Whether the center is from its surroundings or the surroundings from the center, and we asked him why he was discussing it. He said it was so he could demonstrate something about the center and the surroundings in nature and life - that is, about the source of the center and the surroundings. And when we asked him what his own opinion was, he answered about these things the same as before - that he could demonstrate either side, but for fear of losing his reputation he proved that the surroundings are from the center.
"Yet I know that there was something before the sun, and it was everywhere in the universe, and that these things flowed together by themselves - that is, into centers."
But then we spoke to him again out of displeasure from zeal, and we said, "You, friend, are insane." And when he heard this he pulled his chair from the table and looked at us hesitatingly and then pricked up his ears. But he was laughing. But we went on, "What's more insane than to say that the center is from its surroundings
(by your center we understand the sun, and by its surroundings we understand the solar system), and therefore to say that the solar system came to be without the sun? Doesn't the sun make nature and all that belongs to it - which depend solely on the heat and light coming from the sun through the atmospheres?
Where were these things before?
"But we'll tell where these things came from in the discussion that's coming next. Aren't the atmospheres and everything on the earth like surfaces, and the sun their center? What would they all be without the sun? Could they survive one moment? So what were they before the sun existed? Could they have existed? Isn't continued existence a steady coming - to - be? So, when the continuing existence of everything having to do with nature is due to the sun, it follows that so is its coming into being. Everyone sees this and accepts it from firsthand observation. Doesn't a result continue to be, because of its cause, just as it comes to be because of it? If the surfaces were first and the center afterwards, wouldn't the first thing continue to be because of the later, which is against the laws of order? How can things that come later produce something sooner, or outsides produce insides, or something more gross produce something purer? So how can the surfaces, which make the surroundings, produce the center? Who doesn't see that this is against the laws of nature? We have brought up these proofs for an analysis of the theory by way of settling it that the surroundings come to exist because of the center, and not the other way around, even though anyone who thinks straight sees it without the proofs.
You said that the surroundings flowed together into the center by themselves. Then is it accidentally in such wonderful and amazing order that one thing exists on account of another and each and every thing on account of people and their eternal life? Can nature look after such things by some love through some wisdom, and can it make people into angels and angels into a heaven?
Consider these things and think, and your notion about nature's coming from nature will collapse."
After this we asked him what he had thought about the third proposition, about the center and surroundings of nature and of life, and what he thought now - whether he believed that the center and surroundings of life are the same as the center and surroundings in nature.
He said he was unsure and that he had thought earlier that the innermost activity of nature was life, and that love and wisdom, which essentially make man's life, are from that life, and that the fire of the sun produces life through heat and light, via the atmospheres, and that now, because of the things he heard about man's eternal life, he was wavering and this uncertainty carried his mind now up, now down. When on the upswing he accepted the center he knew nothing about before, and on the downswing he saw the center he had thought was the only one. And he said that life is from a center he had not known about and nature is from the center that he used to think was the only one. And that both centers had surroundings around them.
To this we said, "Good. Only you also want to consider the center and surroundings of nature from the center and surroundings of life, and not the other way around." And we informed him that above the angelic heaven there is a sun that is pure love - to all appearances a fire like the world's sun - and angels and people have free will and love due to the heat that comes from that sun, and intellect and wisdom due to the light from it.
And the things that have to do with life are called spiritual, and the things that come from the world's sun are vessels for life and are called natural. Also, the surroundings of the center of life are called "the spiritual world," which survives due to its sun, and the surroundings in nature are called "the natural world," which survives due to its sun.
"Now, you can't apply space and time to love and wisdom, instead, conditions, so the surroundings of the angelic heaven's sun do not spread outwards, but they are in the spread of the natural sun all the same, and they are in the living objects there according to their reception - and reception depends on the things' forms."
But then he asked, "Where does the fire of the world's sun, or nature, come from?"
We answered that it is from the sun of the angelic heaven, which is not fire but Divine Love going out from right near God, who is Love Itself.
This surprised him, so we explained it this way. "In essence, Love is spiritual fire. For this reason fire, in the spiritual sense of the Word, means love. This is why the priests in the churches pray for heavenly fire to fill people's hearts - meaning love. The fire of the Israelites' altar in the Tabernacle and the fire of the candlestick represented nothing other than Divine Love. The heat of blood, or the vital heat of people and animals in general, comes from nowhere but love, which makes their life. This is why a person takes fire, gets hot, and burns when his love is aroused in zeal, ire, or wrath. So from the fact that spiritual heat, which is love, causes natural heat in people to the point where their faces and limbs get hot and inflamed, you can establish that the fire of nature's sun exists from no source other than the fire of the spiritual sun, which is Divine Love.
"Now, the surroundings arise from the center, and not vice versa, as we said above, and the center of life, which is the sun of the angelic heaven, is Divine Love going out from right near God, who is in that sun. And the surroundings of that center, which are called the spiritual world, come from there. And from that sun the world's sun comes to be - and its surroundings, which are called the natural world, come from it. So it is clear that the universe was created by the one God."
After this we went away, and he went with us beyond the yard of his school and talked with us about heaven and hell and Divine care, with a new acuteness of character.
380. I will add two Memorable Relations. First:
I was once in amazement at the vast multitude of men who attribute creation and hence all things under and above the sun to nature. Whenever they see anything, they say, from the acknowledgment of their heart, Is not this the work of nature? Asked why they say the work of nature and not of God, when yet at times they themselves, in common with the generality of men say that God created nature, and so can just as well say that the things they see are the works of God as that they are the works of nature, they answer with an inward sound, almost inaudible, "What is God but nature?" From this persuasion respecting the creation of the universe out of nature, and from this insanity as though from wisdom, they all seem so full of their own glory that they look upon those who acknowledge the creation of the universe by God as ants creeping on the ground and treading the beaten Path, and upon some as butterflies flying in the air. Calling their dogmas dreams because they see what they do not see, they say, "Who has seen God, and who does not see nature?"
[2] While I was in amazement at the multitude of such men, an angel stood by my side and said to me, "On what are you meditating?" I answered, "On the multitude of men who believe that nature created the universe." The angel then said: "All hell consists of such men, and they are there called satans and devils, the satans being those who have confirmed themselves in favor of nature and so have denied God, and the devils those who have lived wickedly and so have rejected from their hearts all acknowledgment of God. But I will lead you to gymnasiums in the south-western quarter where are those of them who are not yet in hell."
Taking me by the hand, he then led me; and I saw small houses wherein were gymnasiums, and in their center, one which seemed to be the chief building. It was built of pitch-black stone overlaid with thin plates, as of glass, sparkling as though from gold and silver, like the mineral called glacies mariae (mica), and interspersed here and there with shells which likewise sparkled.
[3] We approached this building and knocked, and presently a man opened the door and said, "Welcome." He then ran to a table and bringing four books, he said, "These books are the wisdom which is applauded by multitudes in the kingdoms of today; this book or wisdom by many in France, this by many in Germany, this by some in Holland, and this by some in Britain." He said further, "If you wish to see it, I will make these four books shine before your eyes." He then poured out the glory of his own fame, and, surrounded by this, the books at once shone as though from light; but before our eyes this light immediately vanished. We then asked him, "What are you writing now?" He replied that from his treasures he was now drawing out and setting forth matters of inmost wisdom. "These are in brief: 1. Is nature of 1life, or life of nature? 2. Is the center of the expanse, or the expanse of the center? 3. Concerning the center and expanse of nature and of life."
[4] Saying this, he again seated himself at the table, and we walked about in his gymnasium which was spacious. Because there was no daylight there but only the nocturnal light of the moon, he had a candle on the table; and, what surprised me, the candle seemed to be carried around the room and illumine it, though, not having been snuffed, the light it gave out was but little. While he was writing, we saw images in various forms flitting from the table to the walls. In that nocturnal moonlight they seemed like beautiful Indian birds, but when we opened the door, lo, in the sun's daylight they seemed like birds of night with weblike wings; for they were semblances of truth made into fallacies by confirmations which he had ingeniously connected together into a series.
[5] After seeing all this, we went to the table and asked him what he was writing now. He said, "On the first question, Is NATURE OF LIFE, OR LIFE OF NATURE?" Respecting this, he said that he could confirm either one and make it true; but because deep within him was a latent something which he feared, he dared confirm only that nature is of life, that is, from life, and not that life is of nature, that is, from nature. We courteously asked him what that thing was which was deeply latent within him and which he feared. He answered that it was the possibility of being called by clergymen a naturalist and thus an atheist, and by laymen a man devoid of sound reason, "for both laymen and clergymen believe in the proposition from blind faith, or see it with the eyes of confirmers."
[6] From zeal for truth we then addressed him with some indignation, saying: "Friend, you greatly err. Your wisdom, which consists in the gift of clever writing, has seduced you, and the glory of your fame has led you to confirm what you do not believe. Do you not know that the human mind is capable of being elevated above things sensual, being things which are in the thoughts from the bodily senses? and that when elevated, it sees that the things of life are above, and those of nature below? What else is life but love and wisdom? and what else is nature but their receptacle whereby they work out their effects or uses? Can the two be one in any other way than as principal and instrumental? Can light be one with the eye? or sound with the ear? Whence come the sensations of these organs but from life? and their forms but from nature? What is the human body but an organ of life? Is not each and every thing therein formed organically to produce what the love wills and the understanding thinks? Are not the organs of the body from nature, and love and thought from life? and are not these entirely distinct from each other? Elevate the keenness of your genius yet a little higher and you will see, that to be affected and to think is the property of life; and that to be affected comes from love, and to think from wisdom, and both from life; as we said, love and wisdom are life. If you elevate your faculty of understanding a little higher still, you will see that there is no love and wisdom without an origin somewhere, and that the origin is [love and] 2wisdom itself, and hence life itself; and these are God from whom is nature."
[7] After this we talked with him about the second question, Is THE CENTER OF THE EXPANSE, OR THE EXPANSE OF THE CENTER? and we asked him why he discusses this. He replied that he discussed it to the end that he might come to some conclusion respecting the center and expanse of nature and of life, thus respecting the origin of the one and the other; and when we asked What his own opinion was, he answered as before, that he could confirm either, but that from fear of the loss of fame he would confirm the proposition that the expanse is of the center, that is, from the center. "Although I know"' he added, "that there was something prior to the sun--something which was everywhere in the Universe; and that these things flowed together into order of themselves, thus into centers."
[8] At this, again addressing him from indignant zeal, We said, "Friend, you are insane." When he heard this, he drew his seat back from the table and looked at us timidly, and then pricked up his ears--but he was laughing. We then continued, saying: "What is more insane than to say the center is from the expanse? --by your center we understand the sun, and by your expanse we understand the universe--thus that the universe came into existence without the sun? Does not the sun make nature and all the properties thereof, these being dependent solely on the heat and light proceeding from the sun by its atmospheres? Where Were they before?--as to whence they were, this we will tell you in the discussion that follows. Are not the atmospheres and all things on the earth like surfaces, and the sun their center? What are all these without the sun? could they subsist for a single moment? What then were they all prior to the sun? could they have subsisted? is not subsistence perpetual existence? Since, therefore, the subsistence of all things of nature is from the sun, it follows that their existence is also from the sun. This is seen and acknowledged by every one from his own observation.
[9] As the posterior exists from the prior, does it not also subsist therefrom? If the surface were the prior, and the center the posterior, Would not the prior subsist from the posterior? Yet this is contrary to the laws of order. How can things Posterior produce things prior? or things exterior, things interior? or things grosser, things purer? How then can surfaces, which make the expanse, produce centers? Who does not see that this is against the laws of nature? We have brought forward these arguments from rational analysis to establish the truth that the expanse exists from the center, and not the reverse, though every one who thinks rightly sees this without them. You have said that the expanse flowed together into the center of itself. Is it then by chance that it flowed into so marvelous and stupendous an order that one thing exists for the sake of another, and each and every thing for the sake of man and his eternal life? Can nature provide such things from any love, by any wisdom? from men make angels? and from angels, heaven? Suppose this, and then think, and your idea of the existence of nature from nature will fall."
[10] After this we asked him what he had thought and what he now thinks about the third question, THE CENTER AND EXPANSE OF NATURE AND OF LIFE, whether he believed the center an expanse of life to be the same as the center and expanse of nature. He said that he hesitated, and that previously he had thought that the interior activity of nature is life; that from this are the love and wisdom which essentially make man's life, and that the fire of the sun produces them by its heat and light by the mediation of the atmospheres; but that, from what he had heard about the eternal life of men, he was now in doubt, and this doubt carried his mind now upwards, now downwards; When upwards, he acknowledged a center of which he had previously known nothing, and when downwards, he saw the center which he had believed to be the only center; and [that he now wished to think] that life is from the Center of which he had previously known nothing, and nature from the center which he had previously believed to be the only center; also that each center has an expanse around it.
[11] To this we said that that was good, provided only he wished also to look at the center and the expanse of nature from the center and expanse of life, and not the reverse. We then instructed him that above the angelic heaven is a sun which is pure love, in appearance fiery like the sun of the world; that from the heat proceeding from that sun, angels and men have will and love, and from the light, understanding and wisdom; and that the things belonging to life are called spiritual, while those which proceed from the sun of the world are containants of life and are called natural; and furthermore, that the expanse of the center of life is called the SPIRITUAL WORLD Which subsists from its own sun, and the expanse of nature is called the NATURAL WORLD which subsists from its own sun. "Now because spaces and times cannot be predicated of love and wisdom, but instead thereof states, the expanse around the sun of the angelic heaven is not an extense but yet is in the extense of the natural sun and in living subjects there, according to their reception, their reception being according to their forms."
[12] "But then"' he asked, "from whence is the fire of the sun of the world or of nature?" We answered, "It is from the sun of the angelic heaven, which is not fire but is Divine Love proximately proceeding from God who is Love itself."
He wondered at this, so we demonstrated it as follows: "Love in its essence is spiritual fire. Hence it is, that in the Word in its spiritual sense fire signifies love. Therefore, in temples, priests pray that heavenly fire, by which they mean love, may fill their hearts. The fire of the altar in the tabernacle with the Israelites, and also the fire of the candlestick represented nothing else than Divine Love. The heat of the blood, that is, the vital heat of men and of animals in general is from no other source than the love which makes their life. Hence, when a man's love is exalted into zeal, anger, and wrath, he is enkindled, grows hot, and is inflamed. Therefore, from the fact that, with men, spiritual heat which is love produces natural heat, even to the enkindling and inflaming of their faces and limbs, it can be manifest that the fire of the natural sun came into existence from no other source than the fire of the spiritual sun, which is Divine Love.
[13] Now since, as we said before, the expanse arises from the center and not the reverse, and the center of life, which is the sun of the angelic heaven, is Divine Love proximately proceeding from God, who is in the midst of that sun; and since from this is the expanse of that center, being that expanse which is called the spiritual world; and since from that sun, the sun of the world came into existence and therefrom the expanse thereof which is called the natural world; it is evident that the universe was created by the one God."
After these words we departed, and he accompanied us beyond the area of his gymnasium and talked with us about heaven and hell and about Divine auspices, from a new sagacity of ingenuity.
Footnotes:
1. I.e., from; see subsections 5, 7.
2. See the same Memorable Relation in True Christian Religion, no. 35.
380. I shall append two Memorabilia.
I
Once 1I was feeling amazement at the vast number of men who ascribe creation and hence all things under and above the sun to nature, saying from an acknowledgment of the heart, when they look at a thing, "Is it not the work of nature?" Asked why they say it is nature's work and not God's, when yet they sometimes say with the generality of people that God created nature, and therefore could as easily say that the things they see are God's as that they are nature's, they reply in a smothered, almost inaudible voice, "What is God but nature?" In their persuasion that the creation of the universe is nature's work, and in this insanity which seems wisdom, they all appear pretentious; so much so that they look on all who acknowledge that the universe was created by God as if they were ants creeping on the ground and keeping to the beaten way, or butterflies fluttering in the air. They call their doctrines dreams, because they see what really they do not see, and ask, "Who has seen God, and who has not seen nature?"
[2] As I felt astounded at the number of such men, an angel appeared beside me and said to me, "What are you meditating about?"
I replied, "About the multitude of those who believe that nature created the universe."
The angel said to me, "All hell consists of such men, where they are satans or devils - those being called satans who have confirmed themselves in favor of nature and hence have denied God, and those being called devils who have lived iniquitously and so have rejected all acknowledgment of God from their hearts. But I will conduct you to the schools in the southwest quarter where such men are to be found before they enter hell."
He took me by the hand and led me. I saw some small buildings in which were the schools, and in the midst of them one which appeared to be the headquarters building. This was built of pitch-black stone, overlaid with thin glass-like plates sparkling as if from gold and silver, like what is called glacies Mariae, and interspersed here and there were shells, which glittered, too.
[3] We approached this building and knocked, and presently a man opened the door and said, "Welcome." He ran to a table and fetched four books. "These books," he said, "are the wisdom which a number of nations are applauding today. Many in France applaud this book or wisdom; many in Germany, this book; some in Holland, this book; and this, some in Britain." He continued, "If you care to see it, I will make these four books shine before your eyes." He poured and shed around them the glamour of his reputation, whereupon the books flashed as with light. But the light vanished at once before our eyes.
Then we asked, "What are you writing about at present?" He replied that he was drawing forth and expounding from his treasuries matters of inmost wisdom, in brief these: (1) Is nature derived from life or life from nature? (2) Is a center derived from its expanse or
The expanse from its center? (3) What are the center and the expanse of nature and of life?
[4] So saying, he sat down again at the table. We walked about in his school, a spacious one. He had a candle on the table, for the light in the place was not the diurnal light of the sun but the nocturnal light of the moon. To my surprise, the candle seemed to move about the room and illuminate it, although, not having been snuffed, it gave only a little light. As the man wrote, we saw images of different shapes flying from the table to the walls, which in that nocturnal moonlight looked like beautiful Indian birds; but when we opened the door, in the solar daylight they looked like birds of evening with weblike wings. For they were semblances of truth, made into fallacies by being confirmed, and these he wove ingeniously into a series.
[5] Having watched this phenomenon, we went to the table and asked him what he was writing about now. He said, "About the first problem, Is nature derived from life or life from nature?" Of this he said that he could confirm either idea and make it true; but that as something lurked within which excited his fears, he ventured to confirm only this, that nature is of, that is, from life, and not that life is of, that is, from nature.
We asked courteously what it was he feared which lay hidden within. He said it was that he might be called a naturalist and thus an atheist by the clergy, and a man of unsound reason by the laity, "for both these are either believers from a blind faith or see from the sight of those who confirm blind faith."
[6] But then we addressed him in some indignation of zeal for the truth, saying, "Friend, you are very much mistaken. Your wisdom, which is a literary skill, has seduced you, and the glamour of reputation has led you to confirm what you do not believe. Do you not know that the human mind is capable of being raised above sensuous things or such things as are in the thoughts from the bodily senses; and that, thus elevated, it sees the things of life above, and the things of nature beneath? What is life but love and wisdom? And what is nature but the receptacle of these, by which they elaborate their effects or uses? Can these be one except as principal and instrumental? Can light be identical with the eye? Or sound with the ear? Are not their sensations from life, while their forms are from nature? What is the human body but an organ of life? Are not each and all things in the body organized to do what love wills and understanding thinks? Are not the organs of the body from nature, but love and thought from life? Are they not quite distinct from each other? Raise the insight of your skill a little higher still, and you will see that it is the property of life to be affected and to think, and that to be affected is from love and to think is from wisdom, and both are from life; for, as we said, love and wisdom are life. If you raise your faculty of understanding yet a little higher, you will see that there can be no love and wisdom without an origin somewhere, and that this origin is love itself and wisdom itself, and hence life itself, which are God, from whom is nature."
[7] Afterwards we talked with him about the second problem, Is a center derived from its expanse or the expanse from its center? We asked him why he took this up. He replied that he did so in order to come to a conclusion about the center and the expanse of nature and of life, thus about the origin of the one and the other. When we asked what his opinion was, he made similar answer as before, that he could confirm either idea, but that for fear of damaging his reputation he would confirm the idea that an expanse is of, that is, from its center, "although I know," he said, "that there was something before the sun, and this was everywhere in the universe, and that these things flowed together into order, thus into centers, by themselves."
[8] Again we addressed him in an indignant zeal and said, "Friend, you are insane." At this he pushed his chair back from the table and looked at us fearfully. Then he lent an ear, but with a smile, and we proceeded: "What is more insane than to say that center is from expanse and thus that the universe came into existence apart from a sun? For by your center we understand the sun, and by your expanse we understand the universe. Does not the sun make nature and give it all its properties? which are dependent solely on the heat and light proceeding from the sun by its atmospheres. Where were all things of nature before? [Whence they are we shall tell in the following discussion.] Are not the atmospheres and all things on the earth like surfaces, and the sun the center of them? What are they all apart from the sun? Could they subsist for one moment? What then were they all before there was a sun? Could they have subsisted? Is not subsistence a perpetual coming into existence? Since, therefore, the subsistence of all things of nature is from the sun, it follows that their coming into existence is also from the sun. This every one sees and acknowledges from his own observation.
[9] As the posterior exists from the prior, does it not also subsist from the prior? If the surfaces were prior and the center posterior, would not the prior subsist from the posterior? But this is contrary to the laws of order. How can things posterior produce things prior? Or exteriors produce interiors? Or things grosser, things purer? How then can surfaces, which constitute the expanse, produce centers? Who does not see that this is against the laws of nature? We have brought forward these arguments from rational analysis to establish that an expanse exists from its center, and not the contrary, although every one who thinks rightly sees it without these arguments. You said that the expanse flows together of itself into the center; did it then by chance flow into such a wonderful and stupendous order that one thing serves another, and each and all serve man and man's eternal life? Can nature, from any love by any wisdom, provide such things, and make angels of men, and form a heaven of angels? Suppose this, and reflect, and your idea of the existence of nature from nature will fall to pieces."
[10] Then we asked him what he had thought and what he now thought about the third topic, The center and the expanse of nature and of life; did he believe the center and the expanse of life to be identical with the center and expanse of nature? He said he hesitated. He had previously thought that the interior activity of nature was life, and that from this are the love and wisdom which essentially make man's life; and that they are produced by the fire of the sun through its heat and light, the atmospheres serving as means. But now on account of what he had heard about man's eternal life he was in doubt. The doubt swayed his mind now upward and now downward; when upward he acknowledged a center of which he had known nothing before, and when downward he saw a center which he had believed was the only one. Life (he said) is from the center of which he had not known before, and nature from the center which he had believed was the only one, and each center has an expanse about it.
[11] To this we said, "Good! If only you would also view the center and the expanse of nature from the center and expanse of life, and not contrariwise." We informed him that above the angelic heaven is a sun which is pure love, in appearance fiery like the sun of the world. From the heat which proceeds from that sun angels and men have will and love, and from the light from it they have understanding and wisdom. Further, the things which are of life are called spiritual, and those which proceed from the sun of the world are containants of life and are called natural. Then (we went on), the expanse of the center of life is called the spiritual world which subsists from its own sun, and the expanse of nature is called the natural world, which subsists from its sun. Now, as spaces and times cannot be predicated of love and wisdom, but rather states, the expanse about the sun of the angelic heaven is not an extended area, and yet is within the domain of the natural sun, and is with animate subjects there according to reception, which is according to the form."
[12] "But then," he asked, "whence is the fire of the sun of the world or of nature?"
We answered, "From the sun of the angelic heaven, which is not fire but Divine love, proximately proceeding from God who is Love itself."
As he marvelled at this, we explained it in this way: "Love in its essence is spiritual fire. Hence in the Word, in its spiritual sense, fire signifies love; priests in temples accordingly pray that heavenly fire, by which they mean love, may fill the heart. The fire of the altar and the fire of the candlestick in the tabernacle with the Israelites represented nothing else than Divine love. The heat of the blood, or the vital heat of men and of animals in general, has no other source than the love which makes their life. A man is enkindled, waxes warm, and is inflamed, therefore, when his love is intensified into zeal, anger, and wrath. This fact, that spiritual heat, which is love, produces natural heat in men, even kindling and inflaming face and limb, assures one that the fire of the natural sun came into existence from no other source than the fire of the spiritual sun, which is Divine love.
[13] Now, as an expanse springs from its center and not the reverse, as we said before; and as the center of life, which is the sun of the angelic heaven, is Divine love proximately proceeding from God, who is in the midst of that sun; and as the expanse of that center, called the spiritual world, is thence; and as from that sun the sun of the world came into existence, and from it its expanse, called the natural world, it is clear that the universe is created from the one God."
Thereupon we left, and he accompanied us out of the schoolyard, talking with us about heaven and hell and about the Divine auspices with a new sagacity in his genius.
Footnotes:
1. These Memorabilia also occur in True Christian Religion 35.
380. I will add two Relations. First, this:
Once I was in amazement at the vast multitude of men who attribute creation, and thence all things under the sun and beyond the sun, to nature, saying from an acknowledgment of the heart, when they see anything, 'Is not this of nature?' And when asked why they say it is of nature and why not of God, since yet they sometimes say with the generality, that God created nature, and can therefore, as easily say that the things they see are of God as that they are of nature, they replied, with an internal, almost inaudible tone, 'What is God but nature?' They all from persuasion respecting the creation of the universe from nature, and from this insanity as if from wisdom, appear vainglorious; so much so that they look upon all those who acknowledge the creation of the universe from God as if they were ants that creep along the ground, and tread the beaten way, and some as if they were butterflies that fly in the air, calling their doctrines dreams, because they see what they do not see, saying, 'Who has seen God, and who has not seen nature?'
While I was in amazement at the multitude of such, an angel stood by my side and said to me, 'What are you meditating upon?' I replied, 'Upon the multitude of such as believe that nature created the universe.'
And the angel said to me, 'All hell is of such, and they are called satans and devils-satans those who have confirmed themselves in favor of nature, and thence have denied God, and devils, those who have lived viciously and so have rejected from the heart all acknowledgment of God. But I will lead you to gymnasia, which are in the southwestern quarter, where such abide who are not yet in hell.'
And he took me by the hand and led me. And I saw small houses in which there were gymnasia, and in the midst of them one that appeared to be the official residence of the others. It was built of stone, black as pitch, overlaid with thin plates, as of glass, sparkling as if from gold and silver, like what are called Glacies Marioe (mica) and interspersed here and there with shells, likewise glittering. We approached this building and knocked, and presently one opened the door and said, 'Welcome.' And he ran to a table and brought four books, and said, 'These books are wisdom which a multitude in the kingdoms of the present day applaud; this book or wisdom many in France applaud; this, many in Germany; this, some in Batavia; and this, some in England.' He said further, 'If you would like to see it I will make these four books shine before your eyes;' and then the glory of his reputation shot forth and poured around, and thereupon the books flashed as with light; but this light to our eyes vanished instantly.
And then we asked, 'What are you now writing?' He replied that what he was now drawing forth from his treasures and expounding were matters of inmost wisdom, which in brief are these: (1) Whether nature is of life, or life is of nature? (2) Whether the center is of the expanse, or the expanse is of the center? (3) Concerning the center and the expanse of nature and of life.
This said he seated himself again at the table, but we walked about in his gymnasium, which was spacious. He had a candle on the table, because the diurnal light of the sun was not there, but the nocturnal light of the moon; and what surprised me, the candle appeared to be carried and to give light all about the room, but as it had not been snuffed it gave but little light. And while he was writing we saw images of various forms flitting from the table to the walls, which in that nocturnal, lunar light appeared like beautiful Indian birds; but when we opened the door, lo! in the diurnal light of the sun they appeared like birds of evening whose wings are webbed. For they were semblances of truth, which by confirmations become fallacies and which were ingeniously connected by him into a series.
After we had seen these things we went to the table, and asked him what he was writing now. He said, 'On the first problem, Whether nature is of life, or life is of nature?' And respecting this he said that he could confirm either and make it true; but as something lay hidden within which he feared, he ventured to confirm but this, 'That nature is of life, that is from life, and not that life is of nature, that is from nature.' We courteously asked him what it was that he feared which lay hidden within? He said it was that he might be called by the clergy a naturalist, and thus an atheist, and by the laity a man of unsound reason, 'since they both are either believers from a blind faith or see from the sight of those that confirm it.'
But then, with some indignation of zeal for the truth, we admonished him, saying, 'Friend, you very greatly err. Your wisdom, which is ability in writing, has led you astray, and the glory of reputation has impelled you to confirm what you do not believe. Do you not know that the human mind is capable of being elevated above things sensual, which are such as are in the thoughts from the bodily senses; and that when it is elevated it sees the things which are of life above, and the things that are of nature beneath? What is life but love and wisdom? And what is nature but the receptacle of these, whereby they work out their effects or uses? Can these be one except as principal and instrumental? Can light be one with the eye? Can sound be one with the ear? Whence come their sensations but from life, and their forms but from nature? What is the human body but an organ of life? Are not all things and every single thing therein organically formed to do whatever the love wills and the understanding thinks? Are not the organs of the body from nature, and love and thought from life? Are they not quite distinct from each other? Lift the keenness of your genius a little higher, and you will see that it is of life to be affected and to think, and that to be affected is from love and to think is from wisdom, and both are from life; for, as was said, love and wisdom are life. If you elevate your faculty of understanding yet a little higher, you will see that there is no love and wisdom unless there is somewhere an origin of it, and that the origin of it is [love itself and] 1wisdom itself, and thence life itself, and these are God, from whom is nature.'
After this we talked with him about the second problem, Whether the center is of the expanse, or the expanse is of the center? and asked him why he was discussing this. He replied, to the end that he might come to a conclusion respecting the center and the expanse of nature and of life, thus respecting the origin of the one and the other. And when we asked what his opinion was, he made similar answer as before, that he could confirm either, but that for fear of loss of reputation he should confirm that the expanse is of the center, that is, from the center, 'although I know,' he said, 'that there was something before the sun, and this everywhere in the universe, and that these things flowed together into order, thus into centers of themselves.'
But then again we addressed him from indignant zeal, and said, 'Friend, you are insane.' When he heard this he drew back his seat from the table, and looked at us timidly. And then he turned his ear, but smiling, and we continued, saying, 'What is more insane than to say the center is from the expanse? By your miter we understand the sun, and by your expanse we understand the universe, and thus that the universe came into existence without the sun? Does not the sun make nature and all things belonging to it? which are dependent solely on the heat and light proceeding from the sun by its atmospheres. Where were these before? But from whence they are we will tell in the following discussion. Are not the atmospheres and all things that are on the earth as surfaces, and the sun the center of them? What are all these without the sun? Could they subsist for one moment? What were they all then before the sun? Could they have subsisted? Is not subsistence a perpetual coming into existence? Since, therefore, the subsistence of all things of nature is from the sun, it follows that the coming into existence of them all is also from the sun. This everyone sees and acknowledges of his own observation. As the posterior exists from the prior, does it not also subsist from the prior? If the surfaces were prior and the center posterior would not the prior subsist from the posterior? But this is contrary to the laws of order. How can things posterior produce things prior? Or exteriors, interiors? Or things grosser, things purer? How then can superficies, which constitute the expanse, produce centers? Who does not see that this is against the laws of nature? We have brought forward these arguments from rational analysis to establish that the expanse exists from the center, and not the contrary, although everyone who thinks rightly sees it without these arguments. You said that the expanse flows together into the center of itself. Is it thus of chance that it flowed into so wonderful and stupendous an order so that one thing is for another, and all things and every single thing for man and his eternal life? Can nature, from any love by any wisdom, provide such things? And of men make angels? And from angels, heaven? Suppose this, and meditate on these things, and your idea of the existence of nature from nature will fall.'
After this we asked him what he had thought and what he now thought, about the third problem, Concerning the center and the expanse of nature and of life; whether he believed the center and the expanse of life to be the same as the center and expanse of nature? He said he hesitated, and that he had thought before that the interior activity of nature was life, and that from this are the love and wisdom which essentially make the life of man; and that the fire of the sun by its heat and light produces them, the atmospheres being means. But now from what he had heard about the eternal life of man he was in doubt; and this doubt swayed his mind now up and now down; when up he acknowledged a center of which he knew nothing before, and when down he saw a center which he had believed the only one; and that life is from the center of which he had not known before, and nature from the center which he had before believed to be the only one, and that each center has an expanse about itself.
To this we said, 'Well, if only he would also view the center and the expanse of nature from the center and expanse of life, and not contrariwise.' And we informed him that above the angelic heaven there is a sun which is pure love, to appearance fiery, like the sun of the world; and that from the heat which proceeds from that sun angels and men have will and love, and from the light from it they have understanding and wisdom. And that the things which are of life are called spiritual; and that those which proceed from the sun of the world are containants of life, and are called natural. Then, that the expanse of the center of life is called the spiritual world which subsists from its own sun; and that the expanse of nature is called the natural world, which subsists from its sun. Now, as spaces and times cannot be predicated of love and wisdom, but states instead, the expanse about the sun of the angelic heaven is not an extense, but is yet within the extense of the natural sun, and is with the living subjects there according to reception, and reception is according to forms.
'But then' he asked, 'from whence is the fire of the sun of the world or of nature?'
We answered, 'It is from the sun of the angelic heaven, which is not fire but Divine love, proximately proceeding from God who is Love itself.'
This, because it is marvellous, we explained in this way: 'Love in its essence is spiritual fire. Hence it is that in the Word, in its spiritual sense, fire signifies love; for which reason it is that priests in temples pray that heavenly fire may fill the hearts, by which they mean love. The fire of the altar, and the fire of the candlestick in the tabernacle with the Israelites, represented nothing else than Divine love. The heat of the blood, or vital heat of men and of animals, in general, is from no other source than from the love which makes their life. Hence it is that man is enkindled, waxes warm, and is inflamed when his love is exalted into zeal, anger, and wrath. From this fact, therefore, that spiritual heat, which is love, produces natural heat with men, even so that it kindles and inflames their faces and their limbs, one may be assured that the fire of the natural sun existed from no other source than from the fire of the spiritual sun, which is Divine love. Now, as the expanse springs from the center and not the reverse, as we have said before; and as the center of life, which is the sun of the angelic heaven, is Divine love proximately proceeding from God, who is in the midst of that sun; and as from this is the expanse of that center, which is called the spiritual world; and as from that sun came into existence the sun of the world, and from this its expanse, which is called the natural world, it is clear that the universe is created from the one God.'
After these words we departed, and he attended us beyond the area of his gymnasium, and talked with us about heaven and hell, and about the Divine auspices, from a new sagacity of his genius.
Footnotes:
1. In this Relation as found in True Christian Religion 35 are found the additional words Ipse Amor et which in the translation above have been added in brackets.
380. Adjiciam duo Memorabilia; Primum hoc. Quondam eram in stupore de ingente multitudine hominum, qui Creationem addicunt Naturae, et inde omnia quae sub Sole, et quae supra Solem sunt; dicentes ex agnitione cordis, cum vident aliquid, "annon hoc naturae est;" et cum interrogantur, quare dicunt illa naturae esse, et cur non Dei, cum tamen aliquoties cum communione dicunt, quod Deus creaverit Naturam, et inde possunt tam aeque dicere, quod illa, quae vident, Dei sint, quam quod naturae sint, respondent 1sono interno paene tacito, "quid Deus nisi Natura:" apparent illi omnes ex persuasione de Creatione universi ex natura, et ex insania illa sicut ex sapientia, gloriosi, adeo ut aspiciant omnes qui agnoscunt Creationem Universi a Deo, sicut formicas, quae repunt humi et terunt stratam viam, et quosdam sicut papiliones qui in aere volant; vocantes illorum dogmata somnia, quia vident quae non vident, dicentes, quis vidit Deum, et quis non videt naturam.
[2] Quando in stupore de multitudine talium eram, adstitit mihi a latere Angelus, et dixit mihi, "quid meditaris," et respondi, "de multitudine talium, qui credunt, quod Natura creaverit Universum;" et dixit mihi Angelus, "totum Infernum ex talibus est, et vocantur ibi satanae et diaboli, satanae qui confirmaverunt se pro Natura, et inde negaverunt Deum, diaboli qui facinorose vixerunt, et sic e cordibus omnem agnitionem Dei rejecerunt; sed deducam te ad Gymnasia, quae in plaga meridionali occidentali sunt, ubi tales, et nondum in inferno sunt:" et prehendit me manu, et deduxit; et vidi domunculas, in quibus gymnasia, et in medio illarum unam, quae erat sicut Praetorium reliquarum; hoc constructum erat ex lapidibus piceis, quibus superinductae 2erant lamellae sicut vitreae ex auro et argento quasi micantes, quales sunt quae vocantur Glacies Mariae, et hic et ibi erant interspersa conchilia similiter nitentia.
[3] Illuc accessimus et pulsavimus, et mox aliquis aperuit januam, et dixit, "beneventote;" et cucurrit ad mensam, et apportavit quatuor Libros, et dixit, "hi Libri sunt Sapientia, cui multitudo Regnorum hodie adplaudit; huic Libro seu sapientiae applaudunt multi in Gallia, huic multi in Germania, huic aliqui in Batavia, et huic aliqui in Britannia:" porro dixit, "si vultis videre, faciam ut hi quatuor Libri coram oculis vestris luceant;" et tunc gloriam famae suae effudit et circumfudit, et Libri mox sicut ex luce fulserunt; sed haec lux coram oculis nostris illico evanuit: et tunc quaesivimus, "quid nunc scribis," et respondit, quod nunc illa, quae intimae sapientiae sunt, e thesauris suis educat et expromat, quae in compendio sunt haec.
I. Num Natura sit Vitae, vel num Vita sit Naturae.
II. Num Centrum sit Expansi, vel num Expansum sit Centri.
III. De Centro et Expanso Naturae et Vitae.
[4] His dictis reposuit se super solio ad mensam; nos vero in Gymnasio ejus, quod erat spatiosum, ambulavimus: ille super Mensa habebat candelam, quia non lux diurna solaris ibi erat, sed lux nocturna lunaris; et quod miratus sum, candela visa est circum circa ibi ferri, et illuminare; at quia illa non erat emuncta, illuminabat parum; et cum scripsit, vidimus imagines in variis formis e mensa in parietes volantes, quae in nocturna illa luce lunari apparebant sicut volucres pulchrae Indicae; sed cum aperuimus januam, ecce illae in luce diurna solari apparebant sicut aves vesperae, quibus alae retiformes sunt; erant enim verosimilitudines, quae per confirmationes factae sunt fallaciae, quae ingeniose in series ab illo erant connexae.
[5] Postquam haec vidimus, accessimus ad mensam, et quaesivimus illum, quid nunc scribit; dixit "de Primo illo, Num Natura sit Vitae, vel num Vita sit Naturae;" et de hoc inquiit, quod possit utrumque confirmare, et facere ut sit verum; sed quia intus latet aliquod reconditum, quod timet, non ausit confirmare nisi hoc, quod Natura sit Vitae, hoc est, ex Vita, non autem quod Vita sit Naturae, hoc est, ex Natura; quaesivimus blande, quid est quod intus latet reconditum quod timet; respondit, quod sit quod vocari possit Naturalista, et sic Atheus ex Clericis, et 3quod vir non sanae rationis a Laicis, quoniam hi et illi sunt vel credentes ex caeca fide, vel videntes ex visu confirmantium illam.
[6] Sed tunc ex quadam indignatione Zeli pro veritate alloquuti sumus illum, dicentes, "amice, valde falleris; sapientia tua, quae est ingeniositas scribendi, seduxit te, et gloria famae induxit te ad confirmandum quod non credis; nostine quod Mens humana sit elevabilis supra sensualia, quae sunt quae in cogitationibus sunt ex sensibus corporis, et quod cum elevatur videat illa quae vitae sunt supra, et illa quae Naturae sunt 4infra; quid vita aliud quam amor et sapientia, et quid natura aliud quam illorum receptaculum, per quod operentur suos effectus seu usus; num haec possunt unum esse, quam sicut principale et instrumentale; num potest lux unum esse cum oculo, num sonus cum aure; unde horum sensus nisi ex vita, et illorum formae nisi ex natura: quid Corpus humanum, nisi quam Organum vitae; annon omnia et singula ibi organice formata sunt ad producendum illa quae amor vult ac intellectus cogitat; suntne organa corporis ex natura, ac amor et cogitatio ex vita; suntne illa inter se prorsus distincta. Eleva aciem ingenii adhuc parum altius, et videbis, quod vitae sit affici et cogitare, et quod affici sit ex amore, et cogitare ex sapientia, ac utrumque ex vita, nam, ut dictum est, amor et sapientia sunt vita: si adhuc elevas facultatem intelligendi parum altius, videbis, quod non detur Amor et Sapientia, nisi alicubi sit ejus Origo, et quod Origo ejus sit [Ipse Amor et] 5Ipsa Sapientia, et inde Ipsa Vita, et haec sunt Deus a quo Natura."
[7] Postea loquuti sumus cum illo de Altero, Num Centrum sit Expansi, vel num Expansum sit Centri; et quaesivimus, cur hoc ventilat; 6respondit, propter finem ut concludat de Centro et Expanso Naturae et Vitae, ita de origine unius et alterius; et cum interrogavimus, quae ejus mens, respondit de his similiter ut prius, quod utrumque possit confirmare, sed quod ex timore jacturae 7famae confirmet, quod Expansum sit Centri, hoc est, a Centro; "tametsi scio quod Ante Solem fuerit aliquid, et hoc ubivis in Universo, et quod haec in ordinem a se confluxerint, ita in Centra."
[8] Sed tunc iterum alloquuti sumus illum ex Zelo indignante, et diximus, "amice, insanis;" et cum hoc audivit, retraxit solium a mensa, et timide nos aspexit, et tunc attendit aurem, sed ridens; at continuavimus dicendo, "quid insanius est dicere, quam quod Centrum sit ab Expanso; per Centrum tuum intelligimus Solem, et per Expansum tuum intelligimus Universum, et sic quod universum exstiterit absque Sole; facitne Sol Naturam et omnes ejus proprietates, quae unice dependent a calore et luce procedentibus a Sole per athmosphaeras; ubinam haec prius; sed unde haec, in sequente ventilatione dicemus; suntne athmosphaerae, et omnia quae super tellure, sicut superficies, et Sol illorum Centrum; quid illa omnia absque Sole; num possint uno momento subsistere; inde quid illa omnia ante Solem; num potuerint subsistere; estne subsistentia perpetua existentia; cum itaque omnium naturae subsistentia est e Sole, sequitur quod etiam omnium existentia; hoc videt et ex autopsia agnoscit unusquisque:
[9] annon posterius sicut existit etiam subsistit ex priori; si superficies foret prius, et centrum posterius, annon prius subsisteret ex posteriori, quod tamen est contra leges ordinis: quomodo possunt posteriora producere priora, aut exteriora interiora, aut crassiora puriora; inde quomodo superficies quae faciunt expansum possunt producere centra; quis non videt, quod hoc sit contra naturae leges. Adduximus haec argumenta ex analysi rationis, ad confirmandum, quod Expansum existat ex Centro, et non vicissim, tametsi unusquisque, qui juste cogitat, absque his argumentis hoc videt. Dixisti, quod Expansum confluxerit in Centrum a se; num sic fortuito in tam mirabilem et stupendum ordinem, ut unum sit propter alterum, et omnia et singula propter hominem, et ejus vitam aeternam; num natura potest ex aliquo amore per aliquam sapientiam providere talia, et num potest ex hominibus facere Angelos, et ex Angelis Coelum; pone haec et cogita, et cadet tua idea de existentia naturae a natura."
[10] Post haec quaesivimus illum, quid cogitaverat, et quid nunc cogitat de Tertio, De Centro et Expanso Naturae et Vitae; num credat quod Centrum et Expansum Vitae sit idem cum Centro et Expanso Naturae; dixit quod haereat, et quod prius cogitaverit, quod interior activitas naturae sit vita; et quod Amor et Sapientia, quae essentialiter faciunt hominis vitam, sint inde; et quod ignis Solis per calorem et lucem, mediis athmosphaeris, producat 8illa; at quod nunc ex auditis de Hominum vita aeterna, in ambiguo sit, et quod hoc ambiguum ferat mentem jam sursum jam deorsum, et cum sursum, agnoscat Centrum de quo non prius aliquid noverat, et cum deorsum, videat Centrum quod credidit unicum; et quod Vita sit ex Centro, de quo non prius aliquid sciverat, et quod Natura sit ex Centro, quod prius credidit unicum esse; et quod utrumque Centrum habeat Expansum circum se.
[11] Ad haec diximus, Bene, modo etiam velit ex Centro et Expanso vitae spectare Centrum et Expansum naturae, et non vice versa: et instruximus illum, quod supra Coelum Angelicum sit Sol qui est purus Amor, ad apparentiam igneus sicut Sol Mundi, et quod ex calore qui procedit ex illo Sole, sit Angelis et hominibus Voluntas et Amor, et quod ex luce inde sit illis Intellectus et Sapientia; et quod illa quae vitae sunt dicantur Spiritualia, et quod illa quae ex Sole Mundi procedunt, sint continentia vitae, et dicantur Naturalia; tum quod Expansum Centri 9Vitae dicatur Mundus Spiritualis, qui ex suo Sole subsistit, et quod Expansum Naturae dicatur Mundus naturalis, qui ex suo Sole subsistit. Nunc quia de Amore et Sapientia non praedicari possunt Spatia et Tempora, sed pro illis Status, quod Expansum circum Solem Coeli Angelici, non sit extensum, sed usque in Extenso Solis naturalis, et apud subjecta viva ibi secundum receptiones, et receptiones secundum formas.
[12] Sed tunc quaesivit unde ignis Solis mundi seu naturae; respondebamus, quod sit ex Sole Coeli Angelici, qui non est ignis, sed Divinus Amor proxime procedens a Deo, qui est Ipse Amor: hoc quia miratus est, demonstravimus ita; "Amor in sua essentia est spiritualis ignis; inde est, quod ignis in Verbo in spirituali ejus sensu, significet amorem; unde orant in Templis Sacerdotes, ut Ignis coelestis impleat corda, per quem intelligunt amorem; Ignis Altaris, et Ignis Candelabri in Tabernaculo apud Israelitas, non aliud quam Divinum Amorem repraesentavit; Calor sanguinis, seu Calor vitalis hominum, et in genere Animalium, non aliunde est quam ex amore, qui facit vitam illorum; inde est, quod homo incendatur, incalescat 10et inflammetur, dum amor ejus exaltatur in zelum, iram et excandescentiam; quare ex eo quod Calor spiritualis, qui est Amor, producat calorem naturalem apud homines, usque ut accendat et inflammet illorum facies et artus, constare potest quod Ignis Solis naturalis non aliunde exstiterit quam ex Igne Solis spiritualis, qui est Divinus Amor.
[13] Nunc quia Expansum oritur ex Centro, et non vicissim, ut supra diximus, et Centrum Vitae, quod est Sol Coeli Angelici, est Divinus Amor proxime 11procedens a Deo, Qui in medio illius Solis est; et quia inde est Expansum illius Centri, quod vocatur Mundus spiritualis; et quia ex illo Sole exstiterat Sol Mundi, et ex hoc Expansum ejus, quod vocatur Mundus naturalis, patet, quod Universum a Deo uno creatum sit." Post haec abivimus, et ille comitatus est nos extra Aream sui Gymnasii, et loquutus est cum nobis de Coelo et Inferno, et de Divino auspicio, ex nova ingenii sagacitate.
Footnotes:
1. Prima editio: sint; sed respondent (sic etiam Vera Christiana Religio 35[1])
2. Prima editio: superindnctae
3. Prima editio:
4. Prima editio: sunt,
5. Sic Vera Christiana Religio 35[6].
6. Prima editio: ventilit,
7. Prima editio: jucturae
8. Prima editio: producant
9. Prima editio: Cenrri
10. Prima editio: in calescat
11. Prima editio: praxime