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Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #186

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186. The second experience.

Once I turned over in my mind the question in what part of the human mind theology is stored. I thought at first that since theology is spiritual and celestial, it must be at the highest level; for the human mind is divided into three levels, like a house with three storeys, or like the dwellings of the angels in three heavens.

Then an angel visited me and said: 'With those who love truth because it is truth, theology reaches the highest level, since that is where their heaven is, and they enjoy the same light as angels. Ethics, however, considered and perceived theoretically are located at the second level, because they communicate with spiritual matters; political affairs lie beneath these at the first level. Facts, however, which are of many kinds and can be classified into genera and species, constitute the door to the higher regions. Those in whom spiritual, ethical, political and factual matters are subordinated to one another in this way have their thoughts and actions controlled by righteousness and judgment. The reason is that the light of truth, which is also the light of heaven, shines down from the highest level on those beneath, just as sunlight passing through the ethers, and so eventually the air, gives light to enable men, animals and fish to see.

[2] 'The case is different, however, with theology in those who do not love truth because it is truth, but only because it enhances their own reputation. With these people theology resides at the lowest level, where factual knowledge is stored; in some cases it becomes mixed with these, in others they cannot mix. Political matters lie beneath these at the same level, and ethics beneath these, since in these cases the two higher levels are not open on the right-hand side. These people therefore do not have any power of inward judgment, nor any affection for righteousness, but only ingenuity. This allows them to talk on any subject as if they were intelligent, and to adduce what appear to be rational proofs of any proposition which comes up. But the objects of their reason, which are what they chiefly love, are false, because they are inseparable from the fallacies of the senses. This explains why there are so many people in the world who can no more see the truths of doctrine to be drawn from the Word, than those born blind; and when they hear them, they hold their noses to prevent their smell from assailing them and causing nausea. But when faced with falsities, they open every sense-organ and suck them in as whales do water.'

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #416

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416. Afterwards, seeing me close by, the two angels said with respect to me to the spirits standing around, "We know that this man has written about God and nature. Let us hear what he has to say."

So they came over and asked me to read to them what I had written about God and nature; and I read therefore the following: 1

People who believe that the Divine operates in every single thing of nature, can, from the many things which they see in nature, confirm themselves on the side of the Divine, just as well as and even more than those who confirm themselves on the side of nature. For people who confirm themselves on the side of the Divine pay heed to the marvels which they see in the propagations of both plants and animals.

In the propagations of plants, they note how a tiny seed cast into the ground produces a root, by means of the root a stem, and then in succession branches, leaves, flowers and fruits, culminating in new seeds - altogether as though the seed knew the order of progression or the process by which to renew itself. What rational person can suppose that the sun, which is nothing but fire, has this knowledge? Or that it can impart to its heat and its light the power to produce such effects, and in those effects can create marvels and intend a useful result?

Any person having an elevated rational faculty, on seeing and considering these wonders, cannot but think that they issue from one who possesses infinite wisdom, thus from God.

People who acknowledge the Divine also see and think this; but people who do not acknowledge the Divine do not see and think it, because they do not want to. Therefore they allow their rational faculty to descend into their sensual self, which draws all its ideas from the light in which the bodily senses are, and which defends the fallacies of these, saying, "Do you not see the sun accomplishing these effects by its heat and its light? What is something that you do not see? Is it anything?"

[2] People who confirm themselves on the side of the Divine pay heed to the marvels which they see in the propagations of animals - to mention here only those in eggs, as that in them lies the embryo in its seed or inception, with everything it requires to the time it hatches, and with everything that develops after it hatches until it becomes a bird or flying thing in the form of its parent. Also that if one gives attention to the form, it is such that, if one thinks deeply, one cannot help but come into a state of amazement - seeing, for example, that in the smallest of these creatures as in the largest, indeed in the invisible as in the visible (i.e., in tiny insects as in large birds or animals), there are sensory organs which serve for sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch; also motor organs, which are muscles, for they fly and walk; as well as viscera surrounding hearts and lungs, which are actuated by brains. That even lowly insects possess such component parts is known from their anatomy as described by certain investigators, most notably by Swammerdam 2 in his Biblia Naturae 3 .

[3] People who attribute all things to nature see these wonders, indeed, but they think only that they exist, and say that nature produces them. They say this because they have turned their mind away from thinking about the Divine; and when people who have turned away from thinking about the Divine see wonders in nature, they are unable to think rationally, still less spiritually, but think instead in sensual and material terms. They then think within the confines of nature from the standpoint of nature and not above it, in the way that those do who are in hell. They differ from animals only in their having the power of rationality, that is, in their being able to understand and so think otherwise if they will.

[4] People who have turned away from thinking about the Divine when they see wonders in nature, and as a result become sense-oriented, do not consider that the sight of the eye is so crude that it sees a number of tiny insects as a single, indistinct mass, and yet that each of them is organically formed to be capable of sensation and movement, thus that they have been endowed with fibers and vessels, including little hearts, air passages, viscera and brains; that these have been woven together out of the finest elements in nature; and that these structures correspond to some activity of life, by which even the least of these are individually actuated.

Since the sight of the eye is so crude that a number of such creatures, each with countless components in it, looks to it like a small, indistinct mass, and yet people who are sense-oriented think and judge in accordance with that sight, it is apparent how obtuse their minds have become, and thus in what darkness they are in respect to spiritual matters.

Footnotes:

1. From Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 351-357, 350.

2. Jan Swammerdam, 1637-1680, Dutch anatomist and entomologist.

3. Published posthumously under Dutch and Latin titles, Bybel der Natuure; of, Historie der insecten.../Biblia Naturae; sive Historia Insectorum... (A Book of Nature; or, History of Insects...), with text in Latin and Dutch in parallel columns, Leyden, 1737 (vol. 1), 1738 (vol. 2).

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

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