351. (ii) The truths of faith are arranged into groupings, and thus, so to speak, into bundles, a fact that up to the present has been unknown. The reason for this ignorance is that the spiritual truths, out of which the whole of the Word is woven, have been rendered invisible, because of the mystical and enigmatic faith which plays the leading role in present-day theology. As a result, they have sunk into the ground like silos.
It needs to be explained what is meant by groupings and bundles. The first chapter of this book, dealing with God the Creator, is divided into grouped topics, the first of which is on the oneness of God; the second is on the being of God, that is, Jehovah; the third on the infinity of God; the fourth on the essence of God, which is Divine love and Divine wisdom; the fifth on the omnipotence of God; and the sixth on creation. The separate points in each make up the grouping; they tie together the contents, as it were into handfuls. These groupings in common and in particular, so both taken all together and individually, contain truths, which in proportion to their volume and coherence raise the level of faith and bring it to perfection.
[2] If anyone is unaware that the human mind is organised, or is a spiritual organism terminating in a natural organism, in which and controlled by which the mind operates on its ideas or thinks, he cannot help holding the opinion that perceptions, thoughts and ideas are merely rays and variations of light falling upon the head and presenting forms which he sees and acknowledges as reasons. But this is nonsense, for everyone knows that the head is filled with brains, the brains are organised, and the mind lives in them, and its ideas are fixed and remain in it as they are received and proved. So the question is, what sort of organisation is there? The answer is that everything is arranged into groupings, as it were into bundles, and this is how the truths that make up faith are arranged in the human mind. This fact can be illustrated by the following considerations.
[3] The brain consists of two substances, one glandular, called the cortical and grey matter; the other is fibrillary and is called the medullary substance. The first substance, the glandular one, is arranged in clusters like grapes on a vine; these clusters are its groupings. The second substance, called medullary, is composed of continuous bundles of fibres projecting from the glands of the first substance. These bundles are its groupings. All the nerves, which project from those and lead down into the body to perform various functions, are simply handfuls and bundles of fibres; so too are all the muscles, and generally speaking all the viscera and organs of the body. Both classes are of such a nature because they correspond to the groupings in which the mind is organised.
[4] Moreover throughout Nature there is nothing which is not composed of bunches to form groupings. Every tree, every bush, plant and vegetable, indeed every ear of corn or blade of grass is both generally and in detail so constructed. The universal cause of this is that this is the way Divine truths are structured; for we read that all things were created by the Word, that is, by Divine truth, and that the world too was made by the Word (John 1:1ff). These facts can allow us to see that, if the human mind did not contain such an orderly arrangement of substances, human beings would not possess any powers of analytical reasoning. Everyone has such powers in proportion to the orderly arrangement of his mind, and so in proportion to the volume of truths cohering as it were in a bundle; and this arrangement depends upon his free use of his reason.
