Divine Love and Wisdom (Rogers) n. 373

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

373. Since the will and intellect are the recipient vessels of love and wisdom, therefore the two are organic forms, or forms organized of the purest substances. For in order to be recipient vessels, they must be of such a character. It does not matter that their organization is not evident to the eye. It is too deeply hidden for visual sight, even when amplified by the use of microscopes. The tiniest insects are also too small to be seen, and yet they have in them sense organs and motor organs, since they have senses and walk and fly. They also have brains, hearts, pulmonary passages, and viscera, as some keen observers have discovered from their anatomy seen through microscopes. When little insects are themselves not visible to the eye, and still less the little organs of which they are composed, and yet no one denies that they are organized down to the least particulars in them, how then can it be said that the two recipient vessels of love and wisdom called will and intellect are not organic forms? [2] How can love and wisdom which are life from the Lord operate into a nonrecipient, or into something which has no substantial existence? How else can thought be retained, or someone speak from thought if it is not retained? Is not the brain where thought exists full, and everything in it organized? The organic forms themselves there are visible even to the naked eye, and the vessels of the will and intellect in their first elements plainly so in the gray matter, where little gland-like constituents are clearly seen (concerning which, see no. 366 above). Please do not think of these things as existing in a vacuum. A vacuum is nothingness, and in nothing nothing happens, and from nothing nothing springs. (Regarding the notion of a vacuum, see no. 82 above.)


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church