PART ONE

Chapter IX

ORIGIN OF THE UMAN FORM,
AND ITS DERIVATATION FROM THAT ORIGIN

1.    Origin from the Lord.

E. 1119²:

That which proceeds from the Lord is in His semblance, in human form.  (Cp. Inv. 48)

A. 3839:

Divine order when represented in form appears as a man:  


Compare: The devil, from phantacy appearing as man.

W. 285e:

The human form is inmostly present within everything of creation.

D. Wis. iii,4²:

"Therefore there can be no extension into any other than the human form."  (Organic fibres called "rays" of wisdom from love.)

D. 1708-1714 - general treatment:

As the soul inflows into the body, so the Lord into the Grand Man.  The Lord gives form to the bodies of men, and this form is but little exernally modified by angels, spirits, and men.
       Why so, D. 1712.

D. 4064f:

The existence and subsistance of the body are from the Grand Man.  The necessity of this.  See D. 3972, 3148.

Ath.Cr. 26, 27, 177, 178:

Shows that the human form is from the proceeding Divine which goes forth from every single thing of the Lord's Body, interior and exterior.  AFFECTION clothes itself everywhere with a body.  The clothing of form is an essential or atmosphere, and goes on everywhere in the atmosphere; an arcanum.

2.    The Soul.

Contains the Divine Celestial and the Divine Spiritual, A. 1894.  Without the Divine Celestial and the Divine Spiritual, nothing human is with man; but a certain animality such as is with beasts.

Note:  The purpose of life is to appropriate this gift into the mind.

Through the Inmost or Highest - the Human Internal - man is man.  H. 39;  A. 1999³.

M. 220:

The inmost of man is, in essence, spiritual.  The Soul is a spiritual substance which has not extension but impletion, and from which there is no taking out of a part but a production of the whole without any loss of it - (Includes the souls of animals in this efinition).
       The soul has implanted an effort to propagate itself.
                       Male soul  -  truth
                       Female soul  -  intel. good

D. 241:

On the spiritual form of the interiors, that it can never be overcome, but resists every attack and always remains the firmer.
                       Cp. De Infinito
                              De Anima

M. 315:

A discussion in the spiritual world about the nature of the soul.

M. 315¹¹:

The soul is the man himself, because it is the inmost man.

Its form is the human form, fully and perfectly; yet it is from Gopd, and thus the dwelling-place of God with man.

The soul is the inmost and subtlest essence of the man.  Essence is nothing without form.

Influc 8:

The Soul, being a higher spiritual substance, receives influx from God immediately.  (Cp. A. 7270, as to the mediations used.)

The human mind, being a lower spiritual substance, receives influx from God mediately through the spiritual world.* (Cp. T. 8)

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*  The body, being composed of the substances of nature which are called matters, receives influx from God mediately by the natural world. (Influx 8)

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Whatever flows from God flows proximately into man's soul, and by the soul into the rational mind, and by this into the organs of the body.  (Cp. Gen. 2:7. Jn 5:26, Lord's soul.)

Inlux 11:

The soul is not "a spark of life"; the danger of this falsity, described.

A. 10125^2:

Everything of the body is produced from the soul, and thus to a resemblance of it, that the soul may be in a state adapted and accommodated to the functions in the ultimate of order.

T. 166:

Man begins from the soul, which is in its essence in the seed.  This not only initiates, but produces, in their order, those things which are in the body, and afterwards those things which proceed from these two, soul and body, together - which are called operations.  Wherefore, from the production of one from another, and thence the insertion and conjunction, it is manifest that these three are of one essence which are called three essentials.

T. 922, 103:

The soul is from the father; the body is from the mother.

(The mother's soul imposes its form on the body and mind from below; it wills to clothe and nourish and protect.)

A. 7270⁴:

There is only one substance (in the univese) and the rest are formations from it.  (Cp. The Soul in the body.)  (Cp. The doctrine of the "simple fibre".)

3.    Formation of the Body.

A. 6465:

All things both in man and in nature come forth (existant) by means of successive formations, thus interior things by means of formations from prior things ...  - Discrete Degrees.

D. Love xi:

Discrete Degrees:

Are the degrees of the formation of one thing from another, thus from the first or highest to the ultimate or lowest where formation ceases...

Without descrete degrees a form would not possess that interior quality which constitutes the cause or soul; and without continuous degrees it would have no extension or appearance (i. e., either spiritual or natural).

A. 8603²:

The soul, or inmost form in the seed, must be opened successively before it can be expanded into forms like the parents.

This refers to planda; but the principle is shown that interiors do not cohere with  exteriors by continuity, but are distinct, and conjoined by extensions like fibres, by which there are communications.  These fibres serve for transitions.

E. 1208³:

Animals:  The forms of the animal kingdom are all according to the flux of spiritual substances and forces - (which flux is the human form...)

In everything spiritual there are three forces: - of Acting; of Creating; and of Forming (E. 1209).  (See the whole series in E. 1196-1215.)

Animals: the two higher degrees are lacking, E. 1224; see D.L.W.

 4.    Adjunction of the Soul to the Body.

W. 340:

It is the spiritual (which organizes from the Sun of heaven) that produces forms of plants and animals and packs them with matters from the earth in order that they may be fixed and constant.
       (Cp. Sir Hans Sloan's bird, w. 344)

E. 1218e:

The spiritual is the real man.  "The dead part that is added does not contribute reality but diminished it."  Why an "outer garment from the sun os the world is added."

M. 315¹¹:

Discussion on "What is the Soul:?"
Answer:  The inmopst of all the forms of the body.

Influx 12:

How closely the soul is conjoined with the body.  Described.

H. 433:

All that which lives in the body[tissurs is of the spirit, and it all rises at death.  H. 434.

M. 310:

Interiorly viewed, the badies of men are the forms of their minds exteriorly oganized.

The form of the mind is also interiorly the form of the body.

The mind determines the interior form of the body. (Cp. Heredity of the Lord, T. 103, etc.

D. Wis. vii,4:

Man's Spiritual is joined to his Natural, or, the Substantial of his spirit to the Material of his body, with such adaptations and so intimately that there is not a fibril, thread, or minutest part of them where the human spirit is not in unior with the corporeal human...
       (Death treated of.)

Second Index on Marriage, s.v. INFLUX:

(No influx from the mind into the body except in appearance, for the mind is everywhere within the body, being a perfect man.

The spirit acts instantaneously, not successively, for the spiritual is not in places...)

A. 4659:

The spirit of man is universally in the body and is its purer substance.  The body is the material part which is everywhere annexed to it, adapted to the world in which it then is.

D. Wis vii,2e:

The Spiritual accompanies every minute part (of the viscera and organs of man) from ultimates to inmosts, and therefore also all the minute structures and fibers of the heart and lungs.  ...When therefore the connection between man's body and spirit is dissolved, the spirit possesses a form similar to that which the man had before:  ...heart, lungs, senses, motions... "How mistaken therefore are those who assign a particular place for the soul, whether in the brain or the heart..."  (Death: is the separation of the spiritual substances from the material.)

Coro. 11:

The body which he carried about in the world - only a covering.

?            :  The body is only obedience.\

What substances enter into man's formation:

T. 38³:

Good forms itself through truths...  The human mind is organized interiorly from spiritual substances, exteriorly from natural substances, and finally from material things.

Cp. W. 257:

Two substances of the natural mind.

Notice:  The finest substances of nature are not called "material" but "natural".
Cp. Elementals and Finites (?)

 5.    The Medium of Formation:

D. Love xxi:

Heat is said to be the medium of formation - chick in the egg;  embryo in the womb; etc.

What part heat from the natural sun takes in the formation: it opens the cuticles so that internal heat can flow into ultimates from within.

Spritiual animal (i. e. living) forms are produced from Divine love by spiritual heat.

6.    Use Commands the Form:

A. 4223:

Use exists before the forms or organs.

In the Soul;  D. 357A.

A. 4926:

Use is prior to the members or organs and forms them and adapts them to itself.

A. 4249²:

The organ is according to the form of its fibers, consequently so is its operation.

7.    The Primitive Form of Man:

A. 3633:

All spirits and angels appear as men because their inmost conspires to such a form; just as the Primitive of man, which is from the soul of the parent, endeavors toward the formation of the whole man in the ovum and worb, although this primitive is not in the form of the body but in another most perfe form known to the Lord alone. ... (In heaven all are centers of influxes from all in the Grand Man which makes all the human into the image of heaven.)

W. 388:

The first web of the human form, from its beginnings in the brain and continued into the body through the nerves, is the form into which man comes after death - a man in all perfection.

(The spiritual is the real form; the materiall is superinduced.   A fixed containant is retained to eternity.)

W. 432 (Last number of D. L. W.)

Man's primitive is made up of spiritual substance - not visible by natural light (Cp. A. 4224).

Discuss: Former apparent optimism of Swedenborg about seeing even "spiritual" things by the microscope. (Psychologica n. 75)

W. 432 (cont.)

An error to think that man is in his fulness from the first - that is the rudiment and is afterwards perfected by growth.

See "Seven Seals of Science" by L. Meyer, as to opinions of Swedenborg's contemporaries about the seed and the egg.

Note:  Division of egg, yet formation of complete offspring.

A type of man's primitive form was presented before Swedenborg by the angels.

Tiny image of the Brain
Lines of Face in front
No Appendages
     Upper convex part:
        Contiguous globules
       3 degrees of sizes
       Transparent membrane



Flat frontal part:
   Delineation of a "face"
Convex part in two hemispheres:
    Right and Left
    Right = Love
    Left = Wisdom
    Interweavings of sides

Inner Degrees: in order and form of heaven.
Outer Degrees: In opposition. (Cp. D. 2487f.)
Evils of heredity thus reside in the extremes.
Unless the highter degrees are opened, no corruption is put away from the lower. (Cp. 3 260, 270, 263, 289)

Thus in the Primitive there is a continual effort toward the human form, which it also gradually assumes.

D. Wis. ii,1:

The head is formed first in the egg.

D. Wis ii,2:

From the primitive forms in the brain are sent forth fibres to the sensories, motor organs, and viscera, which are simply structures formed of fibres and nerves sent forth from each brain and the spinal marrow.  The bloodvessels, from which also networks are formed, are themselves from fibres from the brain.

Cineritious substance: fibres from the cortical glands.  These are the initial forms from which all parts of the body are brought forth and produced.

D. Wis. ii,3:

The natural thus produced corresponds to the spiritual which was its origin.

The spiritual adapts itself to use, ...clothing it with provided media...

In the Spiritual World, what is Substantial takes the place of the natural.  Such forms are all the things in man.

D. Wis. iii,2:

The Divine is in these two reciptacles of life as a formative principle, and by these it is in their extensions, but always spiritually in their uses, not materially.  (Described)

Nothing in Nature exists except from seed, and grows except by heat.

The Primary Rudiment of man (the seed) is a twin receptacle of life...

D. Wis. iii,3:

        Hence the duality in the body.

D.  iii,4

The receptacles are not like little tubes, but like the brain.

(Description like w. 432)

Three degrees of compact bodies, or spherules.

Nob fibres.

Tow higher degrees are the "habitations of the Lord".

Lowest NATURAL is corrupted as to order.  Hereditary evils reside therein.

Beasts:    Have not the two higher degrees.  The Natural, in clean beasts, is not bent contrary to the order of the universal flux, trhey being unable to pervert their affections.

D. Wis. iii,5,6:

The life of the embryo is not "his", but the Lord's; and the embryo is not conscious of it.

D. Wis. iv:

Analogy to Regeneration, in which man receives a new body for his spirit.
(The spiritual body is formed in the material body - T. 583)

D. Wis. v²:

The will and understanding of man are actually built into the three (spiritual) degrees of the substances here spoken of.  The will and understanding are substantial subjects, being interiorly in the substances that form the cortex of the brain and the medullary and nervous substances of the body.

D. Wis v^e:

Mental functions and their ultimates in the rain; defined.

Inv. 14:

The brain the first of the body.

W. 370:

"It is to be observed that the forms themselves of the members, organs, and viscera in man, as to their woof and tissue, are from fibres arising from their first principles in the brains; but they are fixed by such substances and matters as there are in earths, and from earths in air and ether; which is effected by means of the blood.  Wherefore in order that all things of the body may preserve their formation, and thus be permanent in their funtions, man requires to be nourished by material food, and to be continually renewed."

A. 4041:

The brain is formed according to the fluxions of heaven.

Its invisible interiors are formed according to the interior forms of heaven.

Man is created according to the form of three heavens.

D. 3148:

The human body is formed, through the brain, from the Grand Man of heaven.

        On FORMATION   by the "simple fibre", see Rat. Psych.

8.    Degrees of the Soul.

Incomplete notes:  See concerning references s. v. Soul.

A.    Bestial Soul - vs. Human

Adv. 919:

Man has a soul purely spiritual and super-celestial;

Brutes a soul which is lower than heaven and it partakes of what is spiritual and natural.

E. 1199:

The animal soul is described as natural affection.  See E. 1207, 1212, 1201, D. Love x³.

Cp. Formative substance of man and beasts, in E. A. K. and in CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY.

B.    Degrees of vital essences in man:

Adv. 88, 643, 649, 919, 927; (and see 653, 613, 917, 923).

D. 2756f, 2794, 2837.

E. 750², 313^14.

End Chapter IX