Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 346
45
In Respect to His Interiors
Every Man Is a Spirit
432. Whoever duly considers the subject can see that as the
body is material it is not the body that thinks, but the soul,
which is spiritual. The soul of man, upon the immortality of
which many have written, is his spirit, for this as to everything
belonging to it is immortal. This also is what thinks in the
body, for it is spiritual, and what is spiritual receives what is
spiritual and lives spiritually, which is to think and to will.
Therefore, all rational life that appears in the body belongs to
the soul, and nothing of it to the body; for the body, as just
said, is material, and the material, which is the property of the
body, is added to and apparently almost joined to the spirit, in
order that the spirit of man may be able to live and perform
uses in the natural world, all things of which are material and
in themselves devoid of life. And as it is the spiritual only that
lives and not the material, it can be seen that whatever lives in
man is his spirit, and that the body merely serves it, just as
what is instrumental serves a moving living force. An
instrument is said indeed to act, to move, or to strike; but to
believe that these are acts of the instrument, and not of him
who acts, moves, or strikes by means of the instrument, is a
fallacy.
433. As everything in the body that lives, and that acts and
feels from that life, belongs exclusively to the spirit, and
nothing of it to the body, it follows that the spirit is the man
himself; or what is the same thing, that a man viewed in