Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 348
that is added to the spirit to enable it to perform its functions
in the natural and material world is not the man, but only an
instrument of his spirit. But evidences from experience are
preferable, because there are many that fail to comprehend
rational deductions; and those that have established themselves
in the opposite view turn such deductions into grounds of
doubt by means of reasonings from the fallacies of the senses.
Those that have established themselves in the opposite view are
accustomed to think that beasts likewise have life and
sensations and thus have a spiritual part, the same as man has,
and yet that part dies with the body. But the spiritual of beasts
is not the same as the spiritual of man is; for man has what
beasts have not, an inmost, into which the Divine flows,
raising man up to itself, and thereby conjoining man to itself.
Because of this, man, in contrast with beasts, has the ability to
think about God and about the Divine things of heaven and
the church, and to love God from these and in these, and thus
be conjoined to him; and whatever can be conjoined to the
Divine cannot be dissipated, but whatever cannot be conjoined
is dissipated. The inmost that man has, in contrast with beasts,
has been treated of above (n. 39), and what was there said will
here be repeated, since it is important to have the fallacies
dispelled that have been engendered in the minds of many who
from lack of knowledge and trained intellect are unable to form
rational conclusions on the subject. The words are these:
I will mention a certain arcanum respecting the angels of the
three heavens, which has not hitherto come into anyone’s mind,
because degrees have not been understood. In every angel and in
every man there is an inmost or highest degree, or an inmost or
highest something, into which the Divine of the Lord first or most
directly flows, and from which it disposes the other interiors in
him that succeed in accordance with the degrees of order. This
inmost or highest degree may be called the entrance of the Lord to
the angel or man, and his veriest dwelling place in them. It is by
virtue of this inmost or highest that a man is a man, and
distinguished from the animals, which do not have it. From this it
is that man, unlike the animals, is capable, in respect to all his
interiors which pertain to his mind and disposition, of being raised
up by the Lord to himself, of believing in the Lord, of being
moved by love to the Lord, and thereby beholding him, and of