Afterlife: A Guided Tour of Heaven and Its Wonders - Swedenborg ...

Heaven
Over and above these particular examples, all the fowl
of the air know the foods that are good for them—not only
what they are, but where they are. They know how to
construct nests for themselves, each species differently
from all others, how to lay their eggs there, incubate them,
hatch and feed their chicks, and expel them from the nest
when they can be on their own. They also know the par -
tic u lar enemies they must avoid and the allies they can
associate with, all from earliest infancy. I will say nothing
about the wonders in the eggs themselves, where every -
thing necessary for the formation and nourishment of the
embryonic chicks lies properly available, or countless
other wonders.
Will anyone who thinks with any rational wisdom say
that such things arise from any source but a spiritual
world, a world that the natural world serves by clothing
what comes from it with a body, or presenting in effect
that which is spiritual in origin
The reason why earthbound animals and the fowl of the
air are born into all this knowledge while we, who are
actually superior, are not, is that animals are in the proper
pattern of their life and cannot destroy what is within
them from the spiritual world because they are not
rational. It is different for us, who think from the spiritual
world. Because we have corrupted ourselves by living
contrary to the design that reason itself has recommended
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