Arcana Coelestia volume 7 - Swedenborg Foundation

ARCANA COELESTIA 3659planets also being earths, some of them with moons revolvingaround them, and making—as is known by observation— dailyand annual motions like our earth; nevertheless with very manypersons the fallacy of sense prevails, that it is as it appears to theeye.[3] (2) It is a fallacy of merely natural sense, or that which is innature, that there is only a single atmosphere, and that this ismerely successively purer from one portion to another, and thatwhere it ceases there is a vacuum. When only the external sensuousof man is consulted, it apprehends no otherwise. (3) It is a fallacy ofmerely natural sense, that from the first creation there has beenimpressed on seeds a property of growing up into trees and flowers,and of reproducing themselves, and that from this is the cominginto existence and subsistence of all things. And if it is urged that itis not possible for anything to subsist unless it perpetually comesinto existence, according to the law that subsistence is a perpetualcoming into existence, and also that everything not connected withsomething prior to itself falls into nothing, still the sensuous of thebody and the thought from this sensuous does not apprehend it,nor that each and all things subsist in the same way that they cameinto existence, by influx from the spiritual world, that is to saythrough the spiritual world from the Divine.[4] (4) Hence it is a fallacy of merely natural sense that there aresimple substances, which are monads and atoms; for whatever iswithin the range of the external sensuous, the natural man believesto be a simple substance, or else nothing. (5) It is a fallacy of merelynatural sense that all things are of nature and from nature, and thatthere indeed is something in purer or interior nature which is notapprehended; but if it is said that within or above nature there iswhat is spiritual and celestial, this is rejected; and it is believed thatif it is not natural, it is nothing. (6) It is a fallacy of sense that onlythe body lives, and that its life perishes when it dies. The sensuousdoes not at all apprehend that the internal man is in everyparticular of the external man, and that the internal man is withinnature, and in the spiritual world; hence it does not believe, because