Arcana Coelestia volume 7 - Swedenborg Foundation

ARCANA COELESTIA 3667body, so far it looks at rational things as beneath itself, deemingthem worthless and rejecting them.[3] For example, the rational natural man can comprehend thatman does not live from himself, but by an influx of life throughheaven from the Lord; but the sensuous man cannot comprehendthis, for he says that he plainly feels and perceives that life is inhimself, and that it is idle to speak contrary to the evidence of thesenses. As another example: the rational natural man comprehendsthat there is a heaven and a hell, whereas the sensuous man deniesthis, because he does not apprehend that there is any purer worldthan that which he sees with his eyes. The rational natural mancomprehends that there are spirits and angels who are unseen; butthe sensuous man does not comprehend this, supposing that to benothing which he does not see and touch.[4] As still another example: the rational natural mancomprehends that it is the part of an intelligent man to look atends, and to foresee and to dispose the means to some ultimateend. When he looks at nature from the order of things, he sees thatnature is a complex of means, and he then perceives that a SupremeBeing of intelligence has disposed them; but to what ultimate endhe does not see unless he becomes spiritual. On the other hand thesensuous man does not comprehend that there can be anythingdistinct from nature, thus neither that there can be any Entitywhich is above nature. What it is to understand, to be wise, to lookat ends, and to dispose means, he does not apprehend unless it iscalled natural; and when it is called natural, he has an idea of theseoperations like that which an artificer has of an automaton. Fromthese few instances it may be seen what is meant by the interiornatural and the exterior natural, and also what by sensuous thingsbeing rejected; namely, not the rejection of the things of sight,hearing, smell, taste, and touch, in the body, but of the conclusionstherefrom concerning interior things.5095. Of the king of Egypt. That this signifies which weresubordinate to the interior natural is evident from therepresentation of Pharaoh or the king of Egypt in this chapter, as