spiritual substances of the universe according to its moral state, just as, according to the laws of motion, the matter of the universe arranges itself into an order conformable to its material forces.[2] When finally through death the communion of the soul with the body-world is abolished, life in the other world would be only a natural continuation of such connections as were formed with it already in this life, and all the consequences of the morality exercised here we would find there in the effects which a being standing in indissoluble communion with the whole spirit-world would have already achieved, according to spiritual laws.[3] Present and future would be, as it were, out of one piece and constitute a continuous whole, even according to the order of nature. This latter circumstance is of especial importance. For in a speculation based merely upon reasoning there is a great difficulty if, in removing the inconvenience which follows from the incomplete harmony of morality and its consequences in this world, we have to resort to an extraordinary idea of the divine will. For, though our judgment of it might, according to our conceptions, be probable, a strong suspicion would
- ↑ 29 (p. 66).—"All man's will and love remains with him after death (n. 470–484). He who wills and loves evil in the world, wills and loves evil in the other life, and then he no longer suffers himself to be withdrawn from it. Hence it is that the man who is in evil is tied to hell, and likewise is actually there as lo his spirit, and after death desires nothing more than to be where his own evil is; consequently it is man after death who casts himself into hell, and not theLord. For no one comes into hell until he is in his own evil and in the falsities of evil, since it is not allowed any one there to have a divided mind, namely, to think and speak one thing and to will another. Every evil spirit must there think what is false derived from evil, and must speak from the falsities of evil; in both cases from the will, thus from his own love and its delight and pleasure; just as in the world when he thought in his spirit, that is, as he thought in himself when he thought from interior affection. The reason is that the will is the man himself, and not the thought, only so far as it partakes of the will, and the will is the very nature itself or disposition of the man; thus to be let into his will is to be let into his nature or disposition, and likewise into his life."—H. H., 547, 510.
- ↑ The interactions of man and the spirit-world, taking place by means of morality, according to the laws of spiritual influences, might be defined in such a way that thence a closer association of a good or a bad soul with good or evil spirits respectively would naturally arise, and thus the evil spirits would, from themselves, associate with that part of the spiritual republic that is in accordance with their moral quality, undergoing all the consequences which thence might follow according to the order of nature.[1]
- ↑ 30 (p. 66).—"Every one comes to his own society in which his spirit had been in the world; for every man as to his spirit is conjoined to some society, either infernal or heavenly, a wicked man to an infernal society, a good man to a heavenly society (see n. 438). The spirit is brought to that society successively, and at length enters it. An evil spirit when he is in the state of his interiors, is turned by degrees to his own society, and at length directly to it, before this state is ended ; and when this state is ended, then the evil spirit casts himself into the hell where his like are."—H. H., 510.
