Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/49

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THE TWO WORLDS.
43

to possess. In the spiritual world its living atmospheres and substances are immediately responsive to the mind's activity, and the idea, which corresponds in the mind to its desire and thought, projects itself into substantial forms in the world external to the mind. The phenomenal spiritual world, therefore, is created through the minds of those who dwell in it; corresponds to the states of the minds through which it is created; and changes with their change. But in this world, the dead materials of nature have to be formed and fashioned into fixed copies of living spiritual forms, into which life, through the spiritual world may flow; just as the mind which would realize here its idea of what it would have, must fashion a copy in inert material substances. The chair is wanted, and thought of, before it is made; in the spiritual world when wanted and thought of it is made, and the owner has it while he wants it; but in this world to have it he must fashion so much dead stuff into the fixed form of his idea, and then he has it to go away from and come back to as he wants it. So of the two worlds in general and particular; all things under the spiritual sun are living, all under the natural sun are dead;