fixity and permanence in general, within the bounds or limits of which there is a charming and ever-varying fluctuation of particulars.
We see at once that society in heaven has no geographic or national basis. A society of angels is only a larger man, consisting of similar units bound together like the organs of the human body by loving sympathies, each doing the work for which he is structurally fitted, and each finding his own life by expending it for all the rest. Many societies, great and small, are again held together by larger bonds and sympathies and grander uses, and constitute a still greater man. Finally, all the heavens are so organically connected, that they appear to the Lord as a single man. Heaven, says Swedenborg, is the maximus Homo—the Grand Man.
His doctrine of the Grand Man, with all its complexities and mysteries, is based upon the transcendent fact, that the universe was created by a Divine Man, in his own image and likeness; and all its discrete degrees, spiritual and natural, are woven and held together by influx and correspondence through the mediation of the Human Form. The subject is too vast and difficult for even a partial elucidation in this little volume.
