Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/668

572 and that it is distinct from the natural world, — as the prior and the posterior, or as the cause and the thing caused, — can know nothing of this influx. This is the reason why those who have written on the origin of vegetables and animals could not but deduce it from nature; or if from God, have inferred that from the beginning God indued nature with the power of producing such things, — thus not knowing that nature is indued with no power. For nature in itself is dead, and no more contributes to the production of these things than the instrument to the work of the artist, which must perpetually be moved that it may act. It is the spiritual principle, which derives its origin from the sun wherein the Lord is and proceeds to the ultimates of nature, that produces the forms of vegetables and animals, and exhibits the wonders that there are in both; and it clothes them with material substances from the earth that these forms may be fixed and enduring. As it is now known that there is a spiritual world; and that the spiritual is from the sun wherein the Lord is, and which is from the Lord; and that it moves nature to action, as the living actuates the dead; also that in that world there are things similar to those in the natural world; it can be seen that vegetables and animals must have existed from no other source than from the Lord through that world, and that through it they perpetually exist; and thus that there is a continual influx from the spiritual world into the natural. (D. L. W. n. 340.)

I heard two Presidents of the English Royal Society, Sir Hans Sloane and Martin Folkes, conversing together in the spiritual world on the existence of seeds and eggs, and the productions from them on earth. The former ascribed them to nature; and maintained that from creation nature is indued with force and power to produce such things, by means of the sun's heat. The other said that this power is continually from God the Creator in nature. To settle the dispute a beautiful bird appeared to Sir Hans Sloane; and he was requested to examine it, to see whether in any least respect it differed from a similar bird on earth. He held it in his hand, examined it, and said that there was no difference. Yet he knew that it was but an affection of some angel represented out of him as a bird, and that it would vanish or cease with its affection; which indeed it did. Sir Hans Sloane was convinced by this experience that nature contributes nothing at all to the production of vegetables and animals, but that only which flows in from the spiritual world into the natural. He said, if that bird in its minutest parts were filled with corresponding material substances from the earth, and so fixed, it would be a durable bird, like the birds on earth; and that it is the same with those things that are from hell. He said further, that if he had known what he now knew of the spiritual world, he would