Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/307

XXII ] Man, the souls coming from one world or earth would by no means suffice, because there must be infinite varieties, and in every part innumerable spirits to confirm or establish it," so the angels dictated to Swedenborg on March 3, 1748.12

Who was in the Grand Man? The angelic societies. Who was outside it? The hells or infernal societies. The qualities of the angelic societies could be known from their position in His body, "in the plane of the head, breast, shoulders, feet," etc., and the qualities of the infernal societies could also be known from their situation "under the soles" or "under the buttocks" of the Grand Man, "in planes in every direction."

Living men too, Swedenborg said, "have a situation either in the Grand Man [that is in heaven] or outside of it in hell. During his life in this world man is not aware of this, but still he is there and is thereby directed." 13

Through variations in the quality of their feelings spirits might seem to change place, but their ruling love determined the location in or out of the Grand Man to which they inevitably returned. Swedenborg admitted, however, that novitiate spirits wandered about for some time before their characters were sufficiently clear-cut to give them their final abode, or home in the appropriate "province." 14

This physiological symbolism was carried very far by Swedenborg. He determined the "genera and species" of any spirit by the place in which it seemed to appear or manifest itself in relation to his own body, either inside or outside it. (So and so appeared near the left temple, etc.) "When it is known where spirits are, relatively to the body, it may be known who they are and of what quality." He explained that the spirit was not really "there," of course; it was only an "appearance," to express the situation of that spirit in the Grand Man.15

Bad spirits also had their situation which they usually seemed to announce by giving Swedenborg a pain in that part of his body which "corresponded" to their province; and if he had had all the pains in real earnest which he said the spirits gave him he would never have lived to be a hale eighty-four!

(Modern mediums, it may be noted here, often complain of specific pains in their own bodies, which, they say, are really the