Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/161

Rh what the Doctor means, or should mean, in the saying that where the evil "spheres are not latent the carriers will be absolutely innocuous." The "evil spheres " can enter into perverted and disordered mental forms; and these by heredity belong to all, until they are by real regeneration corrected and re-formed. Of course those who are in actual sin are more susceptible to the sphere of evil spirts, and consequently to the diseases they induce through infectious germs and such like, which the Doctor happily calls "carriers of their sphere." But not always the evil suffer most from such causes, for they by their evil selfhood may for the time be more alert and observant of those ultimate laws of bodily order, which are the correspondents of heavenly order, and thus receive into their natural life that "common influx" which preserves their external in health and beauty. The main point here, however, is that diseases are in all cases caused by the operation of evil spirits, and that their operation is in and by means of spiritual conditions either of the mind's life or induced upon it. As Dr. Wilkinson says: "Wherever a swamp and putridity of circumstance lies, they are congenially attracted, and