Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/170

164 and gravitate into their lowest corresponding ultimate, the drug "absorbs their malignities," and the system gathering up its forces by the law of resistance to disturbance rejects both drug and infestors. The Doctor might, however, have found a more pointed Scriptural illustration of this process, in the case of the demons obliged to leave the man, begging to be allowed to enter into the swine. Influx from heaven into corresponding functions of the body produces a resisting sphere even in sickness, and operates as a mandate upon infesting spirits as soon as a lower form to which they correspond is presented to them; for that they shall animate it when presented is the law of their life. The smaller the quantity of the drug, and the finer its state of subdivision the less resistance it offers to the connatus of living forces for its expulsion, after "malignities are absorbed."

This explanation is purely inferential; though it has long been accepted by many students of Swedenborg as a sufficient, or at least suggestive, answer to the question, How is it if all causes belong to the spiritual world that drugs do facilitate the removal of disease? When the science of