Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/40

34 received a new basis of fact, a new field of illustration, and a new significance as to the order and law of creation.

There are continuous degrees which exhibit gradation on the same plane; as greater or less degrees of light or heat or pressure. So, likewise, there are greater or less degrees of clearness in intelligence or understanding; and greater or less facility of expression in speech. These, however, are only differences of more or less in things on the same plane, and continuous. But the degree which distinguishes the understanding from the speech is discrete, and not continuous. The thought does not shade off into the expression. The thought may be more or less clear on its own plane; and the expression more or less clear on its plane; but the planes are distinct. The thought descends into the speech and clothes itself, and thus takes on a new form and function on a lower plane of existence, without losing its own form and function in the mind itself. It is the efficient cause of which the speech is the effect. The thought is spiritual, the speech is natural. They belong to correlated planes of existence, which do