Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/88

82 yet still the exteriors, which receive the world, may be in a form according to the order of the world, and hence in various beauty. For external beauty, which is of the body, derives its cause from the parents and from formation in the womb, and afterwards is preserved by a common influx from the world; hence it is, that the form of the natural man differs very much from the form of his spiritual man. Sometimes it has been shown what the spirit of man was in form, and it was seen, that in some who were beautiful and handsome in the face, it was deformed, black, and monstrous, so that you would call it an image of hell, not of heaven; but in some who were not beautiful, that it was well formed, fair and angelic. The spirit of man also appears after death, such as it had been in the body, when it lived in the world."

In explanation of this last paragraph, it should be borne in mind that there is a general correspondence of the things of the body with heaven, and that all things in order receive a common influx; whereas the disorderly things of man's natural mind correspond with hell, and receive influx