Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/138

 of the soul, to knowledge of which he was aspiring. In the Animal Kingdom he says—

"The soul is properly the universal essence of its body. The soul is the only thing substantial and essential in its body. From it are derived and born all the substances and essences which are called composite and corporeal. For what can truly be unless it be from a thing prior, more simple, and more unique, which is the beginning of the rest? That which gives to others being and existence must itself be. It cannot be produced from modes, accidents, and qualities without a subject and form, and consequently without a real essence and substance. The soul also is peculiar or individual, and there is not one universal soul for all; so that the soul of one cannot belong to the body of another; for—which is to be demonstrated—the very form of the body is the result of its essential determination, or the body itself represents the soul as it were in an image. . . . The higher or highest universal essence is the soul, the lower is the animal spirit, and the third the blood. The highest essence imparts being, the power of acting and life, to the lower, and this imparts the same in like manner to