Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/144

, since it is the very end of creation that a most perfect society of souls may exist. . . . As then no soul is absolutely like another, but some difference or diversity of state exists between all, this has not obtained merely for the sake of distinguishing one from another, but to the end that the most perfect form of society might exist from the variety. And in such a form there must needs be not only a difference among all, but such a difference or variety as that all the individuals may come together in harmony, so as to form together a society in which nothing shall be wanting that is not found in some one. . . . This harmonic variety, however, does not consist in the outward variety of souls, but in their spiritual variety, of love toward God and toward their neighbor; for the state of the soul concerns only its spiritual state, how it may be nearest to its God. When any shade of variety is wanting, some place in heaven may be said to be as yet vacant; so that all the differences, or varieties, are to be filled up before the form can exist in full perfection.

"But whether there are to be many societies and as it were many heavens of which the