Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/124

 of the life that inflows, must necessarily determine for ever the character of the man. The interior life is terminated in, and therefore takes on the character of, the external or natural life, just as the light and heat of the sun, terminating in hideous forms and excrementitious substances, take on the ugliness of the one and the offensiveness of the other. Accordingly Swedenborg says:

"A man's interiors are distinguished into degrees, and in every degree are terminated, and by termination separated each from the interior degree; and this from the inmost to the outermost. . . . These degrees in man are most distinct; hence, if he lives in good, he is as to his interiors a heaven in its least form, or his interiors correspond to the three heavens. And therefore if a man has lived the life of charity and love, he can after death be translated even into the third heaven: but in order to acquire such a capacity, it is necessary that all his degrees be well terminated, and thus by terminations be distinct from each other; and when they are terminated, or by terminations are made distinct, every degree is a plane in which the good inflowing from the Lord rests and is received. Without these degrees as planes good cannot be received but flows through, as through a sieve or a perforated basket, even to the sensual [plane], and in that is changed to what is filthy, viz., into the delight of self-love and the love of the world, consequently into the delight of hatred, revenge, cruelty, adultery, avarice, or into mere voluptuousness and luxurious-