Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/54

 performance of good uses from love to the Lord and his neighbor; hell is a state of spiritual thraldom, in which no useful act is performed from love of or delight in the use, but only by compulsion, as a slave works under the lash.

It should be said, however, that the love of self is evil and makes man an infernal only when it is the supreme and ruling love. Then it is out of its place and the soul is in disorder. In its right place, which is a state of subordination and complete subjection to the nobler love of heaven, it is good and useful. Says Swedenborg:

"These three loves [the love of heaven, the love of the world, and the love of self] are related to each other like the three regions of the body, the highest of which is the head, the intermediate the chest and abdomen, while the legs and feet and soles of the feet form the third. When the love of heaven forms the head, the love of the world the chest and abdomen, and the love of self the feet with the soles of the feet, then man is in a perfect state according to creation, because the two lower loves then subserve the highest as the body and all its parts subserve the head." (True Christian Religion, 403.)

But when the love of self or of the world is as the head—is supreme—then the true order is reversed; the man is turned, as it were, upside down; the love of heaven is as the feet, and he tramples on the laws of