Page:The Other Life.djvu/94

 Centre through all the spheres down to the lowest and last things of the mineral kingdom in the physical world. Nothing stands alone in the universe. All things cohere, and every cause is traceable to the first Great Cause. How it is that all the heavens and hells, the world of spirits and all the innumerable worlds of men are held together in one vast chain of being, and governed by the same laws and controlled by one Divine Order, can only be comprehended by the system of ontology given to us through Swedenborg.

Man who is born corporeal and sensual and therefore without language like a beast, can ascend through the successive degrees of affection and thought by the opening of the rational, spiritual and celestial faculties, which lie folded away in the mysterious depths of his spiritual being. As he ascends he becomes capable of more and more interior thought and life, and of understanding the language of successively higher states.

The descent of affection and thought from the higher to the lower planes is a very different phenomenon. The spirit has left the corporeal, sensual sphere behind it, has ceased to think and feel on the external, rational and natural plane. It thinks spiritually in the degree next above the one