Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/24

 serves it, as an instrument is subservient to a living moving force. It is said, indeed, of an instrument, that it acts, moves, or strikes; but to believe that these acts are those of the instrument and not of him who acts, moves, or strikes by means of it, is a fallacy.

Since everything that lives in the body, and from life acts and feels, belongs exclusively to the spirit, and nothing of it to the body, it follows that the spirit is the real man; or, what is similar, that man considered in himself is a spirit, and that the spirit is also in a form similar to that of the body; for whatever lives and feels in man belongs to his spirit,—and everything in him, from his head to the sole of his foot, lives and feels.

Hence it is, that when the body is separated from its spirit, which is called dying, the man still continues a man, and lives. I have heard from heaven that some who die, when they are lying upon the bier, before they are resuscitated, think even in their cold body, nor do they know otherwise than that they still live, except that they are unable to move a single material particle belonging to the body.

Man cannot think and will, unless there be a subject which is a substance, from which and in which he may think and will. Whatever is supposed to exist without a substantial subject, is nothing. This may be known from the fact that man cannot see without an organ which is the subject of his sight,