Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/51

 before. And he who is delighted with studies, reads and writes as before.

In a word, when man passes from one life into the other, or from one world into the other, it is just as if he passed from one place to another; and he carries with him all things which he possessed in himself as a man. So that it cannot be said that a man after death,—which is only the death of the terrestrial body,—has lost anything that belonged to himself. He carries with him his natural memory also; for he retains all things whatsoever which he has heard, seen, read, learned and thought in the world, from earliest infancy even to the end of life.

But because the natural objects which are in the memory cannot be re-produced in the spiritual world, they are quiescent, just as they are with a man in this world when he does not think of them: but still they are re-produced when the Lord pleases. But concerning this memory and its state after death, more will be said shortly.

The sensual man cannot possibly believe that such is the state of man after death, because he does not comprehend it; for the sensual man cannot think otherwise than naturally, even about spiritual things. Whatever therefore is not palpable to the bodily sense, that is, whatever he does not see with his eyes and touch with his hands, he affirms has no existence; as we read of Thomas, in John xx. 25, 27, 29.

Still, however, the difference between the life of