Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/59



Although the external or natural memory is in man after death, still the merely natural things in that memory are not reproduced in the other life, but the spiritual things which are adjoined to them by correspondences; which things, nevertheless, when they are exhibited to the sight, appear in a form altogether similar to things in the natural world. For all things which appear in the heavens, appear in like manner as in the world, although in their essence they are not natural.

But the external or natural memory, so far as regards the ideas which are derived from materiality, time, space and all other things proper to nature, does not serve the spirit for the same use which it had served it in the world. For when man in the world thought from the external sensual, and not at the same time from the internal sensual, or the intellectual, he thought naturally and not spiritually. But in the other life, being a spirit in the spiritual world, he does not think naturally but spiritually. To think spiritually is to think intellectually or rationally.

Hence it is that the external or natural memory, as to all material ideas, is quiescent after death, and only those things come into use which man has imbibed in the world by means of the natural memory, and has made a part of his rational life.

The external memory is quiescent as to things