Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 2.djvu/81

Rh teriors receive the world. So far, therefore, as his interiors receive heaven, man as to them is a heaven in the least form after the image of the greatest. But so far as his interiors do not receive, he is not a heaven nor an image of the greatest.

Nevertheless the exteriors which receive the world, may be in a form according to the order of the world, and thence in various beauty; for external beauty which is of the body, derives its cause from parents and from the formation in the womb, and is afterwards preserved by a common influx from the world.

Hence it is that the form of one's natural man may differ very much from the form of his spiritual man. I have occasionally seen the form of the spirit of particular persons. In some who had beautiful and handsome faces, the spirit was deformed, black and monstrous, so that it might be called an image of hell, not of heaven; but in some who were not beautiful in person, the spirit was beautiful, fair and angelic. The spirit of man also appears after death such as it was in the body which clothed it when living in the world. (H. H., n. 87-89.)