Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 9.djvu/25

 MALES AND FEMALES AFTER DEATH.

Since man lives a man after death, and man is both male and female, and the masculine is one thing and the feminine another, and the difference is such that one cannot be changed into the other, it follows that after death the male lives a male and the female lives a female, each a spiritual man. It is said that the masculine cannot be changed into the feminine nor the feminine into the masculine, and that therefore after death the male is a male, and the female is a female.

But because it is not known in what the masculine essentially consists, and in what the feminine, therefore it shall be here briefly told. The distinction consists essentially in this: that the inmost in the mascu- line is love, and the covering of this is wisdom, or what is the same, that it is love veiled with wisdom; and that the inmost in the female is that wisdom of the male, and its covering is the love thence; but this love is feminine and is given by the Lord to the wife through the wisdom of the husband; and the former love is masculine and is the love of being wise, and it is given by the Lord, to the husband according to his reception of wisdom. Hence the male is the wisdom of love, and the female is the love of that wisdom. Therefore there is implanted in each from creation the desire of being joined in one.

That the feminine is from the masculine, or that the woman was taken out of the man, is manifest from