mind, rather than of the natural body. And this leads us to inquire what our author means by, and what is comprehended in, the terms soul and body.

By soul and body, he does not always mean only what we generally understand by those terms, namely, the spiritual and the material parts of which man is generally supposed to consist.

Swedenborg says, "The soul of man, which lives after death, is his spirit, and this is in perfect form a man, and the soul of this form is the will and understanding, and the soul of these is love and wisdom, and these two constitute the life of man" (D. T. W. 344). Again he says, "The inmost of everything is what is called the soul; as for example, the inmost of man is what is called the will of the understanding thence derived, and according to the quality of these such is the whole man; also the inmost of man is his love and faith, and such as these are, such is the whole man" (A. E. 313). Once more, "The internal man is nothing else than mutual love, the spirit of man, or the soul, is the interior man, which lives after death, as an organized substance being adjoined to the body during man's abode in the world; the interior man, or man's soul or spirit, is not the internal man, but the internal man is in it when mutual love is there" (D. L. W. 394).

Respecting the external man, which in a general sense is called the body, the teaching of the Writings is similar. Thus our author says"It is scarcely known at this day what the external man is; for it is generally supposed that the things appertaining to the body alone constitute the external man, such as his sensual faculties or organs, or those of the touch, the taste, the smell, the hearing, and the sight, as also the appetites and pleasures'; but these only constitute the outermost man, which is corporeal. The external man, properly so called, consists of and is constituted by scientifics appertaining to the memory and affections, appertaining to the love in which man is principled, and also by the sensuous faculties proper to spirits, together with the pleasures which likewise appertain to spirits. That these properly constitute the exterior man may appear from man in the other life, or from spirits, who in like manner have an external man and an interior, and consequently an internal man. The body is only an integument or shell, which is dissolved in order that man may truly live, and that all things pertaining to him may become more excellent" (A. C. 1708).

A similar statement occurs in treating of Hagar and Ishmael, which

shows that the "body" has an extensive meaning. "The life of the affection of knowledges and sciences gives to the national principle, as it were, a body, or clothes the life of the internal man, as the body does the soul; this is precisely the case with knowledges and sciences. There is an idea or resemblance of soul and body in all the particulars appertaining to man, in the particulars of his affection and in the particulars of his thought; for there is nothing, however simple it appears, but what is comprehended and exists from something prior to itself" (1910). Many more quotations of the same character might be adduced, but these may suffice.

It appears, therefore, that when Swedenborg states that the soul and the body are the internal and external man, he does not limit the term "soul" to spiritual essence or the term "body" to the material form, but that he includes in the term "soul" all that is internal in man, and in the term "body" all that is external, whether man be regarded as an inhabitant of the spiritual or of the natural world.

The soul includes, therefore, all that constitutes the internal of man's mind, and the body includes all that constitutes the external of his mind. The internal of man's mind, or the internal man, organically considered, is created to the image of heaven-of heaven as it consists of three heavens and of two kingdoms.

The human mind therefore consists of three distinct degrees, answering to the three heavens. And as in each heaven there is will and understanding, so is there in each degree of the mind, so that the mind consists of three degrees of will and understanding.

The natural mind consists also of three degrees corresponding to those of the spiritual mind, and designed to serve as their clothing and their bases. As the three degrees of the spiritual mind are analogous to the three heavens, the three degrees of the natural mind. answer to the three kingdoms of nature. The natural mind may be seen in its inverted state in the three hells, for hell is nothing but the natural mind inverted, the opposite of heaven, which is the spiritual mind perfected.

. Originally by creation, and now by birth, man has nothing that can be called mind, because he has no affection and no thought, thus no will and no understanding. He has, however, the faculties by which he is able to acquire a natural will and understanding by education and a spiritual will and understanding by regeneration.

The natural will and understanding constitute his external man, and his spiritual will and understanding constitute his internal man. These

G

are the internal and the external man in the proper sense of the

term.

It is of the external man as thus formed or developed after birth, by education and regeneration, that Swedenborg generally speaks, and of which, he says, the material body forms no part. In the same way he speaks of man himself as consisting of soul and body, and yet he tells us that the body forms no part of the man, since man can exist as a complete human being without it, which he does when he enters into the spiritual world. Man, however, does not live in the spiritual world without a body, but his body in that world is spiritual, like the world itself in which he lives. Still there is something of the natural world attached to man as a spirit in the spiritual world, for he takes with him some of the purest parts of nature, which then form the cutaneous covering of the spiritual body. Indeed, we are told that the natural mind of man is formed partly of spiritual and partly of natural substances, that man thinks from the spiritual but not from the natural substances; and that it is these natural substances that recede at death, and form the cutaneous covering of the spiritual body. But then we are to recollect that Swedenborg makes a distinction between natural substances and material substances. Thus he says, "The Sun of the world was created, and by the Sun Nature, and lastly the terraqueous globe."

He even speaks of the mind as consisting of both substances, "The human mind is an organized form, consisting of spiritual substances within, and of natural substances without, and lastly of material substances" (T. C. R. 18). Although man does not think from the natural substances of his mind, he thinks in them, and even in the material substances of which the brain consists.

When, therefore, our author speaks of man as consisting of soul and body, he includes in these the spiritual mind on the one hand and the natural mind on the other, even when he speaks of man as an organized being, possessing the faculties of willing and understanding. But as man is man by virtue of will and understanding, these are to be understood as belonging to man in his educated and regenerated state, and to constitute what is called the mind,—the natural will and understanding constituting his natural mind, and the spiritual will and understanding constituting his spiritual mind, or his internal and external For the term "man," strictly speaking, is predicated of one who possesses human attributes, one who thinks and wills, not of one who has the faculties of thinking and willing; and in the strictest

man.

sense, "man" is only predicable of the truth which one thinks and of the good which wills; nothing being truly human but goodness and truth, or love and wisdom.

There are several aspects in which the internal and the external may be regarded, but there is one in particular which the object of the present remarks leads us to consider. The internal man and the external man themselves consist of an internal and an external. "The internal principle (says our author), like the rational, has an internal and an external. The external of the natural principle (or mind) is derived from the sensuals of the body, and from those things which flow in immediately from the world through the sensuals; by these man communicates with the world and with corporeal things. But the internal of the natural principle is constituted of those things which are hence analogically and analytically concluded, but still it derives its constituent properties from the things of the senses. Thus the natural principle communicates with worldly and corporeal things by means of sensual things, and with the rational principle by means of analogical and analytical things, and thus with those things which are of the spiritual world" (A. C. 4570).

This is the condition of the mind as divinely constituted and orderly developed; and is stated by the author, in describing the regeneration of man, as imaging the glorification of the Lord. But there is another condition of the mind, the same in its twofold aspect, but different in its state. This is presented to us, when our author is speaking of the order of regeneration, according to which the internal is first to be regenerated and afterwards the external. The internal, which is first to be regenerated, is the internal of the external man. This he states in the T. C. R. (593), when shewing that the internal is first to be regenerated, and by it the external, and that man is thus regenerated. "The quality of the internal man from his birth shall here be described, his will is prone to evils of every kind, and his thought derived from his will is alike prone to falses of every kind. This, then, is the internal man which is to be regenerated, for unless it be regenerated there is nothing but hatred against all things that respect charity, and as a consequence wrath against all that respect faith. Hence it follows that the internal natural man is first to be regenerated, and by it the external." This he teaches in another way. He tells us that evil does not penetrate into the internal, as consisting of the spiritual mind; evil only closes it. If evil actually penetrated into the spiritual mind, man would perish. The spiritual mind shrinks

from the touch of evil, as a nerve from the prick of a sharp instrument. It recoils from it as heaven recoils from hell, and therefore keeps itself free from contamination. By this means man is preserved dur

ing his life in the world in the capacity of being regenerated.

There are three conditions of the internal man resulting from three conditions of the external. One condition of the internal man is, that it is neither open nor shut; another condition is that it is shut; and a third condition is that it is open.

In early life, before the mind has any fixed principles, either good or evil, the gate of the inner man is neither shut nor open; it stands as it were ajar, and light from heaven streams in to give the faculties the power of right action; and if the human being enters upon and continues in a life of faith and charity, the gate opens more and more, till it stands wide open and admits the full blaze of the light of heaven. This is the case with those who suffer themselves to be regenerated. Regeneration consists in bringing the external man into conformity and conjunction with the internal. If, on the contrary, the human being, as he advances towards maturity, inclines to evil and falsity, the door of the inner man gradually closes, and if he confirms himself in evil it is eventually shut, and he is only preserved in the use of his faculties by some rays of light struggling through chinks and crannies, which even his worst efforts are unable entirely to stop, until he goes into the eternal world, when, if he is confirmed in sin, the door is shut, and he is left in, or rather casts himself into, outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. We may now inquire what it is that constitutes the internal of the external man, and what constitutes the external of that man from which the internal is distinguished.

The internal of the external man consists, I have said, of man's natural will and understanding. By his natural will and understanding, I mean that will from which man naturally or spontaneously wills, and by his natural understanding, I mean that understanding from which he naturally and spontaneously thinks. The natural will is the seat of our natural ends or motives, and the natural understanding is the seat of the wisdom by which we devise the means of carrying our purposes out. A man's natural ends, or the ends of his natural mind, are the love of himself, and the love of the world, and his wisdom is the ingenuity by which he seeks to exalt and aggrandize himself.

(To be continued.)