That the heart also is the first principle that acts in the body, is evident from embryoes: that it is the last, is evident from dying persons; and that it acts without the co-operation of the lungs, is evident from persons suffocated, and from swoons. Hence it may be seen, that as the existence of corporeal life, in persons apparently dead, depends on the heart alone; so in like manner the mental life of those to be recovered from spiritual death, depends on the will alone: the will lives when the thought ceases, as the heart lives when respiration ceases; consequently, the love or will is the essential, ever-during life of man.

1274. [Matt. x. 28.] Fear not them who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.

"This immaterial agent is supposed to exist in or with matter, but to be quite distinct from it, and to be equally capable of existence, after the matter, which now possesses it, is decomposed. -Nor is this theory ill supported by analogy, since heat, electricity, and magnetism, can be given to or taken from a piece of iron; and must therefore exist, whether separated from the metal, or combined with it. From a parity of reasoning, the spirit of animation would appear to be capable of existing as well separately from the body as with it." By the words, spirit of animation or sensorial power, I mean," says Dr. DARWIN, “that animal life, which mankind possesses in common with brutes, and in some degree even with vegetables." This "may consist of matter of a finer kind"; and be that inferior part of us, that spiritual body, of which St. Paul speaks "in the 15th chapter to the Corinthians," where he "distinguishes between the psyche or living spirit, and the pneuma or reviving spirit."

No one will deny, that the medulla of the brain and nerves has a certain figure; which, as it is diffused through nearly the whole of the body, must have nearly the figure of that body. Now it follows, that the spirit of animation, or living principle, as it occupies this medulla, and no other part (which is evinced by a great variety of crucl experiments on living animals), it follows, that this spirit of animation has also the same figure as the medulla above described. appeal to common sense! the spirit of animation acts,—where does it act? It acts wherever there is the medulla above mentioned; and that whether the limb is yet joined to a

I

living animal, or whether it be recently detached from it; as the heart of a viper or frog will renew its contractions, when pricked with a pin, for many minutes of time after its exsection from the body. Does it act any where else?—No; then it certainly exists in this part of space, and no where else; that is, it hath figure; namely, the figure of the nervous system, which is nearly the figure of the body.

1275.

Zoonomia, sect. xiv. pp. 109, 111.

"When the union of the body and soul is broken, it is conceivable that the one may be dissolved and the other preserved entire. Why should the dissolution of the one necessarily bring on that of the other? On the contrary, being so different in their natures their state of union is a state of violence; and when it is broken, they both return to their natural situation: the active and living substance regains all the force it had employed in giving motion to the passive and dead substance to which it had been united. The failings and infirmities of man make us sensible that man is but half alive, and that the life of the soul commences at the death of the body.-We may readily conceive how material bodies wear away and are destroyed by the separation of their parts; but we cannot conceive a like dissolution of a thinking being: and hence, as we cannot imagine how it can die, we may presume it cannot die at all.

ROUSSEAU.

1276. [1 Thess. v. 23.] Those that will allow no soul in man but what is corporeal, have to explain, how mere matter can make syllogisms, and have conceptions of universals, and invent speculative sciences and demonstrations; and, in a word, do all those things which are done by man, and by no other animal.

BOYLE'S Reconcileables of Reason and Religion. Works, vol. i.

1277. [Jude 10.] The doctrine of the human soul has two parts, the one treating of the rational soul, which is divine (2 Pet. i. 4): the other of the irrational soul, which we have in common with brutes. Two different emanations of souls are manifest in the first creation, the one proceeding from the breath of God, the other from the elements: As to the primitive emanation of the rational soul; the Scripture says, "God formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives." But the generation of the irrational or brutal soul was in these words, "Let the water bring forth, let the earth bring forth." And this irrational soul in man is only an instrument to the rational one; and has the same origin in us as in brutes, namely, the dust of the earth. We will therefore style the first part of the general doctrine of the human soul, the doctrine of the inspired substance: And the other part, the doctrine of the sensitive or produced soul.

1278.

Beasts have not thought, but instead of thought an internal sight, which by correspondency makes one with their external sight. But man can think within himself of the things which he perceives with his bodily senses without himself; and can also, by his faculty of rationality, think superiorly of what he thinks inferiorly. In all other faculties, besides rationality and freedom, men are not men but beasts, and indeed from the abuse of these faculties worse than beasts.

SWEDENBORG'S Div. Prov. nn. 74, 75.

1279. [Job xxxv. 11.] Many men do not know how to distinguish between their own life and that of beasts, because they in like manner are in things external, and at heart are solely concerned' about terrestrial, corporcal, and worldly objects. Persons of such a character believe themselves also to be like the beasts in respect of life, and that after death they shall be dissipated in like manner; for, having no concern about things spiritual and celestial, they are likewise without knowledge of such things. Hence comes the insane notion of the men of modern times, in that they compare themselves to brute beasts, and do not see the internal distinction. But he that believes in celestial and spiritual things, or suffers spiritual light to flow in and act, sees altogether according to a different view, and likewise discovers his superiority above brute animals.

SWEDENBORG's Arcana, n. 3646.

NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL BODIES.

1280. [1 Cor. xv. 44.] There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. After stating at some length the imperfection of our ideas on the nature of cohesion, without which there can be no substantial form arising from the composite particles of any kind of body, Mr. LOCKE candidly owns, "that this primary and supposed obvious quality of body will be found, when examined, to be as incomprehensible as any thing belonging to our minds; and a solid extended substance as hard to be conceived as a thinking immaterial one, whatever difficulties some would raise against it."-Again, says he, "however we consider motion and its communication either from body or spirit, the idea which belongs to spirit is at least as clear as that which belongs to body. And if we consider the active power of moving, it is much clearer in spirit than body; since two bodies, placed by one another at rest, will never afford us the ideas of power in the one to move the other, but by a borrowed motion: whereas the mind affords ideas of an active power every day of moving bodies; and therefore it is worth our consideration, whether active power be not the proper attribute of spirits, and passive power of matter. Hence," he adds, may be conjectured, that created spirits are not totally separate from matter, because they are both active and passive. Pure spirit, viz. God, is only active; pure matter is only passive: those beings that are both active

1281. The spirit of man is in the body, in the whole and in every part thereof; both in its organs of motion and of sense, and every where else. The (natural) body is the materiality every where annexed to it, adequate to the world in which it then is. It is hence manifest, that a man after death is equally in an active and sensitive life, and also in a human form, as in the world, but in a more perfect one. SWEDENBORG'S Arcana, n. 4659.

1282.

The first contexture of the human form, or the essential human form with all and singular its constituents, exists from rudiments continued out of the brain by and throughout the nervous system. This is the form, into which a man comes after death. He is then called a spirit and an angel, being in all perfection a man, but spiritual. The material form, which is added and superinduced in the world, is not a human form from itself, but from the rudimental one; being added and superinduced, that the man may perform uses in the natural world, and also carry along with him from the purer substances of the world a fixed continent of his spiritual interiors, and thus continue and perpetuate his life.

SWEDENBORG's Divine Prov. n. 388.

1283. [1 Cor. xv. 44.] In regard to the human soul being the form of man, whatever duly organized portion of matter it is united to, it therewith constitutes the same man; so that the import of the resurrection is fulfilled in this, that after death there shall be another state, wherein the soul shall be again united to such a substance as may, with tolerable propriety of speech, notwithstanding its differences from our 'houses of clay,' be called a human body.

See BOYLE, on the Resurrection, p. 35.

1284. [1 Cor. xv. 3-38.] It appears from microscopical observations, that in every seed there is contained a certain minute part, which is the entire future plant in miniature, and the immediate seat of that spirituous substance to be found in all seeds, and which, when the other parts of the seed are corrupted, increases and displays itself by degrees. Thus, argues the Apostle, as it is not the seed with ail the same substance, but the body of the new plant contained within that seed, which can properly be said to come up or rise again; so, in the resurrection of man, not those grosser parts of external materiality consigned to the grave, but that minutely formed interior part (which is most properly the human body, as being the immediate habitation of the soul) is what shall then

be raised, and, will discover itself in its proper form. —This body, on account of its subtilty, may deserve the denomination of a spiritual body, and may be supposed to resemble those ethereal vehicles ascribed by Platonists to immaterial beings. Nor can it well be conceived, that the highest perfection of human souls in a better world should consist in their being eternally linked to bodies of flesh and blood; bodies, of which the wisest of the philosophers have complained as of prisons or living sepulchres of the soul. Agreeably to which, says the Apostle (2 Cor. v. 4), We that are in this tabernacle (or body) do groan, being burdened : not for that we would be unclothed (or stripped of all body) but so clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life.

COLLIBER'S Christian Religion founded on Reason, pp. 139, 140.

1285. In truth, the particles of every substance in nature appear to possess private laws and affinities, whereby they proceed to unite, and to arrange themselves in regular forms, when all things necessary combine to assist this tendency; that is, when by any means whatever, the particles are removed to a sufficient distance, and afterwards suffered to approach slowly and regularly according to their various laws of action.

PINKERTON'S Voy. and Trav. part xiii. pp. 902-911.

DEATH.

[Heb. ix. 27.] It is appointed unto men once to die.

1288. [Matt. ix. 24.] The phenomena attending death are these-Rigidity of the muscles gradually encreases until the whole body hardens and freezes. Freezing first appears at the extremities, whence it extends to the centre. If taken to thaw in milder air, the parts acquire their former pliancy, but the animal will not revive. Its death is in consequence of the solids being frozen. At a certain degree of cold, the muscles grow rigid, and the irritable power is destroyed; thence proceeds their apparent death. Cold more intense freezes the muscles; freezing destroys the power of irritability, and real death is the consequence. The muscular flesh is then discovered to be full of icicles; and, when one attempts to twist or bend it, fracture ensues, as of a friable substance. DALYELL'S Spallanzani, vol. i. p. 97.

1287. Every salt, in crystallizing, invariably assumes its own peculiar form. You may dissolve common salt, or saltpetre, a thousand times, and crystallize them as often by evaporating or cooling the water in which they are dissolved, yet will you still find the common salt will be constantly crystallized in the form of a cube, and the saltpetre in the form of a prism; and if you examine with a microscope such saline particles as are not visible to the naked eye, you will observe these particles to be of the same shape with the larger masses. The definite figure appropriate to every particular species of salt, may admit a little variety from the accidental admixture of other bodies, or from some singular circumstances attending the evaporation and crystallization of the solution; but these varieties are foreign to the nature of the salt, and are not greater than what attend almost every species of vegetables, and even of animals, from change of food and climate.

ON THE RESURRECTION.

1290. [Luke xxiii. 43.] And Jesus said to him (the thief on the cross), Verily I say to thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

As soon as a man dies, and the corporeal parts grow cold, he is raised up into life; and, on this occasion, into the state of all his sensations: so that, at first, he scarcely knows any other than that he is still in the body. The sensations in which he is, lead him so to believe. But, when he perceives that he has sensations more exquisite, and especially when he begins to discourse with other spirits, he then takes notice that he is in the other life, and that the death of his body was the continuation of the life of his spirit.

There are few that, when they come into the other life, instantly enter heaven. They tarry awhile beneath heaven, that those things of terrestrial and corporeal loves, which they have brought with them from the world, may be wiped away; and that they may be thus prepared to be capable of being in society with angels. The case is similar with the men of all the earths. After their decease, they are at first beneath heaven, among spirits. When they are prepared, they then become angels.

In the other life, the passage from world to world is effected in a moment; and they who have been, in the world, in any conjunction by love, by friendship, or by veneration, meet together and discourse when they desire it.

SWEDENBORG'S Arcana, nn. 4622, 8029, 9104.

1291. Every man after death first enters the world of spirits, which is in the midst between heaven and hell; and there goes through his times or states, till he is prepared according to his life either for heaven or hell. So long as he abides in that world, he is called a spirit: he who is taken up from that world into heaven, is called an angel; but he who is cast down into hell is called a satan or a devil. So long as the same are in the world of spirits, he who is preparing for heaven is called an angelic spirit; and he who is preparing for hell, an infernal spirit. The angelic spirit, in the mean time, is in conjunction with heaven; and the infernal spirit, with hell.

SWEDENBORG's Divine Love, n. 140.

1292. [Luke xxiii. 43.] Respecting the resurrection, the doctrine of the Essenes was this, That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that souls are immortal, and continue for ever, that they come out of the most subtil air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward.

JOSEPH. Wars, vol. v. b. ii. chap. viii. § 2.

1293. [Luke xii. 2.] When a man comes out of the natural into the spiritual world, which takes place when he dies, he then leaves his externals with his body, and retains his internals which he had treasured up in his spirit; and then, if his internal has been infernal, he appears a devil, even such as he had been as to his spirit, when he lived in the world. SWEDENBORG'S Divine Prov. n. 224.

1294. [1 Cor. xv. 35.] How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? -All the religious of the East, says LOUBURE (in his Hist. of Siam), do truly believe that "there remains something of a man after his death, which subsists independently and separately from his body. But they give extension and figure to that which remains; and attribute to it all the same members, all the same substances, both solid and liquid, which our bodies are composed of. They only suppose, that souls are of a matter subtil enough to escape being seen or handled.”

1295.

PRIESTLEY.

There exists, say the first spiritualists, a luminous, igneous subtil fluid, which, under the name of ether or spirit, fills the universe. According to their account, when an earthly body is to be animated, a small round particle of this fluid enters and entirely fills it, until by death its gross elements begin to dissolve, when this incorruptible particle takes its leave, and, retaining the shape of the body, becomes a phantom or ghost, the perfect representation of the deceased. (VOLNEY.)

See MACROBIUS, Som. Scip. passim.

1296. [1 Cor. xv. 35.] The determinate hour of death, says Seneca, is not the last to the soul, but to the body: his words are, Hora illa decretoria non est animo suprema, sed corpori. And, as Lactantius tells us, Chrysippus used to affirm that after death, within a short period of time, we shall be restored into the same form in which we now are,"eis ho nun esmen apokastastesesthai schema” (Grk.). See KNATCHBULL, on 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21.

1297. [Matt. xii. 36.] A man, after death, does not lose the smallest portion of any thing which has ever been either in his exterior or interior memory so that no circumstance can be conceived so small and trifling, as not to be reserved with him. He leaves nothing behind him at death but the bones and flesh, which, during his life in the world, were not animated of themselves, but received animation from the life of his spirit, annexed for that end to his corporeal parts. 1 Cor. xv. 50. SWEDENBORG's Arcana, n. 2475.

1298. [1 Cor. xv. 51. We shall all be changed] Recollecting here the change which takes place in the life of Caterpillars, silk-worms, &c. by the casting of their external bodies, the intelligent reader will be pleased to see the idea of man's change by death still further illustrated by the following description of a most singular insect. "Towards the mouth of the river Maese, and in the Leck, the Wahal, and other branches of the Khine, is annually found an extraordinary sort of insect, called an Ephemeron, remarkable for the shortness of its life, which the name implies. It is a kind of fly, having four wings, six legs, and two straight hairy tails. Midsummer is the usual time of its appearance, and it lives only five or six hours, being born about six in the evening, and dying about eleven at night; but it must be observed, that before it assumes the figure of a fly, it lives three years under that of a worm, in a little cell of clay. It begins its change by shedding its coat, which being done, and the animal thereby rendered light and nimble, it spends the few hours of its life in playing about the surface of the waters; on which the female drops her eggs, and then expires.

SMITH'S Wonders.

1299. [1 Cor. xv. 44.] The institutes of Menu assert, that the vital souls of those men who have committed sins in the body, shall certainly, after death, assume another body, composed of nerves, with five sensations, in order to be the more susceptible of torment; and being intimately united with those minute nervous particles, according to their distribution, they shall feel, in that new body, the pangs inflicted in each by the sentence of Yama.

See FORBES' Oriental Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 22.

1300. [1 John iii. 2.] The esse of an angel is that which is called his soul; his existere is that which is called his body;

and the proceeding from both is that which is called the sphere of his life. By this trine an angel is an image of God. SWEDENBORG, on the Athanasian Creed, n. 18. p. 43.

1301. [2 Pet. i. 4.] That all-pervading Spirit, that spirit which gives light to the visible sun, even the same in kind am I, though infinitely distant in degree. Let my sou! return to the immortal spirit of God, and then let my body, which ends in ashes, return to dust! (Extracted from the Vedas, in the Works of Sir W. JONES, vol. vi. p. 425.) Pythagoras taught that human souls are portions of the Divine substance.

See CICERO de Natur. Deor. l. i. -MINUT. FELIX, p. 151. —LACTANT. l. i. c. 5.

1302. [1 Cor. xv. 52.]

solid or aqueous matter that, by an extreme comminution, is capable of suspension in this aerial fluid. ACCUM'S Chem. vol. i. p. 14.

1305. [Rev. xxi. 18.] The atmosphere is composed of twenty-seven parts of oxygen gas and twenty-three of azote or nitrogen gas, which are simply diffused together, but which, when combined, become nitrous acid. Water consists of eighty-six parts oxygen, and fourteen parts of hydrogen or inflammable air, in a state of combination. It is also probable, that much oxygen enters the composition of glass; as those materials which promote vitrification, contain so much of it, as miuinm and manganese; and that glass is hence a solid acid in the temperature of our atmosphere, as water is a fluid one.

DARWIN'S Temple of Nature, canto iii. l. 13.

Heaven in loud thunders bids the trumpet sound,
And wide beneath them groaus the rending ground.
POPE'S Iliad, b. xxi. l. 452-3.

Those very elements, which we partake
Alive, when dead some other bodies make;
Translated grow, have sense, or can discourse;
But death on deathless substance has no force.

OVID'S Metamorph. b. xv. l. 394.

1306. [Rev. xxi. 1.] No one gas is capable of retaining another in water: it escapes, not indeed instantly, as in a vacnum; but gradually, as carbonic acid escapes into the atmosphere from the bottom of a cavity communicating with it. DALTON'S Chem. Philos. part 1. p. 202.

Consequently the different gases, all but one, rise to their respective altitudes above the watery atmosphere.

HEAVEN, HELL, AND THE INTERMEDIATE STATE

[John xiv. 2.] In my Father's house are many mansions.

The heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot contain God. 1 Kings viii. 27.

I knew a man in Christ caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man caught up into paradise. 2 Cor. xii. 2, 3.

1303. [Luke xii. 56, 57.] As men are educated, they can neither understand, nor believe any thing; for of those things they are taught to believe, they do not begin with evidence to prove them, they do not so much as know, by what rules things are to be proved, but go upon other people's words, and so never come to any certainty in any point: they treat the Scriptures as they have been learned to treat Heathen Stories, to find out the constructions of words; but offer not to seek for the evidence of the facts, or the intention of the Author, or what effects it is to have upon them.

HUTCHINSON'S Religion of Satan, p.

83.

1304. [Isai. xl. 22.] Around our earth, to a great but unknown height, is circumfused an atmosphere of an impalpable gaseous fluid, intermingled with portions of every