He attempts to give some account of the modus
of the new state, affirming that "his presence in the spiritual world
is attended with a certain separation, but only as to the intellectual
part of his mind, not as to the will part;" and he affirms that "he
sees, with the internal sight, the things that are in another life,
more clearly than he sees the things which are here in the world."
Having adopted the belief that certain books of the Old and New
Testaments were exact allegories, or written in the angelic and ecstatic
mode, he employed his remaining years in extricating from the literal,
the universal sense. He had borrowed from Plato the fine fable of "a
most ancient people, men better than we, and dwelling nigher to the
gods;" and Swedenborg added, that they used the earth symbolically;
that these, when they saw terrestrial objects, did not think at all
about them, but only about those which they signified. The
correspondence between thoughts and things henceforward occupied him.
"The very organic form resembles the end inscribed on it." A man is
in general, and in particular, an organizd justice or injustice,
selfishness or gratitude.
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