Divine Love and Wisdom (Rogers) n. 273

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273. (1) The natural mind which is caught up in evils and their resulting falsities is a form of and image of hell. We cannot describe here the nature of the natural mind as it exists in its substantial form in a person, or as it exists in its form woven of substances from both worlds in the brain, where that mind resides in its first elements. An overall idea of that form will be presented in subsequent discussions when we come to take up the correspondence of the mind and body. Here we will say something about its form only in respect to its states and their changes which produce perceptions, thoughts, intentions, purposes, and other effects connected with them. For it is in respect to these that the natural mind which is caught up in evils and their resulting falsities is a form of and image of hell. This form presupposes a substantial form as the objective reality of which it is predicated, for changes of state are impossible without a substantial form as their subject, just as sight is impossible without an eye, or hearing without an ear. [2] As regards the form or image, therefore, in which the natural mind resembles hell, that form or image is such that the dominant love with its lusts-which is the universal state of this mind-is as the devil is in hell, and the thoughts of falsity arising from that dominant love are as the devil's crew. Nor is anything else meant in the Word by the devil and his crew. The case with each is also the same, for in hell the love of ruling from the love of self is the dominant love. This love is there called the devil, and the affections for falsity arising from that love with their accompanying thoughts are called his crew. It is the same in every society of hell, with diversities like the diversities found in species of the same genus. In the same form, too, is the natural mind which is caught up in evils and their resulting falsities. Consequently the natural person who is of such a character comes also after death into a society of hell like him, and he then acts in concert with it in each and every thing that he does. For he comes into his own form, that is, into the states of his own mind. [3] Subordinate to the first love called the devil is another love as well, called Satan. This is a love of possessing the goods of others by any evil art whatever. Clever malicious practices and cunning devices are its crew. People who are in this latter hell are in general called satanic spirits, while people in the first hell are in general called devils; and those who do not act there in a clandestine manner do not deny their name. It is in consequence of this that the hells collectively are called the devil and Satan. [4] The hells have been distinguished in general into two in accordance with these two loves for the reason that the heavens have all been distinguished into two kingdoms-the celestial kingdom and spiritual kingdom-in accordance with their two loves. The diabolic hell by opposition corresponds to the celestial kingdom, and the satanic hell by opposition corresponds to the spiritual kingdom. (That the heavens have been distinguished into two kingdoms-the celestial kingdom and spiritual kingdom-may be seen in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 20-28.) The natural mind which is as described is in its form a hell for the reason that every spiritual form in the greatest and least of its occurrences is the same. So it is that every angel is a heaven in smaller form (as we showed also in the book Heaven and Hell, nos. 51-58). It follows from this that every person or spirit who is a devil or satan is a hell in smaller form.


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