4046. CONCERNING LOVE. That love is the fundamental principle from which and by which heaven exists and subsists, is evident from the circumstance, that there must be such harmony and unanimity, and hence so universal a consociation, that the whole heaven, the whole world of spirits, that is, the whole human race from its first creation, should form a ONE, as all and every particular in man, in whom there are indefinite things, forms one body, and thus constitutes one man; in which body if anything were to prefer itself to any other thing, and not to love another thing better than itself [it could not subsist]. He who is in genuine love has an idea of the common good and of the universal human race, in respect to which every individual man should be as nothing, as is known; wherefore unless a man regards himself as associated with his fellow, and esteems himself as nothing in respect to the common good, and love his neighbor better than himself, he can by no means be in the unanimous body [heaven], but he necessarily expels himself from it, so much as he removes himself from that love. - 1748, November 23.