The Secret of Swedenborg

Certainly we have no right after this to attribute to Swe- denborg an obscure or mystical conception of nature. Nature bears the same servile relation to the spiritual creation that a man's body bears to his soul, that the material of a house bears to the house itself, or that the substance of a statue bears to its form, namely, a merely quantifying, by no means a qualifving, relation. It fills out the spiritual creation, substantiates it, gives it subjective anchorage, fixity, or identification, incorpo- rates it, in a word, just as the marble incorporates the statue. For the statue is primarily an ideal form, affiliating itself to the artist's genius exclusively, and is only derivatively thence f a material existence. So I primarily am a spiritual form, that is to say, a form of affection and thought, directly affiliated to the creative love and wisdom; and what my body does is 26 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOKG.