, and the
interiors are governed by the Lord alone through His divine providence
and the few external by the Lord also together with man, how can anyone
assert that one's own prudence does all things? Were you to see just one
idea laid open, you would see astounding things, more than tongue can
tell.

[3] It is clear from the endless things in the body that there are so
many things in the mind's interiors that the number cannot be given, and
nothing of them comes to sight or sense except only a much simplified
action. Yet to the action thousands of motor or muscular fibres
contribute, and thousands of nerve fibres, thousands of blood-vessels,
thousands of cells in the lungs which must cooperate in every action,
thousands in the brains and in the spinal cord, and many more things
still in the spiritual man which is the human mind, in which all things
are forms of affections and of perceptions and thoughts from the
affections. Does not the soul, which disposes the interiors, dispose the
actions also which spring from them? Man's soul is nothing else than the
love of his will and the resulting love of his understanding; such as
this love is the whole man is, becoming so according to the disposition
he makes of his externals in which he and the Lord are together.
Therefore, if he attributes all things to himself and to nature,
self-love becomes the soul; but if he attributes all things to the Lord,
love to the Lord becomes the soul; this love is heavenly, the other
infernal.

200. Inasmuch as the enjoyments of his affections, from inmosts down
through interiors to exteriors and finally to outermost things in the
body, bear man along as wave and wind bear a ship; and inasmuch as
nothing of this is apparent to man except what takes place in the
outermost things of the mind and the body, how can he claim for himself
what is divine on the strength merely of the fact that those few
outermost things seem to be his own? Even less should he claim what is
divine for himself, knowing from the Word that a man can receive nothing
of himself unless it is given by heaven; and knowing from reason that
this appearance has been granted him in order to live as a human being,
see what is good and evil, choose between them, and appropriate his
choice to himself that he may be united reciprocally with the Lord, be
reformed, regenerated and saved, and live forever. It has been stated and
shown above that this appearance has been granted to man