thing is the same as another nor can be to
eternity. The eye beholds this in the variety of human faces ever since
creation; in the variety of minds, of which faces are types; and in the
variety of affections, perceptions and thoughts, for of these the mind
consists. In all heaven, therefore, no two angels or spirits are the
same, nor can be to eternity. The same is true of every object to be seen
in either the natural or the spiritual world. Plainly, the variety is
infinite and eternal.

[3] _An image of the infinite and eternal is manifest in the
fructification and multiplication of all things,_ in the vegetable
kingdom in the capacity implanted in seeds, and in the animal kingdom in
reproduction, especially in the family of fishes. Were the seeds to bear
fruit and the animals to multiply in the measure of ability, they would
fill all the world, even the universe, in a generation. Obviously there
is latent in that ability an endeavor after self-propagation to infinity.
And as fructification and multiplication have not failed from the
beginning of creation and never will, plainly there is in that ability an
endeavor after self-propagation to eternity also.

57. The like is true of human beings as to their affections, which are of
love, and their perceptions, which are of wisdom. The variety of either
is infinite and eternal; so, too, is their fructification and
multiplication, which is spiritual. No person enjoys an affection and
perception so like another's as to be identical with it, nor ever will.
Affections, moreover, may be fructified and perceptions multiplied
without end. Knowledge, it is well known, is inexhaustible. This capacity
of fructification and multiplication without end or to infinity and
eternity exists in natural things with men, in spiritual with the
spiritual angels, and in celestial with the celestial angels. Affections,
perceptions and knowledges have this endless capacity not only in
general, but in every least particular. They have it because they exist
from the infinite and eternal in itself through what is infinite and
eternal from itself. But as the finite has in it nothing of the Divine,
nothing of the kind, not the least, is in the human being as his own. Man
or angel is finite and only a receptacle, by itself dead. Whatever is
living in him is from the proceeding Divine, joined to him by contact,
and appearing in him as if it were his. The truth of this will be seen in
what follows.

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