nfantile mind, a like innocence in ignorance, and a
like tenderness in all things. They are merely in the rudiments of a
capacity to become angels, for children are not angels but become
angels. For everyone passing out of this world enters the other in
the same state of life, a little child in the state of a little
child, a boy in the state of a boy, a youth, a man, an old man, in
the state of a youth, a man, or an old man; but subsequently each
one's state is changed. The state of little children surpasses the
state of all others in that they are in innocence, and evil has not
yet been rooted in them by actual life; and in innocence all things
of heaven can be implanted, for it is a receptacle of the truth of
faith and of the good of love.

331. The state of children in the other life far surpasses their
state in the world, for they are not clothed with an earthly body,
but with such a body as the angels have. The earthly body is in
itself gross, and receives its first sensations and first motions not
from the inner or spiritual world, but from the outer or natural
world; and in consequence in this world children must be taught to
walk, to guide their motions, and to speak; and even their senses, as
seeing and hearing, must be opened by use. It is not so with children
in the other life. As they are spirits they act at once in accordance
with their interiors, walking without practice, and also talking, but
at first from general affections not yet distinguished into ideas of
thought; but they are quickly initiated into these also, for the
reason that their exteriors are homogeneous with their interiors. The
speech of angels (as may be seen above, n, 234-245) so flows forth
from affection modified by ideas of thought that their speech
completely conforms to their thoughts from affection.

332. As soon as little children are resuscitated, which takes place
immediately after death, they are taken into heaven and confided to
angel women who in the life of the body tenderly loved little
children and at the same time loved God. Because these during their
life in the world loved all children with a kind of motherly
tenderness, they receive them as their own; while the children, from
an implanted instinct, love them as their own mothers. There are as
many children in each one's care as she desires from a spiritual
parental affection. This heaven appears in front before the forehead,
directly in the line or radius in which