nobleness.

From the Mineral Kingdom:--In the bosom of the earth in certain places
there are minerals impregnated with gold, silver, copper, and iron.
From vapors stored up in the earth the gold attracts its element, silver
its element, copper and iron theirs, distinctly, together, and on the
instant, and this by means of some power of unknown heat.

As it is allowable to illustrate spiritual things by means of
comparisons drawn from natural things, these will serve to illustrate
how interior things, which are spiritual and celestial, and by which a
man of the church has communication and conjunction with the heavens,
can be drawn and called forth and extracted and eliminated from the Word
in its outmosts, that is, the sense of the letter. Comparisons can be
made with these, because all things in the three kingdoms of nature,
animal, vegetable, and mineral, correspond to the spiritual things that
are in the three heavens, as the food of the body with which a
comparison has been made, corresponds to the food of the soul, which is
knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom; a tree, with which also a
comparison has been made, corresponds to man, the tree to man himself,
the wood to his good, the leaves to his truths, and the fruits to his
uses; so, too, gold, silver, copper, and iron, correspond to goods and
truths, gold to celestial good, silver to spiritual truth, copper to
natural good, and iron to natural truth. Moreover, these things have
these significations in the Word. And what is wonderful, the purer are
contained in the grosser and are drawn from them, as the animal spirit
and the nerve fluid are contained in blood from which the original
substances and nerve fibers draw and extract their distinct portions.
So, again, fruits and leaves draw theirs from the gross fluid that is
brought up from the soil by the wood and its bark, and so on. Thus
comparatively, as has been said, the purer senses of the Word are drawn
and called forth from the sense of the letter. (A.E., n. 1084.)

VII. The Sense of the Letter

As there are three senses in the Word, a natural, a spiritual, and a
celestial, and as its natural sense, which is the sense of the letter,
is a containment of the two senses, the spiritual and celestial, it
follows that the sense of the letter of the Word is the basis of those
senses. And as the angels of the three heavens receive their wisdom
from the Lord through the Word that they have, and as their Words ma