this he sees as clearly as with his bodily eyes. Moreover the enormous
distance of the rational inhabitants of the world is to be accounted
as nothing in relation to the spiritual universe; and to talk with an
inhabitant of Saturn is just as easy to him as to speak with a
departed human soul. All depends upon the relation of their inner
condition in reference to their agreement in truth and goodness: but
those spirits, which have weak affinities for each other, can readily
come into intercourse through the inter-agency of others. On this
account it is not necessary that a man should actually have dwelt on
all the other heavenly bodies in order to know them together with all
their wonders.

One presiding doctrine in Swedenborg's ravings is this: corporeal
beings have no subsistence of their own, but exist merely by and
through the spiritual world; although each body not by means of one
spirit alone, but of all taken together. Hence the knowledge of
material things has two meanings; an external meaning referring to the
inter-dependencies of the matter upon itself, and an internal meaning
in so far as they denote the powers of the spiritual world which are
their causes. Thus the body of man has a system of parts related to
each other agreeably to material laws: but, in so far as it is
supported by the spirit which lives, its limbs and their functions
have a symbolic value as expressions of those faculties in the soul
from which they derive their form, mode of activity, and power of
enduring. The same law holds with regard to all other things in the
visible universe: they have (as has been said) one meaning as
things--which is trivial, and another as signs--which is far
weightier. Hence by the way arises the source of those new
interpretations of Scripture which Swedenborg has introduced. For the
inner sense,--that is, the symbolic relation of all things there
recorded to the spiritual world,--is, as he conceits, the kernel of
its value; all the rest being only its shell. All spirits represent
themselves to one another under the appearance of extended forms; and
the influences of all these spiritual beings amongst one another raise
to them at the same time appearances of other extended beings, and as
it were of a material world. Swedenborg therefore speaks of
gardens--spacious regions--mansions--galleries--and arcades of
spirits--as of things seen by himself in the clearest light; and he
assures us--that, having many tim