he understanding (as was shown above), and all
the bodily senses derive their perception from their mind's perception.
The same is true of every bodily act; for action from love without
understanding is like man's action in the dark, when he does not know what
he is doing; consequently in such action there would be nothing of
intelligence and wisdom. Such action cannot be called living action, for
action derives its esse from love and its quality from intelligence.
Moreover, the whole power of good is by means of truth; consequently good
acts in truth, and thus by means of truth; and good is of love, and truth
is of the understanding. From all this it can be seen that love or the
will through these three conjunctions (see above, n. 404) is in its
sensitive life and in its active life.

407. That this is so can be proved to the life by the conjunction of the
heart with the lungs, because the correspondence between the will and
the heart, and between the understanding and the lungs, is such that just
as the love acts with the understanding spiritually, so does the heart
act with the lungs naturally: from this, what has been said above can be
seen as in an image presented to the eye. That man has neither any
sensitive life nor any active life, so long as the heart and the lungs
do not act together, is evident from the state of the fetus or the infant
in the womb, and from its state after birth. So long as man is a fetus,
that is, in the womb, the lungs are closed, wherefore he has no feeling
nor any action; the organs of sense are closed up, the hands are bound,
likewise the feet; but after birth the lungs are opened, and as they are
opened man feels and acts; the lungs are opened by means of the blood
sent into them from the heart. That man has neither sensitive life nor
active life without the co-operation of the heart and the lungs, is
evident also in swoons, when the heart alone acts, and not the lungs,
for respiration then ceases; in this case there is no sensation and no
action, as is well known. It is the same with persons suffocated, either
by water or by anything obstructing the larynx and closing the respiratory
passage; it is well-known that the man then appears to be dead, he feels
nothing and does nothing; and yet he is alive in the heart; for he returns
to both his sensitive and his active life as soon as the obstructions to
the lungs are removed. The blood, it is true, circulates in the meantime
through the l