and thus
corroborated by the correspondence of the heart with love and of the
lungs with the understanding (of which above). For if the heart
corresponds to love, its determinations, which are arteries and veins,
correspond to affections, and in the lungs to affections for truth; and
as there are also other vessels in the lungs called air vessels, whereby
respiration is carried on, these vessels correspond to perceptions. It
must be distinctly understood that the arteries and veins in the lungs
are not affections, and that respirations are not perceptions and thoughts,
but that they are correspondences, that is, they act correspondently or
synchronously; likewise that the heart and the lungs are not the love and
understanding, but correspondences: and inasmuch as they are
correspondences the one can be seen in the other. Whoever from anatomy
has come to understand the whole structure of the lungs can see clearly,
when he compares it with the understanding, that the understanding does
not act at all by itself, does not perceive nor think by itself, but acts
wholly by affections which are of love. These, in the understanding, are
called affection for knowing, for understanding, and for seeing truth
(which have been treated of above). For all states of the lungs depend
on the blood from the heart and from the vena cava and aorta; and
respirations, which take place in the bronchial branches, proceed in
accordance with the state of those vessels; for when the flow of the blood
stops, respiration stops. Much more may be disclosed by comparing the
structure of the lungs with the understanding, to which the lungs
correspond; but as few are familiar with anatomical science, and to try
to demonstrate or prove anything by what is unknown renders it obscure,
it is not well to say more on this subject. By what I know of the structure
of the lungs I am fully convinced that love through its affections conjoins
itself to the understanding, and that the understanding does not conjoin
itself to any affection of love, but that it is reciprocally conjoined by
love, to the end that love may have sensitive life and active life. But
it must not be forgotten that man has a twofold respiration, one of the
spirit and another of the body; and that the respiration of the spirit
depends on the fibers from the brains, and the respiration of the body
on the blood-vessels from the heart, and from the vena cava and aorta. It
is evident, moreover, that t
|