d time there are states of life, instead of spaces
such things as have reference to states of love, and instead of times
such things as have reference to states of wisdom. From this it is that
spiritual thought, and spiritual speech therefrom, differ so much from
natural thought and natural speech therefrom, as to have nothing in
common except as regards the interiors of things, which are all spiritual.
Of this difference more will be said elsewhere. Now, because the thoughts
of angels derive nothing from space and time, but everything from states
of life, when it is said that the Divine fills spaces angels evidently
cannot comprehend it, for they do not know what spaces are; but when,
apart from any idea of space, it is said that the Divine fills all things,
they clearly comprehend it.
71. To make it clear that the merely natural man thinks of spiritual and
Divine things from space, and the spiritual man apart from space, let the
following serve for illustration. The merely natural man thinks by means
of ideas which he has acquired from objects of sight, in all of which
there is figure partaking of length, breadth, and height, and of shape
determined by these, either angular or circular. These [conceptions] are
manifestly present in the ideas of his thought concerning things visible
on earth; they are also in the ideas of his thought concerning those not
visible, such as civil and moral affairs. This he is unconscious of; but
they are nevertheless there, as continuations. With a spiritual man it
is different, especially with an angel of heaven, whose thought has
nothing in common with figure and form that derives anything from
spiritual length, breadth, and height, but only with figure and form
derived from the state of a thing resulting from the state of its life.
Consequently, instead of length of space he thinks of the good of a thing
from good of life; instead of breadth of space, of the truth of a thing
from truth of life; and instead of height, of the degrees of these. Thus
he thinks from the correspondence there is between things spiritual and
things natural. From this correspondence it is that in the Word "length"
signifies the good of a thing, "breadth" the truth of a thing, and
"height" the degrees of these. From this it is evident that an angel of
heaven, when he thinks of the Divine Omnipresence, can by no means think
otherwise than that the Divine, apart from space, fills all things. And
that which an ange
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