The philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg : God, Man and the cosmos

tion of protons and electrons brings about a kind of adhesion and, according to which elements are thus combined arise the different forms of physical substance. There is a kind of ‘mating’, a ‘marriage’ of elements, which give rise to new forms, so that, even in the mineral kingdom, there is an embryonic likeness to the human form and to the union in God of Love with Wisdom.

The mineral kingdom acts, too, as a matrix—as a kind of womb into which the creative life of God is received, and by means of which, by the addition of something not intrinsic to that kingdom but extrinsic to it, the world of plants emerges. This new kingdom of vegetation likewise tends to the human form, for the core of it is the effort to produce fruit and seed. The very forms of vegetative life, as they ascend the ladder of development, approximate even more nearly to the human form, so that the tree has its trunk and limbs and reproduces itself by its seeds, to which the earth acts as a kind of foster-mother.

With the animal kingdom and increasingly as animal forms of life are perfected, the creative influent life manifests its essentially human qualities in animal affections and innate knowledge of all things necessary to its life. There are love and matings, reproduction and love of offspring. Whatever may be the nature of that which differentiates animal from plant, it is extraneous to the mineral and vegetative kingdoms. Produced, each in its turn and order, through and by means of the preceding kingdom, what is thus produced is new and unique. The animal is formed to receive its life from God with more of its human qualities than either of the kingdoms through and by means of which, as agent, it is

created,

The creation of man follows the same clearly defined pattern. His body is based upon and contains all the elements of the three kingdoms of Nature. In him are collated mineral, vegetable and animal elements which make him truly a microcosm—a world in miniature. But more significantly than his body, the spirit or mind of man is so formed and organized that he can be the

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