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

one single man, ‘Maximus Homo’—the Grand or Greatest Man; and that His Providential Government of the entire human race is as the government of each individual by his brain and its derivatives into the very ultimates of his body.

Between man’s bodily organs and his mind or spirit with its organs, there exists a relationship which Swedenborg calls ‘Correspondence’. This may be defined as the organic relationship of spiritual cause with natural effect. Thus, the heart and lungs are the corresponding physical organs of the will and intellect, which are the vital organs of the spirit. This is actually a cause and effect relationship, since the motions of the heart and lungs are both derived from and dependent upon the life of the will and the understanding.

A like correspondence could be shown to exist between every part and organ of man’s body and his mind or spirit—as e.g. the liver, the organ of purification, with the rational mind with its power of discrimination; of the pancreas, bladder and spleen; of hands and feet with the deeds initiated and done by the affections of the heart and the thoughts of the mind. So intimate is this connection between soul and body, that Swedenborg declares that while the primary habitation of the soul is in the brain, it nevertheless dwells in every part of the body while yet it remains distinct from the body, which can only live by virtue of the spirit within it and dies when its primary organs, the heart and the lungs, can no longer re-act to the inflowing life from the Will and Understanding.

As it is with man the individual, so.is it with man in the ageregate. Every race of mankind, every nation, every community, is created of such a particular genius and disposition that they perform in the whole body of mankind, spiritual uses which do for mankind, in its wholeness, what the functions of organs of the body do for the individual. The correspondence is with

function or use, not with shape. The human race is itself an organic human organism—one grand or greatest Man. In its perfection in the heavens, in less degrees of 13