Affections, Both Good and Evil

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens the man and his wife; and of the beast that is not clean by twos, the man and his wife. Genesis 7:2

By "every clean beast" are signified affections of good
  • By "sevens" is signified that they are holy
     • By "man and his wife" that the truths were conjoined with goods.

By the "beast not clean" are signified evil affections
  • By "two" that they are relatively profane
    • By "man and wife" falsities conjoined with evils.

That affections of good are signified by "every clean beast"...

The reason why affections are thus signified is that man in himself, and regarded in what is his own, is nothing but a beast. He has very similar senses, appetites, desires; and all his affections are very similar. His good, nay, even his best loves, are very similar - as the love for companions of his own kind, the love of his children, and of his wife; so that they do not at all differ.

But his being man, and more than beast, consists in his having an interior life, which beasts never have nor can have. This life is the life of faith and love from the Lord. And if this life were not within everything that he has in common with beasts, he would not be anything else.

Take only one example-love toward companions: if he should love them only for the sake of himself, and there were nothing more heavenly or Divine in his love, he could not from this be called a man, because it is the same with beasts. And so with all the rest.

If therefore there were not the life of love from the Lord in his will, and the life of faith from the Lord in his understanding, he would not be a man.

By virtue of the life which he has from the Lord he lives after death; because the Lord adjoins him to Himself. And thus he can be in His heaven with the angels, and live to eternity.

Even if a man lives as a wild beast, and loves nothing whatever but himself and what regards himself, yet so great is the Lord's mercy - for it is Divine and Infinite - that He does not leave him, but continually breathes into him His own life, through the angels; and even supposing that he receives it no otherwise, it still causes him to be able to think, to reflect, to understand whether a thing is good or evil - in relation to what is moral, civil, worldly, or corporeal - and therefore whether it is true or false.

As the most ancient people knew, and when they were in self-humiliation acknowledged, that they were nothing but beasts and wild beasts, and were men solely by virtue of what they had from the Lord, therefore whatever pertained to themselves they not only likened to but called beasts and birds

• things of the will they compared to beasts, and called beasts
• things of the understanding they compared to and called birds.

But they distinguished between good affections and evil affections. Good affections they compared to lambs, sheep, kids, she-goats, he-goats, rams, heifers, oxen-for the reason that they were good and gentle, and serviceable to life, since they could be eaten, and their skins and wool could furnish clothing. These are the principal clean beasts. But those which are evil and fierce, and not serviceable to life, are unclean beasts.

(Arcana Coelestia 713 - 715)