Selection from Conjugial Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
LIKE A CHAIN ON LINKS
Good and truth are the universals of creation inasmuch as they are in the Lord God the Creator, indeed are God, for He is Divine Good itself and Divine Truth itself. This may fall more clearly into the perception of the understanding and into the idea of thought, if instead of good we say love, and instead of truth, wisdom. To put it so, there are in the Lord God the Creator, Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, and these are God, that is, He is Love itself and Wisdom itself. These two are the same as good and truth, good being of love, and truth of wisdom, for love consists of goods and wisdom of truths. Since the two sets of terms mean the same thing, in what follows we shall use now one and now the other, intending no difference of meaning. We premise this note, lest the understanding conceive a difference when the terms are used in what follows.
Since, then, the Lord God the Creator is Love itself and Wisdom itself, and the universe was created by Him and is like a work proceeding from Him, something of good and truth from Him cannot but be in each and all created things; for what is made and proceeds from any one, derives from him something similar. Reason can see this from the order impressed upon each and all things of the created universe: one thing is for another, and hence one depends on the other, as a chain on links. For all things are for the sake of the human race, that there may arise from it an angelic heaven, in which creation returns to its Creator, from whom it is; so there is conjunction of the universe with its Creator, and by conjunction everlasting maintenance. Hence it is that good and truth are called the universals of creation. That they are universals, is plain to any reasoning observer. In everything created he sees something referable to good, and something referable to truth.
Good and truth are in created subjects according to the several forms of these for the reason that everything receives influx according to its form. The maintenance of the whole is nothing but the perpetual influx of Divine Good and Divine Truth into forms created by them, for subsistence or maintenance is perpetual existence or creation. The fact that an object receives influx according to its form, may be illustrated by various things,
as by the influx of heat and light from the sun into growths of every kind; each growth receives of these what accords with its form, thus every tree, shrub, herb and grain, each according to its form.Influx is the same into all, but reception according to the form causes each species to continue what it is. We might illustrate the fact further
from the influx into animals of every sort according to the form of each.The simplest person can see that influx is according to form, if he considers various instruments of sound: reed-pipes, flutes, trumpets, horns and organs; all give forth sounds according to their forms under the same afflatus or influx of air.
(Conjugial Love 84-86)