Thinking and Concluding from Ends and Causes

Excerpt from Conjugial Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

To think and conclude from what is interior or prior is to do so from ends and causes to effects; but to think and conclude from what is exterior or subsequent is to do so from effects to causes and ends. The latter procedure is contrary to order, the former according to order.

For to think and conclude from ends and causes is to do so from goods and truths, seen clearly in the higher region of the mind, to effects in the lower. Such is human rationality by creation. 

To think and conclude from effects is to conjecture causes and ends from the lower region of the mind, where are the sensuous things of the body with their appearances and fallacies. This in itself is nothing else than to confirm falsities and lusts, and after their confirmation to see and believe them to be verities of wisdom and goodnesses of the love of wisdom.

(excerpt from Conjugial Love 408)

God Perceives, Knows, and Sees

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

From the things that are according to order, God perceives, knows, and sees each and all things even to the most minute that take place contrary to order - because He does not keep man in evil, but withholds him from evil. He does not lead him on, but strives with him.

From this perpetual striving, struggling, resistance, repugnance, and reaction of evil and falsity against His good and truth, thus against Himself, God perceives both their quantity and their quality. This follows from God's omnipresence in all things and in each thing of His order, and also from His perfect knowledge of each thing and all things of it, comparatively as one with an ear for harmony and consonance notices accurately what is inharmonious and dissonant, when it comes in, also the extent and character of the discord; or as one whose feelings are occupied with what is delightful detects the intrusion of what is undelightful; or as one whose eye is occupied with what is beautiful notices it with more precision when anything unshapely is beside it; for which reason it is customary for painters to place an ugly face beside a beautiful one. It is the same with good and truth when evil and falsity are striving against them; since -

from good and truth evil and falsity are distinctly perceived.

For everyone who is in good can perceive evil; and he who is in truth can see falsity.

And the reason is that good is in the heat of heaven, and truth is in its light; while evil is in the cold of hell, and falsity in its darkness.

This may be illustrated by the fact that the angels of heaven can see whatever is done in hell, and what kind of monsters exist there; while, on the other hand, the spirits of hell can see nothing whatever that is going on in heaven; they can no more see the angels than if they were blind, or were gazing into the empty air or ether.

Those whose understandings are in light from wisdom are like men who at midday are standing upon a mountain and seeing clearly all that is below; while those who are in still superior light are comparatively like men who see, through telescopes, outlying and lower objects as if they were near at hand. But those who are in the false light of hell, through the confirmation of falsities, are like men standing upon the same mountain at night with lanterns in their hands, who see only the objects nearest to them, and these with forms indistinct and colors confused. A man who is in some light of truth, although in evil of life, while he finds delight in his love of evil, sees truths at first much as a bat sees linen hanging in a garden, to which it flies as to a place of refuge. Afterwards he becomes like a bird of night, and at length like a screech-owl. Then he becomes like a chimney-sweep sticking fast in the gloom of a chimney, and seeing, when he looks upward, the sky through smoke, and when downward the hearth from which the smoke comes.

It must be remembered that the perception of opposites is different from the perception of relatives; for opposites are things without, and are opposed to things within.

An opposite has its beginning where one thing wholly ceases to be anything, and another then arises with an effort to act against the former, as when a wheel acts against another wheel, or a current against another current.

But relatives pertain to the arrangement of many and various parts in an order that is concordant and harmonious, like precious stones of various colors in the stomacher of a queen, or like flowers of different colors arranged in a garland to give pleasure to the sight.

Therefore in both of these opposites there are relatives, that is, in what is good as well as in what is evil, in what is true as well as in what is false, thus both in heaven and in hell, all the relatives in hell being the opposites of the relatives in heaven. Since, then, from the order in which He is, God perceives and sees and is cognizant of all things relative in heaven, and thereby perceives, sees, and is cognizant of all the opposite relatives in hell (as follows from what has been said), it is clear that God is omniscient in hell as well as in heaven, and in like manner with men in the world; thus that He perceives, sees, and is cognizant of their evils and falsities from the good and truth in which He Himself is, and which in their essence are Himself; for we read:

If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there (Ps. 139:8);

and again:

Though they dig into hell, thence shall My hand take them (Amos 9:2).

(True Christian Religion 61-62)

Charity - The Principal of Faith

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

When a man deprives himself of charity, he separates himself from the Lord, since it is solely charity, that is, love toward the neighbor, and mercy, that conjoin man with the Lord.

Where there is no charity, there is disjunction, and where there is disjunction, man is left to himself or to his Own; and then whatever he thinks is false, and whatever he wills is evil.

These are the things that slay man, or cause him to have nothing of life remaining.

The state of evil spirits in the other life shows most clearly that those who are in evil and falsity are afraid of everybody. Those who have deprived themselves of all charity wander about, and flee from place to place. Wherever they go, if to any societies, these at once perceive their character by their mere coming, for such is the perception that exists in the other life; and they not only drive them away, but also severely punish them, and with such animosity that they would kill them if they could. Evil spirits take the greatest delight in punishing and tormenting one another; it is their highest gratification. Not until now has it been known that evil and falsity themselves are the cause of this, -

for whatever anyone desires for another returns upon himself.

Falsity has in itself the penalty of falsity, and evil has in itself the penalty of evil, and consequently they have in themselves the fear of these penalties.

The Most Ancient Church was of such a character as to acknowledge no faith except that which is of love, insomuch that they were unwilling even to mention faith, for through love from the Lord they perceived all things that belong to faith. ... But as it was foreseen that the human race could not be of this character, but would separate faith from love to the Lord, and would make of faith a doctrine by itself, it was provided that they should indeed be separated, but in such a way that through faith, that is, through the knowledges of faith, men might receive from the Lord charity, so that knowledge [cognitio] or hearing should come first, and then through knowledge or hearing, charity, that is, love toward the neighbor, and mercy, might be given by the Lord, which charity should not only be inseparable from faith, but should also constitute the principal of faith. 

And then instead of the perception they had in the Most Ancient Church, there succeeded conscience, acquired through faith joined to charity, which dictated not what is true, but that it is true, and this because the Lord has so said in the Word. The churches after the flood were for the most part of this character, as also was the primitive or first church after the Lord's advent, and by this the spiritual angels are distinguished from the celestial.

(selections from Arcana Coelestia 389-393)