683. It happened, when I was picturing [these things] to spirits around me by a spiritual display - specifically, by depicting ideas as forms of forces, which in turn consisted or were built up of myriads of things unseen, and each of these, of myriads of myriads of more inward ones - that then, because souls and spirits are sensitive to such depictions, immediately it was as if they had gone out of their minds, as one of them who was with me admitted. He did not know how they could help perishing from insanity. For if this is the case, [they thought] nothing of life would be left [to them], and even if there were, they would still have no spiritual life coming into them. So a life like that, devoid of a living spiritual influence, is comparable to the life of vegetation, in which there is life, to be sure, but a kind called vegetative. Therefore all things even in the vegetable kingdom reflect the Kingdom of the Lord, each in its own way; in fact, they reflect the human being, having lungs and the rest, as is known. Hence the Divine is in the vegetable kingdom, but without animate life. 1748, 8 February.