(Continuation)

[2] The particular evidences that furnish like testimony are still more numerous and more striking. With some kinds of animals these are such that a sensual man, whose thoughts are confined to matter, compares the things pertaining to beasts with those pertaining to man, and from foolish intelligence concludes that their states of life are similar, even after death, insisting that if man lives after death, animals do also, or if animals die man also dies. The evidences that so testify and by which the sensual man is deluded are that certain animals seem to have prudence and cunning, connubial love, friendship and seeming charity, probity, and benevolence; in a word, a morality the same as with men. For example, dogs, from a genius innate in them, know how to act as faithful guards as if from their own nature; from the transpiration of their master's affection they know as it were his will; they search him out by perceiving the scent of his footsteps and clothes; they know the different quarters and find their way home, even through pathless regions and dense forests; with other like things; from which the sensual man concludes that a dog has knowledge, intelligence and wisdom. Nor is this to be wondered at when he ascribes all such things, both in the dog and in himself, to nature. But the spiritual man on the other hand sees that there is something spiritual that leads, and that this is joined to the natural. [3] These particular evidences, again, are that birds know how to build their nests, to lay eggs in them, to brood over them, to hatch their young, and afterwards from a love called storge to provide for them warmth under their wings and food out of their mouths, until they become clothed with feathers and furnished with wings, when they of themselves come into all the knowledge of their parents from the spiritual which is their soul, and from which they provide for themselves. These particular evidences, again, are all things that are contained in eggs. In the egg the rudiment of a new bird lies hidden, encompassed by every element necessary to the formation of the fetus, from its beginnings in the head to the full formation of all things of the body. Is it possible that nature should provide such things? For this is not only bringing forth, it is also creating; and nature does not create. What has nature in common with life except that life may be clothed by nature, and thus put itself forth and appear in form as an animal? Among particular evidences furnishing the same testimony are those seen in worms of vegetables when in undergoing their metamorphosis, they encompass themselves as with a womb that they may be born again, in which they are changed into nymphs and chrysalises, and after the appointed process of time into beautiful butterflies, when they fly forth into the air as into their heaven; and there the female sports with her male companion like one marriage consort with another, and they nourish themselves with fragrant flowers, and lay their eggs, thus providing that their kind may live after them. A spiritual man sees that this emulates the rebirth of man, and is a representative of his resurrection, and thus is spiritual. [4] Still more striking evidences are seen with bees, which have a government after the form of human governments. They build for themselves little houses of wax according to the rules of art in a series, with commodious passages for transit; they fill the cells with honey collected from flowers; they appoint over themselves a queen to be the common parent of a future race; she dwells above her people in the midst of her guards; and when she is about to bring forth they follow her, with a mixed multitude after them; thus she goes from cell to cell, and lays a little egg in each, and so continually until her matrix is emptied, when she returns to her home; this she does repeatedly. Her guards, which are called drones because they perform no other use than as so many servants to one mistress, and perhaps inspire her with something of amatory desire, and because they do no work, are judged useless; and for this reason, and lest they should seize and consume the gains and work of others, they are brought out and deprived of their wings. Thus the community is purged of its idle members. Moreover, when the new progeny is grown up, they are commanded by a general voice, which is heard as a murmur, to depart and to seek a home and food for themselves. And they go out and collect into a swarm, and institute a like order in a new hive. These and many other things which investigators have discovered and published in books, are not unlike the governments that have been instituted and ordained in kingdoms and commonwealths by human intelligence and wisdom, according to the laws of justice and judgment. Moreover, like men, they know as it were the approach of winter, for which they gather food lest they should die of hunger. Who can deny that such things are from a spiritual origin, or can believe that they can possibly be from any other origin? To me all these things are evidences and proofs of a spiritual influx into natural things, and I have greatly wondered how they could be made evidences and proofs of the operation of nature alone, as they are by certain persons who are deluded by self-intelligence.