Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 186

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

186. (2) So, too, the person's internal form, which is the form of his spirit. This form is continually changing as the state of a person's life changes, because nothing exists without being in some form, and its state is what induces the form. It amounts to the same thing, therefore, whether one says that the state of a person's life changes or that his form does. A person's affections and thoughts all exist in forms, and so depend on forms, for forms are their vessels. If they did not exist in vessels that have form, affections and thoughts might be found even in skulls from which the brain has been removed. It would be like having sight without an eye, hearing without an ear, or taste without a tongue. People know that the vessels of these senses exist and that the vessels are forms. [2] We say that the state of life, and therefore the form in a person, is continually changing, because it is a truth - which the wise have taught and still teach - that no two things are ever the same or absolutely identical, still less a number of things. So, for example, no two human faces are ever identical, still less several of them. It is similar in the case of successive states, that no later state of life is ever the same as one gone by. It follows from this that there is a perpetual change in the state of life in a person, consequently also a perpetual change in his form, especially in the form of his inner qualities. Since these observations, however, do not teach anything about marriage, but only prepare the way for concepts connected with it, and since they are no more than philosophical and intellectual analyses, which some people find difficult to grasp, having made these few comments we therefore pass on.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church