24. I. That all who have ever been born men from the beginning of creation, and are deceased, are either in heaven or in hell, follows from those things which have been said and shown in the preceding article, namely, that heaven and hell are from the human race. This is clear without explanation. It has been the common belief hitherto, that men will not come into heaven or into hell before the day of the Last Judgment, when souls will return into their own bodies, and thus to enjoy such things as are believed to belong only to the body. The simple have been led into this belief by men professing wisdom, who have investigated the interior state of man. Because these have thought nothing concerning the spiritual world, but only of the natural world, nor therefore of the spiritual man, they have not known that the spiritual man which is in every natural man, is in the human form, as well as the natural man. Hence it never entered their minds that the natural man draws his own human form from his spiritual man; although they might have seen that the spiritual man acts at will upon the whole, and upon every part of the natural man, and that the natural man of himself does nothing at all. It is the spiritual man who thinks and wills, for this the natural man of himself cannot do; and thought and will are the all in all of the natural man; for the natural man acts as the spiritual man wills, and also speaks as the spiritual thinks, and that so entirely, that action is nothing but will, and speech is nothing but thought, for on the removal of thought and will, speech and action cease in a moment. From this it is evident that the spiritual man is truly a man, and that he is in the whole, and in every part of the natural man, and that therefore their effigies are alike, for the part or particle of the natural man, in which the spiritual does not act, does not live. But the spiritual man cannot appear to the natural man, for the natural cannot see the spiritual, but the spiritual can see the natural; for this is according to order, but the converse is contrary to order; since there is given an influx, and therefore also a sight, of the spiritual into the natural, for sight too is influx, but not the reverse. It is the spiritual man who is called the spirit of man, and who appears in the spiritual world in a perfect human form, and lives after death. Because they who are intelligent have not known anything of the spiritual world, and therefore nothing of the spirit of man, as was said above, they have conceived therefore an idea that man cannot live a man, before his soul returns into the body, and again puts on the senses. Hence have arisen such vain ideas about man's resurrection, namely, that bodies, though eaten up by worms and fish, or entirely fallen to dust, are to be collected again by the Divine omnipotence, and re-united to souls; and that this is not to happen till the end of the world, when the visible universe is to perish; with many more like ideas, which are every one of them inconceivable, and at the first glance of the mind, strike it as impossible, and contrary to Divine order, tending thus to weaken the faith of many; for those who think wisely, cannot believe what they do not in some measure comprehend; and belief in impossibilities is not given, that is, a belief in such things as man thinks to be impossible. Hence also those who disbelieve the life after death, derive an argument in support of their denial. But that man rises again immediately after his decease, and that then he is in a perfect human form, may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell, in many of its articles. These things have been said, that it may be still more confirmed that heaven and hell are from the human race, from which it follows, that all who were ever born men from the beginning of creation, and are deceased, are either in heaven or in hell.