1475. But the celestial angels who have already been initiated, and re-begotten from celestial seed, quite fully perceive the things that have been said, and this in a manner not unlike that by which they perceive the whole man from his affection which is his soul. Some perceive them as beautiful trees in which the affection is their seed; others as trees in which the affection is their sap; others can thence form, as it were, complete paradises after its likeness, and so forth. But this is done in a celestial manner which no one except those in heaven can conceive, nor can it ever be expressed in words: for example, how all things, both those that are intellectual and those that are of affection, are within charity in a celestial manner; and thus the will, which is the all of action, is formed from innumerable things, until there is so much within, that finally the will is the disposition in which its proprial things are inserted by the affection - by cupidities when the will is evil. The affections constitute the kernel, whilst the intellectual things of truth and good constitute the cortex or shell; when, therefore, the disposition is such, the former kernel rots away, and a new one must be formed by means of the cortical shells. These things must needs seem most obscure to man, but appear so manifest to the angels that they deem them among the simplest things. For they see innumerable things in the kernel or disposition, and in the rind, and they thus see how by means of the rind, as I may say, new shoots are insinuated which root themselves in the former kernel as in dung, and thus grow, and consume the kernel formed from the loves of self and of the world. They see how that kernel is consumed, and how truths and thence goods, and goods and thence truths, are inrooted. I have been led by angels as I write these things, in order that the quality of their speech, or the series of their ideas which is the same as their speech, may be understood as by an obscure example. 1748, Mar. 17.