242. A SPIRITUAL PARADOX: THAT IN MAN, ESPECIALLY IN HIS INTERNALS, THERE IS NOTHING BUT A FLUID STREAM LIKE THE BREATH [spiritus] OUTSIDE MAN It cannot but occur to anyone as a paradox that in human fibers, even in the most minute, there is nothing solid or cohering, and thus rigid: for if it cohered, or by cohering became rigid, it would be in the highest degree brittle and would very quickly perish, for nothing would then be applicable [to it]. But in things internal, not even the least part, or parts of a part, even to the most interior and inmost spiritual substances, is rigid, but all parts are most fluid, as in spirits and angels. Corporeal things alone can be said to cohere, but not in the way the fallacy of sight and of touch induces man to believe; for the less coherent a thing is, or the less it resembles a solid, the more durable it is. This is evident from many things, as in old age when the parts begin to grow together and become more solid, thus to appearance, more durable, but they are then the more brittle and liable to be destroyed. From this it now follows that man is a spirit, even whilst he lives in the body, and that the coherence of the [parts] depends upon the single things being yielding, and thus upon the more interior and inmost things, and by their being disposed by God Messiah by means of both the former and the latter. 1747, Nov. 6, o.s.* * This paragraph is thus referred to in the Index (s.v. Interiora):