331. CONCERNING THE BEGINNING OF ENVY: WITH LITTLE CHILDREN IT IS PERCEIVED TO BE VERY SWEET I have learnt today from experience that that envy which appears with little children towards other little children when they strive with each other for the mother, flows from a most delightful beginning and from love, thus through heaven. For when I was kept in thought concerning the envy of little children it was said to me by a living voice from heaven, that they perceived a heavenly sweetness, and this with variety according to the objects [which excite it]. Hence it can be concluded that the very passions and cupidities in man are all from a heavenly beginning and from love itself, thus they inflow through heaven: but that outside heaven, in the way, they are bent by spirits into things contrary. It is similar with every man as it is with an object, [the influx is bent] according to his essential form, and the variations of that form, and the changes of the state of those variations.