The Doctrine of Ultimates
and the Nature of Matter

Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner

Prefatory

I have attempted to collect what the Writings say about the "matter" which constitutes the natural world. This is done without offering any definite solution to many philosophical problems involved in physics. Yet some suggestions towards such solutions have been advanced. My admitted ignorance of the field of physics and especially mathematical physics has not prevented me from presenting my own understanding of what the Writings state concerning the nature of the physical world:

To provide a setting for the discussion of matter, some considerations have been offered on the Doctrine of Ultimates, which serve to give perspective to the cosmological statements of the Writings. But no attempt has been made to apply this doctrine to the teachings about man's regeneration, the Lord's glorification, or the power residing in the literal sense of the Word.

Inevitably, a certain repetition of familiar doctrinal teachings occurs in our treatment.

Now as to the purpose of our study: The new physics of this century introduced the concept of "indeterminacy." By implication, this questioned determinism or at least the predictability of nature at its base, and caused Sir Arthur Eddington to write "If the atom has indeterminacy, surely the human mind will have an equal indeterminacy; for we can scarcely accept a theory which makes out the mind to be more mechanistic than the atom." (Mathematical Gazette, vol. 16, no. 218, May 1932.)

Certainly there is nothing more unpredictable than human behavior. But the real question is whether the material world is such that our spirit can move the atoms constituting our bodily system, and thus express our inward choice. The Writings, in stressing the constancy and orderliness in the nature of the world, do not rule out the ideas, a) that physical units naturally act in random motion in the absence of any specific spiritual influence; and b) that the spiritual-from a conatus to use-can by its influx motivate and direct the physical units for the formation and operation of organic forms; and finally, c) that this influx and guidance is possible by the very nature of the inmost physical unit.

Nature as the Ultimate of Creation

The theological Writings of Swedenborg contain frequent references to "ultimates." Indeed, if we gather these scattered statements there emerges a unique doctrine which throws light on the nature of the physical world as well as of the spiritual. The understanding of what the Writings mean by "ultimates" should clarify many teachings about creation, regeneration, death, human freedom, the Word, and worship; and even the teachings about the Lord's advent and His glorification, as well as about the Lord's omnipotence and the operation of His Providence. For the Writings teach not only about the ultimates of the natural world but concerning spiritual ultimates and Divine ultimates.

The word ultimate comes from a Latin root which carries the sense of 'farthest', 'last', 'most recent', 'final', and also 'utmost' or 'first in rank'-depending on context. When the term is used in the Writings, it conveys the idea of the last in a series, the last in time, a final product. Thus it is said that "the ultimate of creation is the natural world, including the terraqueous globe with all things on it."[1] But the passage continues

When these were finished, then man was created, and into him were collated all things of Divine order from firsts to ultimates; into his inmost were collated those things which are in the primes of his order, into his ultimates those which are in ultimates ; so that man was made Divine order in form. (LJ 9)[2]

In creation as a whole, then, "the ultimate of Divine order is in the nature of the world."[3] "Those things which are seen in nature in her threefold kingdom are the ultimates of Divine order, since all things of heaven which are called spiritual and celestial terminate in these."[4] The "first of creation," on the other hand, was the spiritual Sun in which is the end or final cause of all things. In the spiritual world are the causes of all things-the efficient or mediate causes. And in the natural world are the effects which appear inter se as instrumental causes.[5]

The natural world is thus the last or the ultimate of creation. Ultimates are those things that are "most remote" from the Lord, that is, "the things in nature and the ultimate things in it. These are called ultimates because spiritual things, which are prior, close (desinunt) in them and subsist and rest upon them as upon their bases; wherefore they are immovable, and hence are called the ultimates of Divine order."[6] "All things which are in nature are ultimates of Divine order; and the Divine does not stop in the middle, but flows down even to ultimates, and thus rests (subsistit)."[7]

Thus the Divine does not stop with creating a spiritual world, but follows this up with a physical creation.[8] For

the force of creating is a force for producing causes and effects from the beginning to the end, and goes on (pergit) from the Prime through intermediates to the ultimate; the Prime is the Sun itself of heaven which is the Lord; the intermediates are spiritual things, then [come] natural things as well as terrestrial out of which at last there are productions: and this force has progressed from the Prime to the ultimate in the creation of the universe; it afterwards goes on in like manner so that there may be continual productions. . . .[9]

To the same effect is this statement: "Divine order never stops in the middle and there forms anything without an ultimate, for it is not in its fullness and perfection; but it goes on to the ultimate; and when it is in its ultimate, then it forms, and also by means there collected it renews itself and reproduces itself further. . . Therefore the seed plot of heaven is there."[10]

Every Series Has Its Ultimate Degree

When we think of the process of creation as a whole, the spiritual world is relatively the prime while the natural world is the last or ultimate. But in the distinctive key doctrine of Discrete Degrees, it is shown that nothing exists in either world which does not consist of both discrete and continuous degrees.[11] And discrete degrees are related as end to cause and cause to effect in a threefold order. They are called homogeneous[12] and (in their substantial aspect) are formed one from another by the process of composition.[13] The first degree forms the second, and from the second is formed the third, which is called the ultimate or last.[14]

Swedenborg testified that the existence of discrete degrees was especially apparent in the spiritual world. For there the three heavens appear entirely discrete. And these heavens, as to distinctive life and quality, were founded in distinct spiritual ethers or atmospheres, the celestial in an "aura," the spiritual in an "ether," and the natural or ultimate heaven in an "ultimate ether" or "air."[15]

Each series of discrete degrees has its primes, its intermediates, and its ultimates.[16] That the spiritual world has its own ultimates which are not identical with anything in nature or with the ultimates of nature, is plainly taught. Referring to the heat and light of the Sun of heaven, Swedenborg wrote

By means of that heat and that light all things in the spiritual world, and all things in the natural world have been created. . . . There are three degrees of that light and heat to the ultimates of the spiritual world, and afterwards three degrees to the ultimates of the natural world.[17]

Thus we read of three spiritual degrees, the lowest of which is the "ultimate spiritual which is called the spiritual natural."[18] This spiritual degree is the source of the souls of both animals and plants, and becomes the plane of man's natural mind-the mind in which man is conscious while on earth.[19] This natural mind also contains three degrees, the rational, the imaginative, and the sensual, and the sensual is called the ultimate of the natural mind. The spiritual-natural or ultimate spiritual, therefore, reaches down into the world and into man's body, and presents a series of three "lower spiritual degrees."[20] And in the spiritual world, the "ultimates" of the ultimate spiritual appear as lands on which the angels dwell and from which spiritual vegetation comes forth without the mediation of nature.[21]

"Nothing is without its ultimate."[22] In fact, there are discrete degrees within each discrete degree.[23] But this does not mean that there is not a certain continuity within a discrete degree which makes it discrete from other discrete degrees. The universe is itself "a continuous work from the Creator even to ultimates," consisting of finite forms in a continuous chain.[24] There is also a continuity of quality in the spiritual which makes it utterly different from the physical. And nature is continuous within itself, by virtue of its common properties of space and time. Yet nature is within itself distinguished into discrete degrees, having three atmospheres so discreted that "no quality of the air can be elevated to any quality of the ether, nor any of this to any quality of the aura."[25] But besides these discrete natural atmospheres, there are in the world three discrete degrees of what is called fixed matters. These degrees of matter are among themselves discrete, being terminations of each of the three discrete natural atmospheres." Their being called "fixed matters" in contrast to "atmospheres" does not impugn that the ethers and the sun itself are material.[27]

By fixed matters are obviously meant the passive raw materials of the mineral kingdom. Just as-in the perspective of creation as a whole-the ultimate of Divine order is nature as a whole, so the solar system has also its inmosts and its ultimates. Its ultimates are described as of the mineral kingdom, including rocks and salts and oils and metals, now covered over with soils of organic origin.[28] Even metals contain "conglobations of parts in a threefold order," forming degrees.[29]

The forms of the mineral kingdom are of three degrees, the first being the "leasts" of each' substance, the second being "congregates of these" in infinite variety, and the third being composites formed by organisms-plants and animals-and broken up into dust to enrich the soil.[30]

In the mineral kingdom, which serves as a storehouse,[31] the "ultimate from the Divine in created things" manifests itself as a conatus towards vegetation and the production of uses.[32] And from ultimates, the uses of all created things ascend by degrees to man and through man to God.[33] If man would only acknowledge and love the Lord as his first end, there "would be a descent of the Divine through man into the ultimate of nature," so that "the very ultimate of nature might live from the Divine."[34] The ascent of uses is possible by the influx of this Divine conatus and of the three degrees of the spiritual into nature.[35]

The mineral kingdom is called "ultimate"; but the vegetable kingdom is called "intermediate," and the animal kingdom, which in this sense includes men, is called "the prime." Yet each kingdom by itself is ordered into three degrees. In the animal kingdom worms and insects are thus called "the lowest," birds and beasts "the mediate," and men "the highest or supreme." [36]

It is to be noted that the term discrete degrees is differently used in different applications. By definition, discrete degrees are formed one from another. Only an idealist could conceive that beasts are formed from men, and insects from animals! What the Writings point out is that the three levels o£ the animal kingdom originate in discrete degrees of natural creation. Man receives the life of all three degrees of the natural world, while beasts receive life only of two degrees, and insects receive life on only the lowest sensuous plane.[37]

In yet another sense, man is the ultimate. Not only was he created "last" in order of time, but he draws into his constitution something from all the degrees of creation, and his physical body is so organized as to serve all the prior degrees, both spiritual and natural. He is therefore an epitome of creation-or a "microcosm and micro-ouranos"-which is "made Divine order in form." [38]

Each Degree Has an Ultimate

In the universal sense, the spiritual world is the prime, while the natural' world is the ultimate of creation. Each world, however, has three discrete degrees, marked by three ethers or atmospheres formed one from another: an aura, an ether, and an air. In each series the third atmosphere or air is the "ultimate." [25] The atmospheres in the natural world are described as a universal aura from which is gravitation, a middle ether from which is light and magnetism, and "an ultimate ether" which is the air. These six degrees of creation are discrete from each other.[39]

But neither of the two worlds consists only of atmospheres. In fact, in each world atmospheres serve as "active forces," waters as "mediate forces," and lands as "passive forces." This is suggestive of the fact that the substance of the natural world appears in three forms-gaseous, liquid, and solid; similarly in the spiritual world there are atmospheres, waters, and lands.[40]

But let us note that these three forms of substance are not related by discrete degrees. They are not successive compositions but: states. So, for instance, water (H₂0) may exist as an invisible vapor or atmosphere, secondly as a liquid, and thirdly in solid form, as ice. Ice is not discretely different from other forms of water, but its molecular activity has lessened, its heat has been dissipated, so that it is what the Writings call "a substance at rest." In a state of cold described as "absolute zero," molecular activity is thought to stop, the water vapor having reached an ultimate state of complete fixity. It is no longer atmosphere or gas, but a "substance at rest."

To distinguish a substance relatively at rest, such as we find in the natural world, from the natural atmosphere whence it was formed, the Writings call it "matter" and speak of it as "fixed." For although the natural atmospheres are also composed of 'material' entities,[41] it is as solids that they become fixed and tangible and passive as on the land masses inhabited by men-lands (terrae) which are often spoken of as "ultimates."

This teaching becomes especially important in view of the fact that everything in each world coexists from discrete degrees and, at the same time, from continuous degrees.[42] The creation of successive discrete degrees is impossible unless the higher degree is continuously lessened in activity and comes into a passive or compressed state which enables it to be reorganized or molded into a discretely lower form by a process of composition.[43]

This means that each discrete degree ranges from its primes to its ultimates, by a continuous or "gradual" lessening in activity, heat, etc., and an increase in density and passivity.[44] When it has by compression taken on a state of inertia, it can serve as the raw material for a creation of a new, discretely lower degree. This is done by a process of composition, directed by the influx of something spiritual. And it explains the puzzling statement that "all creation is effected in ultimates, and all Divine operation passes through to ultimates and there creates and operates . . ."[45]

Unless this law applied to each successive step in creation, the Divine could never have any ultimates wherein to create and fashion.

In the descending process of creation, we therefore have spiritual ultimates as well as natural; and, indeed, ultimates of every successive degree. This is taught quite clearly in the Divine Love and Wisdom, no. 302:

That atmospheres, which are three in each world, the spiritual and the natural, close in their ultimates in substances and matters, such as are in lands.

That there are three atmospheres in each world, the spiritual and the natural, which are distinct among themselves according to degrees of height, and which in their progression towards lower things decrease according to degrees of breadth, was shown in Part Three (nos. 173-76). And because atmospheres decrease while progressing towards lower things, it follows that they become continually more compressed and inert, and finally, in ultimates, so compressed and inert that they are no longer atmospheres but substances at rest and, in the natural world, fixed, such as are in lands and are called matters. From which origin 'of substances and of matters, it follows, first, that these substances and matters also are of three degrees; secondly, that they are held in connection among themselves by the surrounding atmospheres; thirdly, that they are accommodated for the production of all uses in their forms. (Translation by H. L. O.)

It is noted here that since there are three atmospheres which by cooling and condensation become, in their ultimate state, passive, there will, in the natural world, arise matters of three degrees,[46] which are held together by their respective atmospheres.

A corresponding thing happens with the spiritual atmospheres. Each of these suffers a decrease and adaptation, a loss of living force, as it descends towards its ultimate and is turned into a substance at rest. And thus there arise three substances at rest as the ultimates of the three spiritual atmospheres. They are not "matters," yet they appear as such.[47] They are identified with "the lands on which the angels dwell."

Spiritual Ultimates

"As there is nothing without its ultimates in which it terminates and subsists, so the spiritual has its ultimate, which is in a globe'' [tellure], in its lands and waters. . . ."[48] "There are lands there as with us."[49]

"From this its ultimate the spiritual produces plants of all kinds.,. . ."[50] But "the matters, or substances, in the lands that are in heaven are not fixed, and consequently the germinations are not permanent"[51]-and are effected "without nature."[52] "In ultimates, the spiritual retains no more of life than is sufficient to produce a resemblance of being alive."[53]

Angels in heaven have no idea of space and time, but an idea of state.

This idea of state, with the consequent idea of the appearance of space and time, comes solely in and from the ultimates of creation there; the ultimates of creation there are the lands on which the angels dwell.[54]

Ultimates and terminations in heaven differ from ultimates and terminations in the world in this, that in the world these are respective to spaces, while in heaven they have reference to goods conjoined with truths. . . .[55]

Exterior spiritual things are created by the Lord to clothe or invest interior spiritual things. And when these are clothed and invested, then there stand forth forms like those in the natural world, and in these interior spiritual things thus close as in an ultimate, and in these they stand forth in an ultimate.[56]

In angels and spirits, the spiritual ultimate appears as a spiritual body. And in the mind of man this ultimate form of the spirit presents itself in .his corporeal memory-in the so-called "material ideas" and scientifics which had limited and embodied his spirit on earth.

But before there were any angels, or any appearance of spirits or spiritual vegetation or fauna, there were the ultimates of the spiritual atmospheres, in and from which ultimate the natural world was created.[56a]

The Reality of Matter

The history of philosophy, since the time of Thales, has been marked by a search for an 'ultimate reality'. Recognizing that the surface appearances of life are deceptive, thinkers have sought for some underlying substance which stood as a cause of the phenomenal world-an essence or primary element or original component which in the final analysis could not be further divided or derived. Some, like Plato, regarded this real substance as spiritual-as a pre-existing world of patterns or ideas which men realize only in a shadowy and partial way in their mortal experiences in the world of so-called "matter." Others placed reality in matter itself-in indivisible units or atoms, in motion or energy. Descartes and others believed in two coexisting types of created substance: the spiritual, identified with thought or consciousness, and the material, identified with extension endowed with inertia or motion. Many admitted that God was the only substance which was a substance-in se. But the persistent problems concerned the relation of the spiritual (or the mind) to the physical (or matter). Some therefore denied that matter even existed except as an idea in man's minds, and others denied that the spiritual existed except as a by-product of matter in motion.

Swedenborg at no time belonged to the school of philosophy which is called Idealism and which denies the existence of "matter." But the Writings are unique in that they derive the natural or material world from the spiritual, at that same time giving to the natural an essence other than that from which it is derived.[57]

Throughout Christian centuries some concepts prevailed about a spiritual world as well as a natural world, although the spiritual was thought of as a "purer" natural. The scholastics, and Descartes, even made the spiritual quite substantially distinct from the natural, yet they had no real idea of what the spiritual was. But although they admitted that both worlds were created by God, they did not show that the natural world was created from or through the spiritual."[58]

Recent thinkers, of the post-Christian era in which we now live, have sought to explain the phenomenal world without recourse to an underlying substance as a cause. Many philosophers have lately come to disown the use of 'metaphysics', the branch of philosophy that has the function of defining "ultimate realities". And so far as the search for ultimate reality is still continued, it usually takes the form of an investigation into the nature of matter.

Swedenborg did not employ the phrase 'ultimate reality'. He did not-so far as I know-use the term 'ultimate' in the sense of the inmosts of creation. Not that he denied reality to the natural world. But in the doctrine it is shown that it is the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord's infinite love that is "the very reality and the very essential" which makes and creates.59 This is the Logos, the creative Word without which not anything was made that was made. (John 1: 1-3) And it is also shown that spiritual things are more real than those of nature, since the "dead" clothing which nature supplies lessens reality.[60]

Thus the Writings do not place ultimate reality in the matter of the physical world, or in the inmosts or first elements of nature. It is the "primitives" of the spiritual Sun [61] which are the first constituent of finite creation; and that Sun is called "the first and only substance from which all things are."[62 ]That Sun is not to be identified with the Lord who is Divine Man, but it is continually "created" or "produced" from Him.[63]

Natural substance, or "matter," is real because it is created from the spiritual. The challenge to the human mind is to grasp how extended matter could originate from spiritual substance which is not extended. To gain better understanding of this, it is necessary to form an idea of the first entities of nature, as these are described in the Writings.

Solar Matter

The general intimation, if not the explicit teaching, of the Writings, is that the primary matter of nature was that of stars or suns in their original state, and that this matter was so intensely active that it could be described only as "pure fire." This fire, by successive compositions produced gaseous masses which again solidified into planetary matter of several degrees.

The sun of each solar system is the source, not only of the material constituting the planets, but of the sustaining radiant energy by which light and heat are communicated to these orbiting bodies. "All things in the natural world increase in the measure of their sun's presence. . . . They increase as heat makes one with its light. . . . "[64] That the world came into, existence without a sun is dismissed by the doctrine as absurd. The expanse came from the center and subsists from it.[65]

The sun appears as "an ocean of fire" -elementary fire.[66] It consists "of created substances, the activity of which produces fire."[67] This pure fire "is material"[68] and has nothing whatever of life in it-in fact, its fire is death itself.[69] Its heat and light are entirely dead, and so also are the atmospheres from it,[70] and all the forces of nature.[71] In its essence it is such that natural heat and light can exist from it.[72]

Yet its activity is not from itself but from the living force proceeding from the spiritual Sun; wherefore if this living force were withdrawn, the natural sun would collapse.[73] Something spiritual from the- Sun of heaven "is adjoined" to the natural light and heat of our sun when natural light enlightens the eyes of men.[74]

Thus natural light can be' said to receive spiritual light and "convey" it to ultimates by the atmospheres.[75] But natural light and heat only "open and dispose" natural: things for receiving influx from the spiritual.[76]

The doctrine plainly states that "the dead sun was created by the Lord through the living Sun so that everything in ultimates may be fixed, static, and constant, and thus that there may exist things that are to be perennial and enduring."[77]

As indicated above, the term matter is used in the Writings in several senses. It is, as in common parlance, sometimes used to describe the grosser substances of nature which are tangible and visible and relatively inert, in contrast with the invisible atmospheres from which they are condensed.[78]

But generally,, all the substances of the natural world, in all their forms and degrees, including the sun and its three atmospheres, are called "material" or "matter."[79] Materiality is, like space and time, a universal and characterizing attribute of all things of the natural world without exceptions. Even the pure fire of the natural sun is called "material."[80] The atmospheres of nature are said to be "material."[81] But the heat and light which they convey may be regarded as activities of material substances - modifications of the atmospheres-and are thus rather to be called "natural,"[82]-although they are apparently, in one passage, also called "material."[83] Heat and light-or activities---are in one sense not "creatable" but the forms receiving them are created.[84]

The quality of matter in its primes pervades the whole of nature. And this quality comes from its two essential properties, space and time.[85] Spaces and times were created together with this world.[86] Here they exist "actually," while in the other world they are appearances of spiritual states.[87]

The teaching is that "in nature everything is fixed and ultimated" and that natural things are fixed, stated, constant, measurable, permanent, durable,[88] however man's states may change. The matters and substances of nature give fixation to spiritual forms.[89]

But while this is true of all the matters of nature, it is especially true of "the lowest things of nature" which form our lands. These are fixed and "dead," and immutable, since they do not change according to the states of men.[90] The grosser things of nature which man puts on as a body, are put off by death because "the extremes or ultimates of nature cannot receive the spiritual and eternal things to which the human mind is formed, as these things are in themselves." He retains only "the purer things of nature which are nearest to spiritual things"; i.e., he retains only "the interior natural things that agree and concord with spiritual and celestial things and serve them as containants."[91]

The reference here is obviously to what is elsewhere called a limbus or medium of natural substance retained by the spirit so that it can have a relativity (relativum) to the things in nature.[92] This limbus serves as "a fixed containant of spiritual things" on the basis of which his individual life is perpetuated.[93] Thus the interior substances of nature, instead of its ultimates, serve as immortal "containants" for the spirit.[94]

What are these "interiors" or "purer things" of nature which are "nearest to spiritual things"? Although not in the comparatively immobile state of rocks and waters, they are still matters which have space and time as attributes. If drawn from the inmosts of nature,[95] such a substance must resemble the first matter of the sun as to degree and potentialities. It would have to be a form of pure motion, or perhaps energy in some wave pattern. The "fire" of the sun must probably be contained or involuted into less active forms, such as atmospheres before it can serve as an individuated entity. But since the expressions of speech come from the ultimates of nature, and the "limbus" is drawn from the inmosts of nature, the things of this realm "cannot be described except by abstractions."[96]

The same, of course, applies to the first solar atmosphere, which is said to be universal and the source of all gravity.[97] Even abstractions fail to do more than express the effects of gravity.

Even such a physicist as Sir James jeans admitted that the final harvest of science "will always be a sheaf of mathematical formulas."[98]

Space and Matter

Science, having broken down the atom, now speaks of electrons and neutrons and wave-packets as "mental constructs" rather than as adequate representations of the actual processes of nature. In the cosmological treatises of Swedenborg, the ultimate constituent of the physical world-the prima materia [99]-is boldly described as first finites composed of dynamic points, or of "first natural points."[100] In the theological Writings, this constituent is not so definitely described, except for specifying that nature is not composed of "simple substances" such as the monads of Leibnitz, the indivisible "atoms" of Epicurus, the "simple substances" of Wolff, or geometrical "points" of no dimension; for of such "simple substances" nothing can be predicated and nothing can be produced by composition.[101] Instead, the first or most simple constituents are most perfect. "There are innumerable things in the most simple substance of all."[102]

The source of nature is from the spiritual. It is even said: "Its essence, from which it exists, is the spiritual. . . ."[103] But that does not mean that nature has a spiritual essence. For "the natural world derives nothing whatsoever from the spiritual world"[104] -i.e., none of the qualities which make nature nature are spiritual qualities. Matter has all its substantial reality and its superimposed forms from the spiritual, but its residual qualities such as time, space, and motion, come from a process of privation of reality and a removal of spiritual qualities, a limitation or further finition. Matter; according to our doctrine, is life-less substance, but substance none the less.

To emphasize the difference, the Writings call the spiritual 'substantial,' in contrast to the 'material.' "Substantial things are the origins (initia) of material things. What is matter," Swedenborg asks, "but an aggregate (congregatio) of substances?"[105] Thus "the substantial is the primitive of the material."[106] "Matters are originated from substances." [107] By an aggregate of substances, we may understand a concentration or focusing of spiritual forces into a space-time field or within limits not only of energy but of contact.

That the original matter out of which the suns were made was "dead" does not mean that it was or is inactive, or has nothing of efficiency in it. Even a grain of sand, we are assured, expires an effective sphere.[108] And the deceptively passive radioactive metals hold within them the powers of the sun, locked up in ultimates.

When we think of the 'inmosts' of nature, we are tempted to imagine an indefinite extense of space-a room within which we place all known objects, allowing for their shifting positions relative to each other and to us. We might conceive the prima materia as discreted forms to which we attribute space, motion, and thus time. Our notions of space and time are of course always relative, being seen from the point of view of a finite observer. But who can deny that in the view of an Omnipresent Creator there is in the natural world' what has been called 'absolute time' and 'absolute space'?

The doctrine states: "Because the Divine is not in space, neither is it continuous as is the inmost of nature."[109] Space can indeed be conceived as a continuum in which all things are related to some 'constant' such as the speed of light is considered to be. The inmost of nature however is not unlimited or infinite, as Descartes claimed. Its continuity is a continuity of predicates within itself. What is meant, we believe, is that the Divine is not continuous with the inmosts of nature, but is present "in all space without space."[110]

Matter, the ultimate constituent of nature, can be regarded, in the manner of Epicurus, as mass-particles moving in space. But even Epicurus - whose views are condemned in the Writings - endowed interstitial space with a certain reality or quality. Another view is to regard matter as a modification of space itself - space being seen not as empty but as a prior reality, a substantial substratum in which traveling whirls of motion, or fields of force, form bodies or particles such as constitute tangible nature. Descartes had some such idea, but he identified matter with extension, making the natural world continuous and infinite. But Newton came to the belief, later clarified and confirmed in the spiritual world, that there could be no "absolute vacuum" or "interstitial nothing." After his death, he realized that the spiritual world into which he had come was where he had thought his vacuum to be.[111]

Even before his death, Newton suggested that perhaps the unknown medium through which gravitation acted at a distance, was spiritual.[112] And it is stated-as a principle which obviously applies to both worlds-that heat and light "cannot proceed in nothing, thus not in a vacuum, but in a containant which is a subject. Such a containant we call atmosphere which surrounds the Sun. . . ."[113] In the natural world, solar atmospheres perform corresponding functions as media.

But even atmospheres are made up of "discreted substances and least forms."[114] As long as you conceive of matter as consisting of particles, you must also admit of an interstitial something - call it space or not. If you also concede that there can be no infinite space,[115] nor any action at a distance without a medium, you are compelled to conclude that matter arises-and remains-as forms of motion in a nonextended spiritual medium-the "ultimate spiritual."

Certain philosophic quandaries must be taken into account, however. Parmenides objected to the possibility of individual entities separated by space. If space is a vacuum or nothing, nothing would separate these entities and all things must be continuous being. But this argument need not prevent that this continuous being could contain discrete forms of different degrees; or that what we sometimes call space may in itself be a spiritual reality organized as a field of physical force and substance; or that the whole material world could be regarded as a constantly emerging field of spiritual forces. That the physical entities thus created obey the laws of mechanical motion is also the effect of a specific spiritual influx-the influx of a conatus to motion.

This concept would necessarily involve that the spiritual is the cause and medium of all physical existence and of all physical changes, all motion, all matter. It would also imply that what is extended originates from what is nonextended.[116]

Thus the fire of the dead natural sun is not self-derived but is from the living forces of the spiritual Sun. Indeed (as noted) the natural sun would collapse if the living forces should be withdrawn.[117]

It is said that nature has its primary origin from the spiritual Sun, and only a "secondary origin" from the natural sun. This secondary origin adds no reality but adds a "dead" accessory as an outer garment which gives fixity, permanence, and measurableness.[118] "Abstract space, and altogether deny a vacuum," is the advice of the Writings.[119] Creation cannot be understood unless spaces are removed from our ideas.[120] And interiorly in the rational such thought is possible for men.[121] Swedenborg was himself troubled by vain thoughts about infinite space, but was delivered by the Lord "by thinking of infinite space as not being space outside of the universe."[122]

Conatus and Matter

What, then, is matter, when considered from its "secondary origin"?

"Nature begins from the sun."[123] And the sun is a pure elemental fire, which is even called material and "death itself." It adds what is dead (mortuum). Not that this deprivation of life means passivity. The more it is analyzed, the more active matter seems to be. Yet we are warned that no force has been implanted in nature from first creation, as you might wind up a watch to go until it runs down. Instead it is the spiritual which continually inflows into nature and manifests itself as a conatus to motion, or, in man, as a will to action.[124]

This influx of conatus is productive of motion-and repeatedly we are reminded that conatus is the only real thing in motion. "That which from the spiritual world is in natural things . . . is a conatus. . . ." This conatus "is the spiritual in the natural."[125] It is no exaggeration to say that it is the only way in which the spiritual manifests itself in the natural.

The sun is merely an effect of this conatus. Although it is called a "secondary origin," it is really the spiritual that assumes the garbs of death or inertia, assumes new limits which turn it in upon itself to form what we call material substance. These new limits are those of space and time; and by being so limited, the resulting substance is not spiritual or living, or moved by any spiritual purpose or inherent direction to specific uses, as is the case with all spiritual substances.

It is of course the Lord of all life who creates this strange 'dead' substance; and He creates it with a purpose of His own even as He-to achieve His purpose in creation-first chose to "finite" or "limit" the infinite substance of His Love to produce the spiritual primitives of which the spiritual Sun consists,[126] and from which all the degrees of the spiritual world are derived; so, secondly, He "finites" or limits the spiritual substance into a new form by depriving it of its freedom and causing it to bend to the laws and conditions of space and time.[127] By this secondary finition He creates matter, which first appears in the form of the primitive entities out of which the natural suns and stars are composed. Science is even now speculating on the existence and nature of these apparently transitional entities which go to compose the more stable elements of the world. The latest word for this raw material of the stars is 'plasma', a form of matter in which mass at inconceivable temperatures is being transformed into energy or energy recaptured into electromagnetic fields.[128]

The use of this barren matter, formed into suns and planets and satellites, and its activity as light and heat, was not to act as-of-itself or to transmit life as such (as do the spiritual atmospheres), but to furnish the passive substance and energy with which the Creator could clothe His spiritual designs and patterns in permanent forms.

Matter has motion, but no life or direction of its own. A recent writer describes a current idea of matter when he says that so solid a thing as a diamond is "a patterned arrangement of atoms which are themselves mainly empty space, with infinitesimal dabs of electrons whirling round infinitesimal dabs of protons and neutrons."[129] This describes only one phase of the atom. For "actually there is just as much evidence that all matter has wave properties."[130] Inwardly, the hypothetical atom seems to be a miniature solar system in complexity, with orbiting bundles of neutralized energy of inconceivable intensity and velocity. Swedenborg suggested such a dynamic concept of matter in his Principia. And in the Writings, matter is described as originating from pure fire-which means much the same. Yet it is passive and "dead," because it is governed by forces not its own. Motion is not life! It is among "the laws inscribed on the nature of all things" that nothing is activated (agatur) and moved by itself but from another, and this only when it is in an equilibrium between two forces one of which acts from within and the other from without.[131] The force acting from within is the ultimate spiritual, presumably the conatus to motion; while the force acting from without is from the natural world,[132] and would therefore appear as bodies which are forms of motion between which there occurs an exchange of measured amounts of energy according to mechanical laws.

On the other hand, we must distinguish between the elemental matter of nature and the matter which is inwoven into organic, living forms. We have postulated-and without fear of contradiction-that matter arose as forms of motion creating a world of space and time. "Motion is nothing else than continuous conatus."[133] The Writings reiterate that "the only real thing in motion is conatus."[134] In fact, motion may be referred to as the "ultimate degree" of conatus.[135] But the conatus which creates the material substance of the stars is not worthy of the name of "living conatus," because the force or motion of elemental nature which it produces is not a living force or living motion. There are, in every degree of the spiritual, living forces which are generative of all organic forms in both worlds. But these are contrasted with the forces of nature which from their origin in the sun "are not living forces but dead forces."[136] The living forces are from a "living conatus," like the human will.[137] "But still not all endeavors (conatus) are living." For there are "endeavors (conatus) of life's ultimate forces. . . . In ultimates, atmospheres become such forces, by which substances and matters such as are in lands are actuated into forms and are held in forms both within and without. . . .'"[138]

The "nonliving endeavors" (conatus non vivi) are thus not the 'souls' of vegetation or of animal organisms, but the 'soul' of matter, or the source of that force which constructs and maintains the physical elements. "Nothing in nature exists except from the spiritual and by means of it."[139] The 'nonliving' endeavors are presumably the conatus which matter has from creation-by a continuous influx-and which is freed by the sun's radiation to become "the acting force even in the minutest forms of nature."[140]

It is light and heat that serve as "mediate causes" which open the seeds in the soil for the creative influx of the spiritual.[141] Natural radiation thus acts to modify the matter of the earth from without, while the spiritual, with its living formative or plastic forces, inflows from within to produce forms of life.[142]

What shall we make, then, of the opposite teaching, that "the substances of the natural world from. their nature react against the substances of the spiritual world, because, the substances of the natural world are in themselves dead, and are acted upon from without by substances of the spiritual world. . . ."[143] In fact, the natural atmospheres are not receptacles of spiritual heat and light, and "there is nothing interiorly in them from the Sun of the spiritual world; but still they are environed by spiritual atmospheres. . . ."[144]

What must here be meant is that even the spiritual influx into the minutest components of matter,[145] affects the natural units as something other than itself-and is in no sense an interior part of matter or of the forces of nature. It is beyond the relations of space. Only if we remove space from our thought can we see how the spiritual can be present in the natural and yet be "outside" of it. But if we think "interiorly in the rational" we can also see what is meant by the sayings that natural atmospheres were created to "encompass" the spiritual atmospheres "as the shell does the kernel or the bark . . . the wood,"[146] and that three "lower" spiritual atmospheres "constantly accompany" (jugiter sequuntur) the three natural, to enable men "to think and feel."[147]

Matter and Natural Law

The modern concept of matter resembles that which Swedenborg presents in his Principia, in that matter is in essence dynamic, consisting in forms of motion or bundles of energy which act as . entities and are subject to mechanical laws. Actually, nature takes its "secondary origin" when the spiritual assumes the garbs of death, or inertia, by taking on new limits which turn it into what we call matter or natural substance. These new limits are those of the dimensions of space and time.[148] By being so limited (or, if you please, further finited), the resulting substance is no longer spiritual or living or moved by any living purpose or inherent direction to specific ends.

The general opinion is that the world of dead matter is subject to mechanical law. Swedenborg emphasized this as a philosopher, although he allowed also for things not mechanical.[149] In the Writings it is amply shown that the Lord in His omnipotence governs the universe - and "very easily"[150] - according to the laws of His Providence which enters into greatest and least things. Many "laws of Divine order" are mentioned, but the reference is specifically to the spiritual laws of regeneration or of man's spiritual, moral, and civil life. All these laws, even the law of permissions, are said to be "necessities,"[151] as if they were a protective framework within which man's freedom could operate. But to the physical laws of nature, the Writings give only passing references. They note that "all things of heaven constantly have their foundation in the laws of the order of nature in the world and in man, [so] that the foundation remains permanently fixed. . . ."[152]

It is also noted that "not the least little movement is accomplished by a man, without a fixed (stata) law."[153] And some "laws inscribed. on the nature of all things" are listed, with reference to the equilibrium of two forces, one natural and one spiritual.[154]

Much is said about the Lord having created the universe from order, in order, and for order; and about the error of thinking that God acts arbitrarily by changing His. Divine laws - at His pleasure. Much is also said about the chains of causes and effects, operative in both worlds. In the spiritual world, spiritual causes lead to spiritual effects, and also to the creation and subsistence of nature.

Even in the natural world one thing indeed exists from another progressively, but this by causes from the spiritual world; for every effect becomes an efficient cause in order even to the ultimate where the effective force subsists; but this is done continually from the spiritual in which alone that force resides (est). Hence it is that nothing, in nature exists except from the spiritual and by means of it.[155]

Regarded in itself, an effect is nothing but a cause so outwardly clothed that it might serve in a lower sphere to enable the cause to act as a cause there.[156]

Since the natural is thus nothing but an effect of the spiritual, the question then is whether there are any natural or physical laws properly so called; or whether what men have in their research listed as the laws or formulas by which they can to a large extent predict physical events, are no more than generalizations of the accustomed effects of spiritual causes, rather than a testimony to inevitable necessities. And the appearance is that wherever there is "life" - as in all organic forms - matter seems to be reconstructed to display qualities quite different, and to resist some of the supposed natural "laws," 'or at least utilize these laws to a superior end.

The "Law of Chance"

The known laws of mechanics are formulas constructed from statistical studies. Supposedly, matter is not only devoid of inward purpose but - according to many at this day - it is not governed or disposed by any purpose or plan. The universe simply "happened," as one of the infinite possibilities latent in eternity, or (to be conservative) in matter, or in primordial "Space-Time." It started without purpose as a supreme accident, and it ends without a goal.

As was shown above, the Writings speak of matter as in itself "dead"; and that of course means devoid of any living purpose of its own, although dependent on spiritual causes and serving as a tool in the hands of the Creator. But by what laws can it operate? If by the "laws of chance," we would possibly face the paradox that, in creating matter, the Lord forms a substance over which He has - to all appearances - relinquished His control! a world which seems to run mechanically without respect to any motivation of good or evil - a world which seemingly of itself, by the momentum of its first pattern of motion, automatically constructs solar centers with atmospheres and lifeless planets around them, and then arranges them into galaxies and supernovae. We picture a barren world, shaped by ceaseless cosmic convulsions as the raw material of things to come. We imagine planets boiling from fiery depths, cooling into mountainous surfaces and freezing into icy plateaus. A dead world, with no indications of further purpose.

 

As was shown above, the Writings speak of matter as in itself "dead"; and that of course means devoid of any living purpose of its own, although dependent on spiritual causes and serving as a tool in the hands of the Creator. But by what laws can it operate? If by the "laws of chance," we would possibly face the paradox that, in creating matter, the Lord forms a substance over which He has - to all appearances - relinquished His control! a world which seems to run mechanically without respect to any motivation of good or evil - a world which seemingly of itself, by the momentum of its first pattern of motion, automatically constructs solar centers with atmospheres and lifeless planets around them, and then arranges them into galaxies and supernovae. We picture a barren world, shaped by ceaseless cosmic convulsions as the raw material of things to come. We imagine planets boiling from fiery depths, cooling into mountainous surfaces and freezing into icy plateaus. A dead world, with no indications of further purpose.

Many scientists have claimed that such a world is a chain of mechanical causes and effects - a chain that cannot be broken by the free will of man or any other creature. It is deterministic - and when organic life and the race of man appeared on one, possibly more, of the planets in the universe, this too was an accident; and man was and is subject to this determinism - to which there can be no exception.

The Writings also call attention to the chain of cause and effects, which passes from the Lord down through all the discrete degrees of creation even to the ultimates. The universe is governed as "a single continuous chain," just as an end passes into causes and these into effects. "The continuation is not only in but also around from the First and thence from every prime into every posterior even to the last."[157] But the continuity can be broken in man owing to man's freedom.[158]

Thus the Writings give a place in this universe to human freedom. They say that the processes of nature are only effects, while causes are really spiritual: that man as a spirit is free and can within certain limits impose his will upon his body and thus upon the world. He can change the face of the earth as well as choose between good and evil.

The scientist works on the theory that the laws of nature are based on the motiveless nature of matter. "Nature is at the base in disorder." Its elements combine or dissociate according to "the laws of chance" or probability, which can be computed statistically or empirically and, so far, the outcome can be predicted. Many allow this to be the case without pretending that this conclusively makes human free choice impossible. And, indeed, what may appear to man as disorder, may in the eyes of God be ordered in an infinite design.

What is meant by "nature at its base"? I do not believe that it is necessary to know the intricacies of mathematical physics in order to see certain general truths about the construction of matter.

Matter is "dead." If so, it can be moved only from without.[159] This seems to indicate that even the primes of nature have inertia, as modern scientists claim. In the Divine Love and Wisdom, the statement is made: "Nature in itself is quite inert."[160]

But the question arises as to what Swedenborg meant by inertia. Did he use it in the Aristotelian sense?

"The ancients believed that the motion of a body ceased when the cause of the motion ceased to operate: this belief of Aristotle persisted until Galileo denied it. . . ."[161] Newton formulated the new definition of inertia, saying that a body which is not subject to any force can only have a uniform rectilinear motion. This, incidentally, rules out any spiral or vortical motion except as resulting from the effect of several entities on each other. Neither does it explain the beginning of motion. Descartes said that God injected a fixed amount of motion into the universe. Swedenborg took motion for granted as the thing which forms matter, and attributed its source or cause to conatus, much like Aristotle. He does not always use 'inertia' in its technical sense, but speaks of "the ultimates of nature wherein inert things occur," referring to the matters which are the passive end-products of atmospheres."[162]

The question arises whether matter, if inert and mechanical, must consist of entities moving at random or in disorder. The Writings answer without qualifications, that there is no such thing as Chance.[163] The Divine hand is in everything. The real question is how the Lord rules nature by laws which allow for human freedom and for the appearance of self-life. If nature always yielded to man's wishes and our surroundings became immediately representative of our moods, wishes, or states, as is largely the case in the spiritual world, man's free choice would be imperiled. It is necessary that he be born and grow up in a world of fixed objects independent of his state - a world where the Lord sends His rain upon the just and the unjust.[164] It is therefore noted in the Writings that in the ultimates of nature all things are fixed, stated, and constant, as they are on the terraqueous globes.[165] Thus the sun rises and sets with regularity, the seasons follow each other, eclipses can be predicted centuries ahead, chemical reactions and physical processes can be duplicated with precision in the laboratory. The atmospheres, the air and ether, act the same constantly.[166]

There are many "constants," and without such constants there could be no changes and no variations. "The varied can have existence only in the constant, the fixed, and the sure." Thus colors would be impossible, the Writings note, "unless light were a constant"! [166] This law of constants applies to the periodicities of vegetation, and prolification also, and to the bodily organs of man which maintain a constant state which enables activities such as action, speech, and thought.

In the spiritual world, there are corresponding applications of the same law. But the natural world provides the basis of fixity and permanency for all creation. The constants of nature are obviously not affected by human states. And this permits some natural men to find arguments in favor of nature and man's prudence - arguments for the deterministic concept that every event, including man's actions, is predetermined by physical law.[167]

The doctrine states, on the other hand, that there is no such thing as chance. "Apparent accident or fortune is Providence in the ultimate of order, in which all things are relatively inconstant."[168] And it is added that when the sphere of certain spirits is present, misfortunes happen. Concerning fortune or luck, it is stated that it has no other source than the Divine Providence in ultimates, where by things constant and inconstant it deals wonderfully with human prudence and yet conceals itself. [It is] an ocular proof that the Divine Providence is in the most single things of man's thoughts and actions.169

Human life would be terrible unless we could with some degree of certainty rely on the uniform behavior of nature - as, for instance, on the constancy of the laws of gravity. But this constancy, the Spiritual Diary notes, is from the interiors of nature. Speaking of lotteries which, though they pertain to the lowest things of nature, no man can explore, Swedenborg asks:

How then can those things which are of interior nature ... be explored? ... and how, above all, those of the inmost nature where things do not happen inconstantly but constantly; from constancy in inmosts, there exist indefinite inconstancies, through degrees, in the lowest?[170]

We are impressed by the statement that it is in the ultimates of nature that all things are "fixed, stated, and constant";[171] while other statements indicate - somewhat paradoxically - that it is the inmosts of nature which exhibit "constancies," while inconstancies or changes go on in ultimates. What is meant by "constancies"? Surely the laws of nature hold in ultimates as well as in inmosts. For "ultimates are directed, equally with primes," by the Lord.[172]

In the language of science, "If molecules, atoms, and electrons were not submitted to 'perfectly disordered' motions, our statistical reasoning would not lead us to definite laws."[173] Inertia causes matter to act according to the "law" of probabilities or of statistical averages. So far as this is taken to be a universal law, the world must be thought of as deterministic, in which case all events would follow from necessity. But before we accept it as universal, we must note several things. . First, that what we call natural 'laws' are not laws at all, but only generalizations or formulas from a limited human experience, i.e., they are mental constructs. "If man concludes from effects and their inconstancies, he is too much mistaken."[174] Second, that there is an overwhelming human experience that man has free choice within the framework of the familiar 'laws of nature'. Third, that if human freedom is to be maintained, man must live in a world which behaves with a certain constancy or regularity.

Could such a constant world exist, unless matter acted according to probabilities, that is, unless its action was random? How could the spiritual, or the spirit of man, direct the matter and stored-up energy of the body, unless this matter - in its least components - was devoid of any will of its own? or devoid of a "living conatus" or living purpose of its own? After all, matter is "dead," for its "soul," if you can so call the conatus to motion, does not direct it into any form of organic use.

In the regions of the sun and the atmospheres, and in the mineral kingdom, matter exists in unspecialized forms, in simpler combinations, as a source of energy and a pool of various elements. We are assured that the texture of such primitive forms of matter is of incredible complexity.[175] But a different type of complexity (and therefore inconstancy) can be seen in composite substances such as are produced where "life" is present. Basic to these, biologists say, is the photo synthesis developed in green plants, and the synthesis of complicated molecules of protoplasm containing chains and cycles of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc. In resultant protein molecules, even some of the most hardened atheists have to acknowledge the 'purposefulness' of their internal structure, and of the innumerable reactions constituting their metabolism which in their totality seem to be "directed towards a single goal."[176]

Under the conditions of the virgin earth, the conatus to motion present in 'dead' matter can thus be infilled by an influx of superior spiritual degrees, and, thus directed, becomes a conatus to use, and begins to move with purpose to form a material habitat for some form of life.

This occurs, of course, in "ultimates," or on planets; and the first result of the creative influx of the spiritual is the production of seeds.[177] And this advent of life on earth appears as a revolt against static nature, and against the apparent laws of probabilities. For life seems to resist nature - as when a tender shoot lifts the tough soil in its aspiration for sunshine.[178]

Freedom Versus Necessity

Constancy exists in the inmosts of nature.[179] This would imply that nature here acts constantly the same irrespective of human states - acts according to laws of inertia. It would seem that this meant a rule of necessity or of physical cause and effect. And for the maintenance of the entities constituting the dead universe, the constant action of a conatus to unmotivated motion would certainly be required.

But from constancies in inmost things "indefinite inconstant things exist by degrees in ultimates."[180]

The picture here given is that of the countless varieties which the combination of the elements of nature cause on the planets. The complexities of the chemistry of the mineral kingdom are themselves astounding. But through plants and through the animal kingdom, this complexity becomes stupendous! For the initial chemical elements are arranged into combinations that order the influx of life into a code-script from which are produced various species of living things, vegetative and animal, and at last human forms.

As a result of the incredible varieties of organic chemistry in the "ultimates of nature," there appears an unpredictable inconstancy and inconsistency in the behavior of living things or living tissues. In man we call this 'freedom'. But "there is no substance in the created universe which does not tend to an equilibrium, in order that it may be in freedom."[181] Thus there is "something analogous" to free will even in inanimate things - just as a brook picks its way between rocks. The Lord "imparts to everything the ability to receive a freedom according to its nature."[182] Brute animals have a "natural free will,"[183] although they cannot change their soul, their instincts, or their native bent by their own choice.

But man has both spiritual freedom and natural freedom. Unless there were inwrought consistency in nature, his freedom of choice would be meaningless. Likewise, unless he could by his choice free himself of the apparent necessities under which natural 'law' places him, his free will would be meaningless, since it could never be enacted.

We might explain the 'freedom' of inanimate things and of plants and animals as their reactions on various lower levels of nature. But if man's free choice is in any sense real, it must be able to change the state of the inmosts of nature, and direct their action in the body. Man's spirit - both soul and mind - acts into the body and controls it. This means that the inmosts of the body, or the "purest substances of the world," or the "purer things of nature," can in the body "receive the spiritual and eternal things to which the mind is formed." These "interior natural things" can agree and concord with spiritual things, and can serve as containants[184] And since the mind is a form of living conatus, and the inmosts of nature are composed or created from a "nonliving" conatus (a conatus to motion), it is possible for the living conatus to direct and motivate the action of selected strands of these purest things of nature, and through them cause the body to be formed and to act in correspondence with the states of the spirit."[185]

We conceive matter as a form of measurable energy which originates from a 'conatus'. The amount of energy built up in the body through nutriments ought not to change by a change of the quality of the spiritual influx, whether this be a conatus to motion or a 'living conatus'. The so-called "laws of nature" need not be upset by the actions of man, for he acts only according to the laws of the possible. "All that is impossible which is contrary to order" - i.e., Divine order.[186]

Even "miracles" are within the compass of Divine order, whether they appear contrary to the accustomed processes of nature or not.[187] In a real sense, everything that results from the influx of the spiritual world into the natural, is a miracle.[188] And all things that happen are miracles, even if unseen.[189] One might say that every event in which the living conatus to use transforms the nonliving "conatus to motion" within matter to cause a purposive action, is a miracle. A miracle simply means a wondrous occurrence, seemingly at odds with the inertia of matter.

In this light we may see that it is in the organic forms of ultimate nature that we find the "inconstancies," as in fortune or luck, which tease and confuse the cleverest man.[190] In noting this, the Writings show that "fortune" is real enough, but that it is not "chance" but the operation of the "Divine providence in the ultimates of order, in which all things are comparatively inconstant."[191] This Divine operation is "according to the quality of man's state,"[192] and is therefore mediated by spirits, whose sphere seems to affect the way a man shuffles his cards or runs into accidents through most trifling contingencies.[193]

On certain occasions, Swedenborg conversed with some spirits who were inclined to believe in fate, and who supposed that everything happened from "absolute necessity," and that thus the whole of life was a necessity, indeed, that the Lord was bound to necessity. They were then shown that they were entirely free, and if man acts from freedom it is not from necessity, because there were so many contingencies which bear man in freedom to opposite things. And Swedenborg gives a remarkable illustration. The moments of a man's life, with their happenings, are like scattered pebbles. If man was required from necessity to place them in a fore-ordained pattern, nothing else would follow; i.e., man would be an automaton. But instead the pebbles seem scattered - "according to freedom" - and the Lord, foreseeing the form in which man wills to arrange them, permits man to do so, and sees whether man fills up the gaps. And the Lord supplies what is lacking."[194]

In another illustration, some angels liken man's life to the building of a house. Man collects the stones and timber, into heaps without apparent order, while the architect alone visualizes the house as completed. Divine providence similarly provides the most detailed material, "but not according to such an order as man proposes." "All the things which are from the Lord are most essential, but they do not follow in order from necessity, but in application to the freedom of man."[195]

"If man acts from freedom, it is not from necessity." Yet the Lord provides what is "essential" for the freedom of man. This is Providence, not determinism. And among the essentials is a plane of substance in the inmosts of nature which acts with uniformity or constancy, as if by a law of inertia or a symmetry from which physical nature derives its essence.

It is also essential that this first form of dead nature shall be open to spiritual influx, and be such that its inner conatus-to-motion can become the servant of ever higher degrees and types of conatus - productive of organic and rational life; even as we see in the growing body of man how the clumsy movements of an infant become the intelligent speech and useful action of an adult.

Matter never becomes living. But it becomes woven into the yielding tissues - exceedingly intricate and differentiated - which are directed by the "soul" - whether vegetative or animal or human. It is then called "living matter." But it is not itself alive, and the extremes or ultimates of nature involved in the body "are not receptive of the spiritual and eternal things" of the mind, and are rejected at death. Yet the interior natural things, which were most concordant and were "nearest to spiritual things,"[196] were even involved in the operations of the natural mind,[197] are retained after death as a permanent plane organized in the inmosts of nature to correspond with the states of sensation and action which man has experienced on earth, and to provide for the spirit a "relativity" to the world of space and time.[198]

The Animal Soul

The influx of life into nature must in every case take place through the inmost forms of matter, which are formed by the conatus-to-motion. But these primes of nature, by composition, are formed into several lower degrees, which first appear as atmospheres and later as "substances at rest." Plants receive their "soul"[199] or living conatus from the "ultimates" of the spiritual-natural degree as an influx into the inmost matter which is involved in the lowest natural degree.[200] (See Diagram) Animals receive their souls[201] from the "intermediates" of the spiritual-natural degree as an influx into the inmost matter involved in the middle natural.[202] Man's soul (a "soul of life") is from all three spiritual degrees, and its influx is directly into the inmosts as well as into inferior degrees of the body.[203]

The effect of a spiritual influx into an animal is to direct and motivate the natural substances of the middle natural degree. Such direction will appear as a natural affection and appetite - a less perfect form of life. This illustrates the principle that influx is according to correspondence. For the middle natural degree can receive influx only from the intermediate of the ultimate spiritual, which is the plane of imagination and natural affections. And because with animals and plants, the inmosts of nature - which are beyond the destructive forces of death - are inwoven into nature and are not free to be organized into an individual 'limbus,' it can be said that "the first of an animal and a plant is natural and therefore . . . relapses into nature."[204]

Summation

The thesis to which the above study seems to lead is that the physical world is composed of entities which, although they may be transformed into forms of energy, yet normally act among themselves from a conatus-to-motion, which seems like a random or chance activity. This makes for a constancy in the operation of interior nature, and for the appearance of 'natural law'. But what the Writings teach about Influx shows that this "matter" can serve spiritual ends, and can yield its nonliving conatus to the service of "souls" - vegetative, animal, and human; and this by a spiritual influx which directs the motion into purposive action, without any creation of new energy. For the sake of human freedom, the 'law' of constancy or of probability must rule, but only as a state of matter before it is involved in an organic environment. The so-called law of probability or of physical cause and effect is "not a necessity." It does not apply where human freedom can be exercised. What is created such that it has no predetermined purpose, is at the disposal of any purpose, within the framework of the Divine design.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This study was written about 1965.]

Footnotes

1 The ultimate of Divine order is in the nature of the world (AC 10634: 2, cp. 10728, 8439: 2, HH 304).

2 With man is the ultimate of order (SD 3022). The corporeal and material things of man . . . are the ultimates of order. That order extends itself from inmosts to ultimates.... (SD 2751; note reference to the mind). The ultimate of order is the body (SD 2917).

3 AC 10634: 2.

4 AC 10728.

5 DLW 154, 160; AE 726: 5. Cp. AE 1196: 2, 1197: 2; D. Wis. ii: 2, for "efficient causes."

6 AE 725: 5.

7 AE 175: 2 ; cp. HH 304 ref's, Ath. Cr. 112.

8 TCR 76, 24.

9 AE 1209: 2.

10 HH 315.

11 DLW 222 art., 185.

12 DLW 189, 192.

13 DLW 184, 190, 195.

14 In a series of discrete degrees when these are in simultaneous order, the ultimate or lowest degree is indeed also the "outmost" and the containant. But when in successive order, the lowest degree is the "ultimate," the last, the basis or foundation.

15 LJ post. 312; TCR 76.

16 Note the teaching, in CL 311, "that all order proceeds from primes to ultimates, and that the ultimates become the prime of any succeeding order; also that all things of the intermediate order are the ultimates of a prior and the primes of a posterior order."

This principle applies in many ways. It is illustrated by the influence of childhood states upon youth and manhood, and of the betrothal state upon later marriage (CL 313). It applies also to a seed which is the last product of one tree and the first of a new one.

But it is always true of a series of successive discrete degrees that one must come to its ultimate state of relative rest before it can by a process of composition become woven. into a lower degree.

17 AE, Standard Edition, vol. VI: p. 475. (Div. Wis. 169)

18 DLW 345, 346; AE 1201: 4.

19 AE 1210; 1212: 2.

20 AE 1210, see Latin text.

21 AE 1211e, 1210e.

22 AE 1210: 3.

23 DLW 225, 222, 223.

24 Angelic Idea.

25 TCR 32: 8. These atmospheres are described in AE 726: 3, 4; LJ post. 312, 313; Coro. 17; DLW 174, 184, etc.

26 DLW 302; cp. TCR 33; LJ post. 311.

27 ISB 16.

28 DLW 65.

29 DLW 190e.

30 DLW 313, 65.

31 AE 1208: 2, cp. Docu. 2: 2, p. 769.

32 DLW 61.

33 DLW 65.

34 AC 3702; cp. 4618e, 7270: 3, 4, 8439: 2.

35 DLW 61f.

36 DLW 65.

37 DLW 66.

38 TCR 71; LJ 9.

39 LJ post. 312f; cp. DLW 66; TCR 33; ISE 16.

40 DLW 177f.

41 ISB 16: 4.

42 DLW 185.

43 DLW 184.

44 DLW 302. Even the "continuous" lessening must be marked by apparently abrupt steps, such as between vapor, liquid, and solid states, or - according to modern theory - by the giving off of radiation from an atom in distinct units of energy, called quanta.

45 D. Wis. viii. 3, xii. e; HH 297; AE 1086: 5, etc.

46 LJ post. 311.

47 AE 1211: 4; LJ post. 323.

48 AE 1210e, cp. 1133: 5, 6.

49 AE 1211; DLW 177, 173, 178, 321; AR 260. But note that they are not material but spiritual. LJ post. 323.

50 AE 1210e.

51 AE 1211: 4.

52 AE 1211: 3.

53 AE 1212: 2.

54 AE 1219: 5.

55 AC 9499.

56 AE 582; cp. D. Wis. ii, 3e. 56a Angelic Idea.

57 AE 1206: 2; cp. DLW 84: 2, 90e.

58 In his Principia, Swedenborg gave only slight indications that the spiritual was a medium for natural creation.

59 AC 5272; Ath. Cr. 191.

60 AR 1218e, 553: 2; SD 5685; AC 3726: 4.

61 TCR 33.

62 DP 6, 5.

63 DLW 152f, 291, 294.

64 D. Wis. xii, 3.

65 TCR 35; ISB 4; CL 380.

66 AC 5084: 2; ISB 9.

77 TCR 472. .

68 AE 1208: 2.

69 DLW 89f, 157, 164, CL 415: 3, AE 1196: 2, 1207: 2. While the natural is called "dead," it is of course true that the Divine alone is living a Se. "Everything created is in itself inanimate and dead. . . ." (DLW 53). In his Diary, Swedenborg speaks of certain interior forms which are still within nature and are without life; but he adds that "the things that are within or above them are living from the Lord, but still organic, be cause in themselves (in se) they have nothing of life. . . ." (SD 3484). Thus the Grand Man of heaven is called 'dead in se (SD 3419). (In the spiritual world) ". . . the substantial is living, or a most pure ethereal principle, which is formed by the Lord into things of this kind so wonderful that they can scarcely be described." (SD 4293. Cp. SD 4294).

70 DLW 158f, 175, 353.

71 AE 1209: 3e; ISB 10.

72 DLW 84.

73 DLW 157.

74 D. Wis. xii, 1; cp LJ post. 313.

75 CL 235: 2. But compare DLW 175.

76 AE 1209e, 1206e; D. Love xxi, e; DLW 315.

77 DLW 164f; AE 1218: 2.

78 DLW 302f, 65; AC 7381: 2, cp. 6697: 2.

79 TCR 75; ISB 16; AE 1218e.

80 AE 1218: 2.

81 ISB 16: 4.

82 AE 1131: 4, 1139e; LJ post. 267.

83 TCR 75. Color,. like natural light, cannot be separated (distingue) from the material. (SD 2512)

84 TCR 40, 364, 472; AE 1139e.

85 AC 8325: 2, 2625, 6983, 5253: 2 ; DP 51: 2 ; DLW 69f ; AE 1212: 5 ; DLW 160f.

86 TCR 27, 31: 3.

87 TCR 29; DLW 7, 160; DP 50; D. Wis. vii, 5; TCR 64; AE 1219.

88 SD 5611; D. Wis. viii, 6; DLW 165; TCR 78: 4; AE 1211: 4; 1218: 2.

89 DLW 315, 340, 344, 346, 370, 388, 165; D. Wis. xii, 5: 3, Canons, God iv. 12.

90 DLW 160; AE 1218: 2.

91 DP 220: 3.

92TCR 103; D. Wis. viii; DLW 257, 388.

93 DLW 388, 257.

94 DP 220.

95 D. Wis. viii, 4.

96 Ibid ; compare 1 Econ. 650f, 2 Econ. 206f, 225.

97 L j post. 312.

98 Physics and Philosophy, 1944, p. 15.

99 The Fibre, 266a.

100 Principia, I, ch. 2.

101 On "simple substances," see DP 6; DLW 229; AC 5084: 4; CL 329; LJ post. 263; TCR 20e, 90: 2; D. Wis. i; ISB 17: 2.

102 DLW 204, 229.

103 AE 1206: 2.

104 DLW 83, 84, 353.

105 TCR 280: 8, 694, 79: 7,

106 TCR 79.

107 TCR 694; CL 320; Canons, God, iv. 7.

108 DLW 172.

109 DLW 285e.

110 DLW 51, 69, 81f; TCR 78:3. What is here said of the Divine can also, in a manner, be said of the spiritual world. "The expanse around the Sun of the angelic heaven is not an extense, but still in the extense of the natural sun and with the living subjects there according to reception, and reception is according to forms and states." (TCR 35: 11) That the spiritual is present in the natural and is manifested there according to reception, does not imply that the spiritual is confined within the natural!

111 LJ post. 266; DLW 82, cp. 158e; AC 5084: 3.

112 Sir Isaac Newton, "Four Letters to Doctor Bentley . . . ," London 1756, pp. 25, 26.

113 DLW 299, AC 5084: 3.

114 DLW 174.

115 DLW 81; SD 3481; AC 1382; TCR 27.

116 This was recognized by Swedenborg in his treatise on The Infinite, published in 1734. See Wilkinson's translation (1847), p. 10.

117 DLW 157.

118 AE 1218: 3; AC 2625: 2.

119 DLW 81.

120 DLW 155, 300.

121 DLW 51; DP 51; CL 328:2, 3.

122 SD 3482; CL 328: 3, Canons, God, iii, 13, H. Sp. ii, 2.

123 HH 116.

124 AC 5173, 5116: 2, 3; HH 589: 2; DLW 340; DP 201; SD 2070; AE 1206e.

125 AC 5173.

126 TCR 33.

127 Cp. AE 1212: 5.

128 See Ralph E. Lapp, Matter, "Life" Science Library, 1963.

129 Ibid., Introduction by C. P. Snow.

130 Ibid., p. 125.

131 AE 1146; HH 589: 2.

132 AE 1146.

133 AC 8911.

134 AC 9473, 5173, 8911; DLW 197, 218, 219.

135 DLW 218.

136 AE 1209f.

137 HH 589: 2 ; CL 215; Coro. 30e; DLW 218, 219, 310; AC 8911.

138 DLW 311, cp. 302.

139 AE 1206: 3. Underlined in the manuscript.

140 AE 1206e, 1207: 3.

141 DLW 315, AE 1206: 4.

142 AE 1209.

143 DLW 260.

144 DLW 175, cp. 158e.

145 AE 1207: 3, 1206e.

146 TCR 76.

147 LJ post. 313.

148 AE 1212: 5; TCR 29: 3, 27; D. Wis. xii, 3: 2.

149 Principia I, i, 2 (Clissold, pp. 25-29).

150 SD 2234.

151 D P 249: 4.

152 SD 5709.

153 SD 2000.

154 AE 1146: 5.

155 AE 1206: 3.

156 AC 5711. Because natural things clothe the spiritual, it can be said in AC 5326 that "there are more things in the effect than in the cause"; for the spiritual does not have the new qualities of the natural. But, on the other hand, there is "an axiom that nothing exists in the effect that is not in the cause." (AE 1207:3) For the natural is only a very general expression of the immeasurable things of the spiritual.

157 Angelic Id.; cf. AC 7270e.

158 As an arrow shot from a bow can go far wide of the mark because of a slight error in the aim, so every change in the state of man's mind would have dire results unless the Lord foresaw man's choice and led him every fraction of a moment. DP 202: 3, 333: 3.

159 Cp. AE 1146: 5.

160 DLW 166.

161 E. W. Barnes, Scientific Theory and Religion, Cambridge, England, 1933, pp. 14-15.

162 AC 6077; DLW 302.

163 AC 6493, 5508: 2; SD 4562e, 1088.

164 D. Wis. viii, 3.

165 DLW 160, 165. Even in the spiritual world things are relatively fixed (SD 5552) and an appearance of space and time is derived from the ultimates which are the lands on which the angels live. (AE 1219: 3-5) But this appearance is always relative to the spiritual states of love which have become confirmed and permanent. (TCR 78: 2)

166 DP 190.

167 DP 190e.

168 AC 6493.

169 DP 212.

170 SD 4009.

171 DLW 165.

172 SD 4605; cp. Matthew 10: 29, 30.

173 Le Comte du Nouy, Human Destiny, 1947, p. 26.

174 SD 2698.

175 DLW 229; CL 329. See Lapp, Matter, p. 178, for description of plasma state of matter.

176 See A. I. Oparin, The Origin of Life on the Earth, New York, 1957: p. 350.

177 DLW 312.

178 Some scientific authors have claimed that in organic systems "it appears as if the second law of thermodynamics were for a time successfully disregarded, only to resume its dominance later; the physical components of the organism then suffers dispersion." (R. S. Lillie, General Biology and Philosophy of Organism, Chicago, 1945: p. 24) In physics, this law is regarded as the expression of a certain "randomness in the thermal motions of molecules" (Ibid, p. 84). It tends to oppose diversification (p. 85) and organization. This tendency in inorganic matter is suggested in DLW 260, where we read that "the substances of the natural world from their nature react against the substances of the spiritual world. . . ." It is spiritual substances which seek to build matter into organic forms.

179 SD 4009.

180 SD 4009.

181 TCR 496: 4.

182 TCR 499, 491.

183 TCR 478, 480, 499.

184 DP 220; DLW 388, 257.

185 It is interesting to note that even in the Economy of the Animal Kingdom, written in 1740, Swedenborg showed that the inmost of the body, called there "the spirituous fluid," was as to component substance derived from the highest plane of nature - but, in the body, was so constructed as to be "accommodated at once to the beginning of motion, and to the reception of life and wisdom." (2 Econ. 241ff)

186 AC 8700.

187 Compare AE 401: 18.

188 Inv. 60 (Docu. 302A).

189 SD 2434.

190 DP 212.

191 AC 6493; SD 4567. 192 HD 267e, ref's.

198 AC 6493f, 5174; DP 212.

199 Their soul is described as "uses from affections" (D. Love x, e).

200 AE 1212: 2.

201 D. Wis. xii, 5.

202 Cp. DLW 66, 346; AE 1212.

203 DLW 66, 346; CL 183: 5.

204 D. Wis. viii, 2e.

-The New Philosophy 1974;127-163