Produced by E-text donated by the Kempton Project, submitted
by William Rotella
Standard Edition
Swedenborg Foundation
Incorporated
New York
————
Established 1850
First Published in Latin, Amsterdam, 1763
First English translation published in U.S.A., 1794
55th Printing, 1988
ISBN 0-87785-056-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76-46144
Manufactured in the United States of America
The previous translation of this work has been carefully revised. Inthis revision the translator has had the valuable assistance ofsuggestions by the Rev. L.H. Tafel and others. The new renderings ofexistere and fugere are suggestions adopted by the Editorial Committeeand accepted by the translator, but for which he does not wish to beheld solely responsible.
Man knows that there is such a thing as love, but he does not know whatlove is. He knows that there is such a thing as love from common speech,as when it is said, he loves me, a king loves his subjects, and subjectslove their king, a husband loves his wife, a mother her children, andconversely; also, this or that one loves his country, his fellow citizens,his neighbor; and likewise of things abstracted from person, as when itis said, one loves this or that thing. But although the word love is souniversally used, hardly anybody knows what love is. And because one isunable, when he reflects upon it, to form to himself any idea of thoughtabout it, he says either that it is not anything, or that it is merelysomething flowing in from sight, hearing, touch, or interaction withothers, and thus affecting him. He is wholly unaware that love is hisvery life; not only the general life of his whole body, and the generallife of all his thoughts, but also the life of all their particulars.This a man of discernment can perceive when it is said: If you removethe affection which is from love, can you think anything, or do anything?Do not thought, speech, and action, grow cold in the measure in which theaffection which is from love grows cold? And do they not grow warm in themeasure in which this affection grows warm? But this a man of discernmentperceives simply by observing that such is the case, and not from anyknowledge that love is the life of man.
2. What the life of man is, no one knows unless he knows that it is love.If this is not known, one person may believe that man's life is nothingbut perceiving with the senses and acting, and another that it is merelythinking; and yet thought is the first effect of life, and sensation andaction are the second effect of life. Thought is here said to be the firsteffect of life, yet there is thought which is interior and more interior,also exterior and more exterior. What is actually the first effect of lifeis inmost thought, which is the perception of ends. But of all thishereafter, when the degrees of life are considered.
3. Some idea of love, as being the life of man, may be had from the sun'sheat in the world. This heat is well known to be the common life, as itwere, of all the vegetations of the earth. For by virtue of heat, comingforth in springtime, plants of every kind rise from the ground, deckthemselves with leaves, the