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BOOK VI

REVELATIONS OF HARMONIAL LIFE

I

THE LAW OF CORRESPONDENCE¹

The human mind begins by taking a literal view of everything—whether spiritual or material. Its first apprehensions are confined strictly to the apparent, but wisdom, rising on wings of ideality, penetrates to that which lives within, and so judges "not from appearances, but with a righteous judgment," or from the core to the outward, not from the mere husk. So does it render a true verdict concerning that which is interior, spiritual, eternal. As in everything else that it encounters on the way of progressive thought and experience, the mind's first step in theology is to take a literal view of ancient spiritual writings. But intuition expands, and the second step is to take a figurative view—as, for example, of Bible language. Minds in this state apprehend that old prophets and new apostles indifferently have spoken in metaphors, writing emblematically, with a great wealth of figurative expressions. In this manner the Bible students throw off the material and literal conception, seeking pictorial, figurative interpretations, correspond-

¹ See Morning Lectures: Twenty Discourses delivered before the Friends of Progress in the City of New York, 1865. Discourse entitled The End of the World, pp. 52 et seq.

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ences, contrasts and analogies. Swedenborg, being a scientific and philosophical thinker, started systematically to raise interpretation of metaphor, emblem and symbol to the dignity of a science. He reduced, in his own opinion, all scriptural externalism to an intelligible spiritual account. His principle of transliteration was something more than analogy or comparison: it was what he called the science of correspondence, meaning that the internal of any object—whether person, thought, affection or thing—is ever represented in its external, and vice versa. Thus a lamb will be a lamb only to the outward eye of him who looks over the fence, but to the spiritual mind it will indicate the principle or state of innocence. The following familiar examples are given by De Guay¹: "The earth in general corresponds to man; its different productions, which serve for the nourishment of men, correspond to different kinds of goods and truths—solid aliments to various kinds of goods and liquid to kinds of truths. A house corresponds to the will and understanding, which constitute the human mind. . . . Garments correspond to truths or falsehoods, according to their substance, colour and form. . . . Animals correspond to affections: those which are useful and gentle to good affections, those which are hurtful and bad to evil affections; gentle and beautiful birds to intellectual truths, those which are ferocious and ugly to falsehoods; fishes to the scientifics which derive their origin from sensual things; reptiles to corporeal and sensual pleasures; noxious insects to falsities which proceed from the senses. Trees and shrubs correspond to different kinds of knowledge, herbs and grass to various scientific truths. Gold corresponds to celestial good, silver to spiritual truth, iron to natural truth, stones to sensual and precious stones to spiritual truths."

So does Swedenborg go through the mystic sphere of

¹ Letters to a Man of the World, No, xii.

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The Law of Correspondence

psycho-scientific research and succeeds in reducing the whole Bible—or at least so much of it as, according to his superior illumination, was written correspondentially —to a consistent system of interior interpretation. It must be evident to all that the Swedish seer struck ever and anon the core of Divine Fruit on the Biblical trees.¹ At almost every second step his foot was planted on the basis of everlasting truth. Had he always struck solid ground, the world would have found in him an infallible teacher; but he touched spiritual truth just unfrequently enough to show that he was liable to err, which notwithstanding I do not hesitate to say that the science of correspondence is the closest approach to a great discovery in the substantial sense of spiritual communications recorded in the Old and New Testaments.

But there have been and are persons who have conceived that inasmuch as there was a spiritual sense in the literal word so is a celestial concealed within the spiritual. Others may be expected to discover one that is heavenly above that which is celestial and yet others to unfold a deific sense. The reasoning is sophistical, and all such fanaticism is foreign to a healthy mind. For the rest, the internal and external of all things are married together and correspond literally to each other, and that which is true inwardly is true also without.² Hence no religious

¹ The doctrine of correspondences did not, however, originate with Swedenborg, who was a learned man of his period and was—almost indubitably—acquainted with the Latin literature of kabalism. There is no need to dwell upon this point, which is familiar to students of the subject, but the scriptural exegesis of kabalism—and especially of the Zohar, its chief storehouse—is based wholly on the analogies between things within and without. Davis puts the general thesis quite intelligibly elsewhere: The reality of all external things exists in an invisible condition, and forms are a constant manifestation of their inward reality.—The Principles of Nature, Part I, p. 92.
² It is affirmed that, owing to the universal law of correspondence between parts and the whole, the organisation of man stands forth as a complete history of the race, and that it repeats—section by section—

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truth can be incompatible with scientific or philosophic discovery in a corresponding department. So also there can be no antagonism between natural and revealed religion. The changeless God Who "built the palace of the sky," and communicates through various mediators with men, can speak no inconsistent word. In their proper understanding, word and deed harmonise universally. The world's internal conviction, the intuition of all peoples, correspond hereto, and the principal is of universal application. That which is true in the domain of science is true in the social realm, in politics, governments, the internal history of particular races, and true equally—intimately, delicately, eternally—in every component part of our mental existence.

the entire plan and destiny of the wide-spread system of the universe. So also man's body, from base to summit, is a recital at once of its physical growth and of its psychological progression. There is a perfect correspondence between certain parts of the body and certain parts of the head, between systems of visceral organs and groups of mental structures, between nerves in body and brain. By careful observation of signs and symptoms above or within the phrenological parts the physician can determine what organs or nerves are affected in the dependent organism; and thus, as the body is an epitome of physical growth, of psychological progress and experience, so is the head an epitome of every organ, system, quality and principle comprised in the body.—The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, p. 42.