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Swedenborg, Emanuel - The Infinite - Aggregates
Identifier
003143
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Emmanuel Swedenborg – The Infinite and the final cause of creation
We see that man has numerous members, numerous senses and a large faculty of reasoning, also numerous internal parts.
If we fix upon any of the parts, as for instance the cerebrum, it again has numerous parts of its own, both membranes, substances, nerves, marrows and other appendages, besides fluids; And the rest of the body the same. When we examine its parts, we find them severally furnished with manifold arteries, fibres, tendons and tunics and possessing a fine mechanical adaptation for every movement they are intended to perform.
If we consider the parts one by one, in every nerve we see numbers of membranes, numbers of branches and infinite details and if we take any part of these again, we find numbers of vessels of different classes, and the same if we take parts of parts and repeat the observation. Then if we choose to exalt vision by the microscope, how much more still shall we bring to light!.............
And thus the body, whether we consider it as a whole or regard it as made up of parts and parts of parts, the anatomist’s eye recognises that all things are enclosed in membranes, and that the membranes ramify and become finer and finer until at last the eye can see them no longer …. There are still subtler forms, inasmuch as we see correspondent effects in the subtler sphere......
Having now arrived by the aid of reason at the conclusion that the existence of the finer membranes is not only possible but plausible, we have next to consider their qualities. And if they are formed for the reception of motions finer and finer; on the pattern of the motions in the elements it follows that the membranes must of necessity be tense. Motion cannot be received without tension.………..
The membranes themselves are stretched by liquids … If the tension is produced by swelling either from blood or any other fluid.. it must be admitted that such swelling is a cause of tension not only in the larger but also the finer parts…
As finer membranes do exist and must equally have their peculiar tension … there must be some liquid or fluid to cause this power of equal tension and to make the parts so preserve their tension as equally to diffuse over them the motion received
Yet all these objects and details have arisen out of one seed – out of one primitive substance