72 LAWS AND DEVELOPMENTS. 



the Deity ; and its correspondence with physical heat is instinct- 

 ively recognized by the human mind, and is implied in the 

 phraseology with which men naturally speak of it. Thus we 

 speak of one in whom the love or passional principle predom- 

 inates, as a "warm-hearted man," as an "ardent enthusiast," 

 or as a man of "fiery disposition." On the principle, there- 

 fore, that all bodies are developments from an interior soul, 

 and all natural phenomena have an ultimate spiritual origin, we 

 may conceive that while the great Kingdom of Matter was in 

 such immediate relation and juxtaposition to the great King- 

 dom of Spirit, its Cause, Divine Love (or Divine Spiritual Heat) 

 flowed directly into the Realm of Matter, and especially into 

 its seventh or highest and proximately vital degree as being 

 most in affinity with the Divine Spirit itself, and that the 

 effect of this influx was an immediate generation of a corre- 

 sponding natural heat.* This heat must necessarily have been 

 attended by an immediate expansion of the recipient particle 

 or collection of particles, and by the evolution of a magnetic 

 or magnetoid atmosphere partaking of the nature of the parti- 

 cle's interior vitality. Divine Wisdom (or spiritual light) 

 entering w r ith, and acting through, the Love, pervades this 

 atmosphere, and brings it into the nature of physical light, to 

 which wisdom corresponds.f 



The expansion resulting from the heat must necessarily have 



* That natural heat may be produced by what we have here termed spiritual heat, 

 is shewn by the fact, that when passion flows from the interior soul into the nervous 

 tissues of the human body, it raises the general temperature of the body, quickens the 

 circulations, produces a flush of the countenance, and a burning of the cheeks, and, in 

 general, greatly increases the physical powers. It may be remarked, that the general 

 principles of this portion of our theory were taught by the celebrated Swedenborg, though 

 we have arrived at them by an independent process of induction. 



t It is well known that natural light consists of seven prismatic rays ; and this fact 

 hints at the corresponding seven-fold nature of Divine Wisdom, and hence, also, of 

 Divine Love, its inseparable associate. 



