PRESENTED BY 
 
 ^s-? 
 
CONVERSATIONS 
 
 ON 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. W. H. BKNADE. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 THE ACADEMY OE THE KEW CHURCH, 
 1821 Wallace St., Philadelphia. 
 
 1888. 
 
1- 
 
 ^,■.'^ 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Ends and Means, 1 to 71 
 
 II. Suggestions to Teachers, . . . . 72 to 148 
 
 III. The Order of Life, . . . . . 149 to 164 
 
 IV. The Kearrangement of Scientifics, . . 165 to 177 
 
 V. The Forma'ion and Order of ijcientifics, . . 177 to 199 
 
 VI. The Use of Sensual Scit.niifus; . . . 200 to 217 
 
 VII. The Formation of Intelligen e, . . . 217 to 222 
 
 Press of Franklin Printing Huuse, rhilatlelphia. 
 
CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ENDS AND MEANS. 
 
 rPHE universals of etlucation are its uses, the simplest 
 -■- of which are complex. Employing the philosophical 
 terms of subject — one wholearns or knows, — and object — 
 the thing learned or known — the subjects of education are 
 men (from the moment of conception to eternity), and 
 the objects of instruction and education are good and 
 truth. 
 
 The end for which both subjects and objects exist 
 and for which man is to be educated is — not this world, 
 but — an angelic heaven. 
 
 The means of attaining this end are provided in : 
 
 I. The constitution of man, in that he is organized of 
 spiritual and of natural substances; 
 
 II. The relation of man to the spiritual world and 
 to the natural world ; 
 
 III. The influx of the Divine life, which is both a 
 mediate and an immediate influx; 
 
 IV. Divine revelation and human science; 
 
 V. Human receptibility and reciprocation. 
 
4 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 The Universals of method are : 
 
 I. Accommodation, 
 
 II. Application, 
 
 III. Conjunction. 
 
 These are the Divine methods in the reformation and 
 regeneration of man ; and human methods, which are 
 agencies subordinate and subject to the Divine methods, 
 should always be in correspondence with them, so that 
 in childhood a basis may be laid for the Lord's work 
 in manhood. Parents aud teachers stand in the place 
 of the Lord to children, and must therefore learn His 
 methods in the reformation and regeneration of man, 
 and apply them to the instruction and education of 
 children. 
 
 In-structlon (forming a structure within) is the implant- 
 ing of living remains, that are afterward to be brought 
 out, drawn out, and led out, or e-ducated. 
 
 The human race is the basis on which heaven is founded, for man 
 was created last, and what is created last is the basis of all that 
 precedes. Creation commenced from [a] the highest or inmost 
 things, because from [ex] the Divine, and proceeded to the 
 ultimates or extremes, and then first subsisted. The idtimate of 
 creation is tlie natural world, and in it the terraqueous globe 
 with all that is on it. When these tilings were finislied man 
 was created, and into liim were collated all things of Divine 
 Order from firsts to ultimates ; in his inmosts were collated the 
 things that are in the Qrsts of that order, in his ultimates those 
 which are in ultimates, so that man was made Divine Order in 
 form. Hence it is that all things in man and with man are as 
 well from [ex] heaven as from [ex] the world, from heaven those 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 5 
 
 which are of his mind, and from the world those wliich are of 
 his body. For the things of heaven inflow into his thoughts and 
 affections, and dispose them according to reception by his spirit, 
 and the things of the world inflow into his sensations and enjoy- 
 ments, and dispose them according to reception in his body, but in 
 accommodation according to their agreement with tiie thoughts 
 and affections of his spirit. — L. J. 9. See n. 7-10. 
 
 " The Humau Race is the seminary of Heaven," and 
 "marriage is the seminary of the human race" (i. J. 
 10; A. a 5053, 9961, 6697; H. H. 384); education for 
 heaven, therefore, involves education for marriage. 
 Marriage is for Heaven and is Heaven. Marriage is an 
 eternal means to an eternal end, i. e., spiritual life in 
 conjunction with the Divine Life. The end of the 
 whole creation of the natural world was the natural life 
 in the natural body of man. The mineral kingdom is 
 " collated " in his bones, the vegetable in his muscles, the 
 animal in his blood. All these tilings in man's body, 
 taken from the natural world, " the theatre representa- 
 tive of the spiritual world," must be brought into corre- 
 spondence with things spiritual. The reception of things 
 by the body must come into correspondence with recep- 
 tion of thoughts and affections in the spirit. Children 
 sometimes are averse to certain foods and certain studies. 
 This aversion should be bent to good, but not violently 
 broken. The spiritual condition from which the an- 
 tipathy results should be sought out and remedied ; then 
 the natural will follow, as a matter of course. It must 
 be borne in mind that these aversions — if to things 
 
6 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 good — arise not from any evil proper to the child. 
 Children are not in evil before a certain age ; conse- 
 quently, when they act badly, they do so from being 
 affected by the spheres of persons or of things, by the 
 impatient, rebellious, and selfish states of persons, or by 
 the disorderly and noxious conditions of things near to 
 them. Infants affected by a sphere of discontent or 
 passion will cry bitterly or appear actually mad, but if 
 transferred to the arms of a person who is in a tranquil 
 and peaceful state of mind, they will often be soothed 
 instantly and go to sleep in a few minutes, an evidence 
 of the powerful operation of spheres upon them. Every 
 child is in the sphere of the angels of heaven ; by their 
 spheres angels and children are mutually joined to- 
 gether and cannot be disconnected. " Their angels, 
 who always see the face of my Father who is in the 
 heavens" (Matthew xviii, 10), have their mansions in' 
 their affections ; even as with every man the angelic 
 mansions are in his affections if they are good and inno- 
 cent. They are in him ; it is an appearance only that 
 they are separated. These mansions in the affections of 
 man as the Lord's dwelling-place in him are meant by 
 the Lord's words, " In my Father's house are many 
 mansions ; I go to prepare a place for you." (John xiv, 
 2 ; J-. C. 9305.) And that they are in man and not 
 without him, the Lord teaches when He says, " The 
 Kingdom of God is within you." (Luhe xvii, 21.) 
 This should be taught children as a fact. All Di- 
 vine teachings in the Word— that is, in the Word 
 
EJSBS AND MEANS. 7 
 
 as now unfolded in the Writings — should be taught 
 children as facts, not as abstract doctrines ; for thus 
 "will many grievous fallacies be guarded against, falla- 
 cies that remain and ultimately lead to falsities and 
 to evils. 
 
 To return to the teaching in Last Judgment (n. 9) : 
 Creation commenced from the Divine and proceeded to 
 ultimates; and proceeding thus, it so subsists. The 
 spiritual world cannot be separated from the natural 
 in fact, and should therefore not be separated in in- 
 struction and education, but should be kept in intimate 
 association. The mind, reverting continually to heaven 
 and the things of heaven, will be open to an enlarged 
 influx, for its thoughts will extend into more and more 
 societies, and " the extension of heaven, which is for the 
 angels, is so immense that it cannot be filled to eternity." 
 (L. J. 11; E. in U. 126 ; H. R. 415-420.) Hence, as 
 there is an extension of all affections of truth and good 
 into heaven (Z. J. 9), and in like manner of each par- 
 ticular truth, their extension is so immense that it cannot 
 all be comprehended to eternity. No instruction, there- 
 fore, should be given to children that cannot be indefi- 
 nitely extended. 
 
 " The perfection of heaven increases according to 
 numbers" {L. J. 12), but the form of the human mind 
 is like the form of heaven, and therefore its perfection 
 increases according to the increase of truth ^qd good 
 
8 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 whence are its intelligence and wisdom. ( H. H. 51-58, 
 200-212, 265-275.) 
 
 The work of educating children for marriage and for 
 heaven is given to men because men need the work. 
 The Lord does not need men to carry out His purposes, 
 but they need the work, and it is of the Divine Mercy 
 that it is given to them to do. In order that the Divine 
 work may be done, man was so constructed that he not 
 only lives in both worlds at the same time, but that 
 he also is in the human form ia both worlds i^H. H. 7- 
 12, 78-86), and that he is as to his mind in the form of 
 heaven, which form is from the Divine. {H. H. bl \ A. C. 
 4524, 9807.) 
 
 Therefore he was created in the image of the three 
 heavens with which he communicates, which image is 
 the similitude of the Divine Man, with whom man is to 
 be conjoined {H. H. 59-66) ; and so man was likewise 
 created as to his exteriors, especially as to his body, into 
 the image and form of the world in which he first exists. 
 In dealing with man, therefore, it is necessary to think 
 of him as the angels do. 
 
 An angel of heaven is a man according to use; yea, if it is 
 allowed to speak spiritually here, use is a man angel. {D. L. in 
 A. E. xii.) So far as man is in the love of uses, he is in the 
 Lord, for he is so far in the Church and in heaven. Both the 
 Church and heaven are from the Lord as one man, whose forms, 
 which are called superior and inferior, as also interior and ex- 
 terior organics, are made up of those who love uses, doing them ; 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 9 
 
 and the uses themselves compose that man, because he is a 
 spiritual man, which consists not of persons, but of uses with them. 
 . . . They are man, because every use, which in any manner 
 is serviceable to the general good or the public, is man, beautiful 
 and perfect according to the quality of the use, and at the same 
 time the quality of its affection. Tlie reason is, that in every sin- 
 gle thing wliich is in the human body there is from its use an 
 idea of the universe; for it regards the universe there as its own 
 from which, and the universe regards it in itself as its own by 
 which. From that idea of the universe in single things it is that 
 every use there is man, as well in little things as in great things, 
 [and is] equally of an organic form in a part as in the whole. 
 Yea, the parts of parts, which are interior, are men more than 
 tlie composite, since all perfection increases toward the interiors. 
 For all the organic forms in man are composed of more in- 
 terior Ibrms, and these of still more interior ones, even to the in- 
 most, by which there is communication with every affection and 
 thought of the mind of man; for the mind of man in its single 
 things expatiates into all things of its body; into all things of 
 the body is its excursion, for it is itself a form of life. Unless the 
 mind had that body, it would not be a mind nor a man. Hence 
 it is that the decision and beck of the will of man are in a mo- 
 ment determined, and produce and determine actions ; it becomes 
 altogether as if the thought and will themselves were in them and 
 not above them. That every least thing in man from its useisa 
 man, does not fall into tlie natural idea as it does into the spirit- 
 ual. Man in the spiritual idea is not a person, but use, for the 
 spiritual idea is without the idea of person, as it is without the 
 idea of matter, of space, and of time, wherefore when one sees 
 another in heaven, he indeed sees him as nian, but thinks of him 
 as a use ; an angel also appears in the face according to the use in 
 
10 CON VERS A TIONS ON ED UCA TIO N. 
 
 which he is, and its affection makes the life of tlie face. From, 
 all this it may be manifest that every good use is in form a man. 
 — D. L. in A E. xiii. 
 
 The truly spiritual idea of man, therefore, is not that 
 of a person, but of a use; and in the internal spiritual 
 idea of the angels he is so regarded. (JZ H. IZ^ll.) 
 This idea is based upon the fact that man is created to 
 be an angel of heaven, thus to be a perfect human form, 
 which is the form of heaven, in the image and according 
 to the similitude of the Divine form, and this is the 
 Divine Human Form of the Lord Who Alone is Man 
 and Use Itself. {T. C.E.lSd; D. P. 27; D. L. W. 366; 
 H. H. 30 ; A. C. 5704, 4524.) Since man was thus 
 created a form of heaven, he is to be regenerated into a 
 form of heaven, or to be re-created into the original 
 form which he has lost. The Divine which makes 
 heaven, is the good of love and the truth of faith; to be 
 regenerated into this form of heaven, therefore, is to re- 
 ceive the good of love and the truth of faith from the 
 Lord. (jET. H. 9.) In this good of love and truth of 
 faith the Lord dwells with man as in His own ; hence 
 the end of instruction and education is the preparation 
 of such recipients of the good of love and the truth of 
 faith. But the Divine is a man, heaven is a man, hence 
 a primary of the preparation of such recipients is the 
 teaching that the Lord is the Divine Man. {H. H. 78- 
 82.) Where the idea of the Lord as the Divine Man 
 is not, the interiors of man are closed, and he is not in 
 
iJNJDS AND MEANS. H 
 
 the form of heaven. (jEf. H. 83-86.) And in order that the 
 work of educaiion may be understood aright, it is to be 
 known that all goods and truths are in the human form, 
 and that where they are not, there are no uses, and 
 hence no dwelling-place for the Lord; consequently no 
 life, for there is no interior from which is the first of 
 life. 
 
 In education these facts must constantly be borne in 
 mind that *' man is in the least effigy a little spiritual 
 worhl, hence the spiritual man is an image of the Lord" 
 {A. C. 4524), and that as to his body " he is formed into 
 the imageof the world ;" or, as is taught in Arcana Ccelestia 
 (n. 6013), " that man is formed, as to his interiors, to the 
 image of the three heavens ; as to his exteriors, especially 
 as to the body, to the image of the world." Man is thus 
 a form of both worlds, as is indeed involved in the 
 teaching that in man the two worlds meet and are to- 
 gether. In all instruction and education the true rela- 
 tion of these two worlds must be preserved and caie be 
 taken never to disturb it. If this is carried out, and 
 the child knows that he is constantly with angels and 
 spirits, then something is accomplished toward his re- 
 formation and regeneration. Such knowledge will pre- 
 pare a child to understand better the teaching that in the 
 Word there is a spiritual sense in the literal sense, and 
 the literal sense will appear in a truer light. And by 
 this will be given powerful aid in the work of liberation 
 
12 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 from hell and the formation of the man into an image 
 and likeness of God. 
 
 This teaching, that man as to the interiors of his 
 mind is in the midst of spirits and angels, and thinks 
 and loves from their light and heat, is fully given in D. 
 L. W, 92; T. C.R. 475, 607; A. C. 4067; H. H. 438; 
 D. L. W. 252; D, P. 296; C. L. 530; T. C. R. 14, 454. 
 Were it not for the light of the angels, man cov^ld not 
 think, and were it not for their heat, man could n )t love. 
 It follows from the Doctrine cited that man as consti- 
 tuted is never alone, never solitary ; if he were, he would 
 have no thoughts and no loves. Children are always in 
 association with spirits, both good and evil, and in the 
 matter of discipline it must be remembered, as before 
 noticed, that the spirits with them may be convoked by 
 the sphere of the parent or teacher. A teacher's first 
 duty in preparation for the education of others is there- 
 fore to educate himself, i. e., to shun the evils which 
 bring him into evil associations. While the teacher may 
 appear to be in the presence only of a child, he is really 
 with a large number of spirits; and with a class of many 
 children there will be multitudes of spirits from various 
 provinces in the Grand Man. All children can, there- 
 fore, not be instructed alike. The teacher must apply 
 himself to the individuals and give to each one such 
 instruction as will form a plane for true and good spirits. 
 
 Again it follows from the Doctrine cited, that in man. 
 
ENDS AND MEA^S. 13 
 
 the subjects of instruction and education are his thoughts 
 and affections — the thoughts are to be instructed, the 
 affections educated. The education of children will fail 
 of its true end if parents and teachers fail to understand 
 and consider this teaching of Doctrine, and neglect to 
 provide such means and methods as are applicable to 
 this particular of the human constitution. 
 
 "Man was created a fo*^m of Divine Order" (T. C. 
 R. 65 ; H. D. 279 ; H. H. 30, 454 ; L. J. 9), and since 
 all order in the universe is Divine Truth, man was 
 created a form of Divine Truth. {A. C, 8200 ; T. C. E. 
 224.) 
 
 Man was made by Divine Truth, because all things of man 
 refer themselves to the understanding and the will, and the 
 understanding is the receptacle of the Divine Truth, and the will 
 of the Divine Good ; hence the human mind, wiiich consists of 
 those two principles, is nothing else than a form of Divine Truth 
 and Divine Good, spiritually and naturally organized ; the human 
 brain is that form ; and since the whole man depends on his 
 mind, all things that are in his body are appendages, which are 
 actuated by and live from those two principles. — T. C. R. 224. 
 
 Man is Divine Order in form — in a form which origi- 
 nates in Divine Truth from Divine Good. His instruc- 
 tion, in order to be accommodated to his form, must 
 needs have a like origin. The Word is the Divine 
 Truth itself, which presents to man its own Essence in 
 the two Commandments — " Thou shalt love the Lord 
 above all things " and " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 
14 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 thyself." The Divine Truth, as revealed from the Word 
 to the New Church, presents the life of heaven as the 
 spiritual embodiment of its essence. In the life of hea- 
 ven the contents of the Commandments, which are a 
 summary of the Word of Life, are presented objectively 
 to the mind of the child as of the adult. And the hea- 
 venly life has its corresponding forms, greatest and least, 
 in every human form of existence, therefore in every 
 child. Consequently there is a general and also an indi- 
 vidual conformity in every man and every child to the 
 general and individual form of heaven, which must be 
 borne in mind; for both are from the Divine Truth oi 
 the Divine Good of the Lord. 
 
 Pursuing our investigations on the principle hitherto 
 kept in view, of accommodating methods to the Divine 
 by deriving them from the Divine Order, the following 
 important Doctrine next claims our consideration : 
 
 The intellectual in general is the visual of the internal man, 
 which sees from the light of heaven, which is from the Lord, 
 and what it sees is all spiritual and celestial. But tlie sensual 
 in general is of the external man; here, the sensual of sight, be- 
 cause it corresponds and is subordinate to the intellectual. This 
 sensual sees from the light of the world, which is from the sun, 
 and what it sees is all worldly, corporeal, and earthly. There 
 are in man derivations from the intellectual, which is in the 
 light of heaven, to the sensual, which is in the light of the 
 world; were there not, the sensual could not have any life, 
 such as the human. The life of the sensual man is not from 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 15 
 
 this, that he sees from the light of the world, for the light of 
 the world has in it no life ; but from this, that he sees from the 
 light of heaven, for this light has life in it. When this light 
 falls with man upon the things which are from the light of tlie 
 world, then it vivifies tliera, and causes him to see the objects 
 intellectually, thus as a man. Hence man, from the scientitics 
 which have arisen from the things that he has seen and heard in 
 the world, thus from those which have entered by sensual 
 things, has intelligence and wisdom, and from this civil, moral, 
 and spiritual life. 
 
 As to the derivations in particular, they are such with man 
 that they cannot be briefly explained. They are steps as of a 
 ladder between the intellectual and the sensual, but no one can 
 comprehend these steps unless he knows that they are most dis- 
 tinct one from the other, and so distinct that the interior ones 
 can exist and subsist without the outer ones^ but not the outer 
 ones without the interior ones. . . . The life of the man 
 which is from the Divine of the Lord passes by these steps [or 
 degrees] from the inmost to the last . . . and because with 
 man there is a connection with the Divine, and his inmost is such 
 that he can receive the Divine, nor receive only, but also appro- 
 priate to himself by acknowledgment and affection, thus by a le- 
 ciprocal ; therefore man, because he is implanted in the Divine, 
 can never die; for he is in the eternal and infinite, not only by 
 influx thence, but also by reception.—^. C. 5114. 
 
 Since, then, the intellectual is that by which the in- 
 ternal man sees, and he thus sees in the light of heaven, 
 that is, from the Lord, it follows that unless the two 
 primaries, the Lord and heaven, be implanted, the child 
 
 can never see intellectually by means of or into the sen- 
 
 i 
 
1 6 CONVEBSA TlOyS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 sual. He must, therefore, be taught to adore the Lokd 
 as the Diviue Man, and to love Him as the Maker of all 
 things, and to love his neighbor— that is, to treat his 
 companions well. 
 
 Again, since man is so created that he can receive the 
 Divine in his inmost, and thence in his derivatives in 
 order, he, by means of these, which are steps, can return 
 from the outermost to the Divine — from the world to the 
 Lord. The formation of these steps is the great prob- 
 lem of New Church education. New Church teachers 
 are to prepare vessels for the reception of the Divine 
 influx which descends by derivations or steps. The 
 idea of the Lord must be implanted in the inmost in 
 order that it may descend to the outermost, and thus 
 lead man back to a conjunction with the Divine by ac- 
 knowledgment and affection. From this will arise in its 
 fullness the idea that " Man was born that he may be- 
 come spiritual" (T. C. R. 607) ; that he " was born not 
 on account of himself, but on account of others ; that is, 
 that he should not live for himself alone, but for others " 
 (T. C. R. 406 ; A. C. 1103) ; that he "is never born on 
 account of any other end than that he may perform 
 uses." U. a 1103.) 
 
 To carry out the universal ends of education which 
 meet us practically in the quotations just adduced, the 
 following will be found to be the mediate ends, causes, or 
 means which lie in the constitution of man by creation: 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 17 
 
 1. Man is a spirit existing in a natural body in the 
 world, and is a form or organ recipient of lii'e from the 
 Creator. 
 
 2. There are two receptacles of life in man, one for 
 the will and another for the understanding, which recep- 
 tacles at birth are not will and understanding, but facul- 
 ties. (This distinction is of the greatest importance.) 
 
 3. By instruction in the widest sense of the term, 
 these faculties are made will and understanding, and man 
 from beiug an animal becomes, or is made, a man. 
 
 4. This making of man from an auimal is reformation 
 and regeneration, for which he is to be prepared by in- 
 struction and education, and this preparation is tho 
 groat work, given to parents and teachers. 
 
 To make these points clearer, consider them in the 
 light of Doctrine : 
 
 Man is born an animal, but is made a man. — D. L. W. 270. 
 
 Man when born is a brute more than any animal, but he l)e- 
 comes a man by instructions. As these are received, his mind is 
 formed, from which and according to which num is man. . . . 
 Man is in so far a man as he speaks from sound reason and 
 regards his abiding in heaven, and he is in so far not a man as 
 lie speaks from perverted reason and regards only liis abiding 
 in the world. Still, the latter are men, but not in act but in 
 potency, for every man enjoys the power [potency] of under- 
 standing truths and willing good, but in as far as he does not 
 will to do good and understand truths, lie can in externals coun- 
 terfeit a man and ape him. — T. C- R. 417. 
 2 
 
18 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Man has two faculties which become will and under- 
 standing, in order that he may be an organ of life. The 
 "will is made a recipient of good and the uuderstandiug 
 of truth. When this is the case the very esse of his life 
 is in the will, and the existere in his understanding. 
 (D. W. in A. E. ii, v.) 
 
 As man in particular is born " more a brute than any 
 animal," so that an infant is a wild animal, within which 
 however is a human internal, so also man in general, 
 the human race, was born in like condition. The 
 men of the Most Ancient Church lived like "wild 
 animals Iferce] " (^. C. 286), of good disposition, but 
 untamed and undomesticated. They knew not what 
 evil was, but were born into a certain light of science 
 and intelligence into which they should shortly come. 
 They at first crept like quadrupeds, but with the inseated 
 endeavor of standing erect on their feet so as to look up 
 to heaven, (i). P. 275 ; E. in U. 49.) Not being im- 
 bued with hereditary evil, in fact, not knowing what 
 "evil" means, the rational was with them born im- 
 mediately from the marriage of the celestials of the In- 
 ternal Man with his spirituals ; and by the rational, the 
 scientific was born. (J.. 0. 1902.) 
 
 The term fera applied to them in the Writings 
 " signifies spiritual good." (J.. C. 774.) It therefore 
 involves something better than a wild beast, for "in the 
 Hebrew language it signifies an animal in which is a liv- 
 ing soul UlT^y (.A. C. 774), as with man. 
 
EM)S AND MEANS. 19 
 
 Fera is used in a two-fold sense in the Word: for tliose thino^s 
 with man which are alive, and for those which are dead. The 
 reason of its being used for those that are alive, is that this word 
 in the Hebrew tongue signifies something living [n^H]- But 
 because the Most Ancients in their humiliation acknowledged 
 tliemselves to be wild animals [/ero?], hence by this word also 
 those things with man were signified which were dead.— J. C 
 841. (See further on the word fera, A. C. 907, 908, 803, 194, 
 1006, 272, 1029, 1030, 3696, 4729, 5118, 5-536, 9174, 9182, 9276, 
 9335.J 
 
 Ferce (wild beasts) in the Word signify affections of truth 
 and good, for the expression from which they are named and 
 called, in the original tongue, signifies life. For /em in tiuit 
 language is called Chayah, and Chayah [pf^HJ signifies life, and 
 in the afifection of truth and good is the spiritual life itself of 
 man, wherefore when fera in the good sense is named in the 
 Word it is rather to be rendered animal, which signifies a living 
 soul [the Latin word animal, from which is our English word, 
 being derived from anima, which means the soul]. But when 
 fera is used in this sense, then the idea which adheres to the 
 word /em in the Latin tongue [or to the expression " wild beast" 
 in the English language] must be entirely laid aside, for to the 
 expression /em, in that tongue, adheres the idea of something 
 wild \_ferus] or ferocious \_ferox], thus an idea of something 
 sinister and evil. It is diiferent in the Hebrew tongue, where 
 fera signifies life, and in general a living soul or animal. — A. E. 
 388. 
 
 The life of the first men was evidently that of mere 
 animals, the life of the corporeal man, of life in the low- 
 est degree, that degree of the mind in which the facul- 
 
20 CONVEnSATIONS ON ED ICATION. 
 
 ties of will and understaucliDg had their form iu appe- 
 tites and instincts. In this wild animal there was a liv- 
 ing, soul, from which existed germs and possibilities 
 that developed into the degrees of the human mind, 
 where will and understanding successively opened in 
 seusual, natural, rational, and spiritual-natural aud ce- 
 lestial-natural life. 
 
 The corporeal state of life of the first men, which 
 consisted in appetites aud instincts, is treated of in 
 Genesis i, 2 : 
 
 ''And the earth was vacuity and emptiness, and thick dark- 
 ness upon the faces of tlie abyss, and tlie Spirit of God brooding 
 upon tlie faces of the waters." — M:in before regeneration is called 
 an earth vacant and empty, also soil or ground in which noth- 
 ing of good and truth is inseminated. — A. C. 17. 
 
 " The love iuto which man was created is the love to 
 the neighbor." (Z). P. 275.) This love was given by the 
 Lord to this man-animal. The state of men iu the be- 
 ginning was like that of the infant at the present day. 
 In children the love of the neighbor is developed by 
 their being taught to treat their companions well. But 
 there is a difference between the first man and infants 
 now. Then man had an upward tendency to heaven. 
 (Z). P. 275.) Now the inherited tendency and dis- 
 position of man (2). L. W. 270) is downward to hell. 
 Innocence in children is no actual state of life; it only 
 represents the state which man is to attain by regenera- 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 21 
 
 tion. In the first ages influx and perception were the 
 means of making a man out of the animal. Now in- 
 struction and education, beginning on the lowest plane, 
 are the means. The formation of the perfect man of the 
 Most Ancient Church required many ages, for it was a 
 work of successive changes of state in the race, as in the 
 individuals. It is not revealed how long the men of 
 this Church remained corporeal, but as the Lord was 
 forming the celestial heaven in its various degrees, we may 
 suppose that many passed from the earth in that state, so 
 as to form the sensual-corporeal degree of that heaven. 
 The first step in the regeneration of the race was a con- 
 ditiun of good sensual affections and thoughts. These 
 sensual men also went into the other world to form the 
 natural-sensual plane of the celestial heaven. By the de- 
 lights of the senses, the first men were led to the natural 
 plane, out of this to the rational, then to the spiritual and 
 celestial. The first steps toward evil must have come 
 from the influences of the corporeal sensual spirits in tho 
 World of Spirits, who, being ignorant of any interior 
 idea of the Lord, might without any evil intention turn 
 the thoughts of the man of the celestial age away from 
 the Lord as the All of life, toward self, by suggestion. 
 This thought in time became evil by being cherished, 
 and loved, and ultimated in act. 
 
 With the man of the Most Ancient times the first 
 movings of conscious life undoubtedly had their origin. 
 
22 CONVEBSA TIONS ON ED UCATION. 
 
 in the beginniDgs of conjugial love. This love grew out 
 of the relation of the regenerating man of that day to 
 the Lord and became the essential love of the man of 
 the Most Ancient Church. In this love the Divine 
 Love of the Lord to the human race was made real and 
 actual, and from this love sprang the parental love, and 
 with it an idea of the Creating Wisdom of the Divine 
 Love. From these loves and the ideas formed by them 
 would necessarily proceed a third class and series of 
 ideas, having their centre and beginnmg in the Lord as 
 the Preserver of all things. In this idea — that all life 
 and light, both spiritual and natural, were from the 
 Lord alone and that man had nothing of himself and 
 was nothing of himself— is expressed the central Doctrine 
 of life of the Most Ancient Church. 
 
 In the progressive regeneration by which the man of 
 that day came into the life of this Truth were formed 
 and opened the various degrees of the human mind, and 
 the man-animal of the first state of creation became the 
 man of that state concerning which it is said : " And the 
 Lord saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very 
 good." 
 
 The idea of the Lord as a Giver is a first idea grow- 
 ing out of the unconscious into the conscious life of every 
 child, from the relation to its parents, and this idea 
 should be strengthened and enforced by the teaching 
 that all things of life are the Lord's gifts, even the 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 23 
 
 parents and teachers. The Lord is the Creator and the 
 Giver of all. This Truth ought to be implanted as a 
 lirst of the remains necessary to regeneration, and on 
 the quality and quantity of which regeneration depends. 
 There is nothing connate with man, except the faeulty 
 of understanding and the inclination to love. (See T. C. 
 R. 70.) These constitute the " something spiritual," by 
 which man is distinguished from brute animals. (Z). P. 
 275.) On this point Doctrine teaches: 
 
 From this, that the Divine Essence Itself is Lo^re and Wisdom, 
 it is that man has two faculties of life, from one of which lie has 
 Understanding, and from the other Will. The faculty from 
 which is the Understanding, derives all it has from the influx of 
 Wisdom from God, and the faculty from which is the Will de- 
 rives all it has from the influx of Love from God. Man's not 
 being justly wise, and not loving justly, does not take away the 
 faculties, but only closes them up [^includit Ulas'\, and, so long as 
 it closes them up, the understanding is indeed called understand- 
 ing, and the will is likewise [called will], but still, essentially, 
 they are not so; wherefore, if those faculties were taken away, 
 all the human would perish ; which is to think, and from think- 
 in,^ to speak and to will, and from willing to act. Hence it i^ 
 evident, that the Divine in man resides in those two faculties, 
 which are the faculty of being wise, and the faculty of loving; 
 that is, that he is able. — D. L. W. 30. 
 
 Man is a receptacle of God, and a Receptacle of God is the 
 image of God, and because God is Love Itself and W^isdora Itself, 
 man is a receptacle of these, and the Receptacle becomes an 
 image of God as it receives .... Man is born into no 
 
24 CONVERSATIONS ON ED UCA TION 
 
 science, that he may be able to come into all, and progress into 
 intelligence, and by this into wisdom ; and he is born into no 
 love, that he may be able to come into all, by the applications 
 of the sciences from intelligence, and into love to God by the love 
 to the neighbor, and thus be conjoined to God, and by it become 
 a man, and live to eternity. — T. C. R. 48. 
 
 The term " faculty " is defined in the Writings in two 
 senses. In iho; first, faculty is an active force, and thence 
 a power ; or, as applied to the mind, something original, 
 natural ; something to be formed. In the second sense, 
 faculty is used to designate ability to receive, or recepti- 
 bility. {A. a 6148.) 
 
 The faculties of will and understanding always exist, 
 even with devils and satans. They are not man's, but 
 the Lord's with man. Man cannot destroy them, but 
 he can close them up. Into them the Lord flows imme- 
 diately. 
 
 Man is not born a science, like a beast, but he is born a faculty 
 and inclination — a faculty to know, and an inclination to love ; 
 and he is born a faculty not only to know, but also to be intelli- 
 gent and wise ; and he is also born a most perfect inclination, 
 not only to love the things which are of self and of the world, 
 but also those which are of God and of heaven. Consequently, 
 man is born an organ, which only lives by external senses, and 
 at first by no internal ones, for the reason that he may succes- 
 sively become a man, at first natural, afterward rational, and at 
 length spiritual. This could not be done, if he were born into 
 sciences and loves, like beasts ; for connate sciences and affec- 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 25 
 
 tions end [or finite] that progression ; but connate faculty and 
 inclination end [or finite] nothing. Wherefore, man can be per- 
 fected in science, intelligence, and wisdom to eternity .... 
 It is impossible for man to take any science from himself, but he 
 must take it from others, since no science is connate witli him; 
 and since he cannot take any science from himself, neither can 
 he take any love, since, where there is no science, there is no 
 love ; science and love are inseparable companions, nor can they 
 be separated any more than will and understanding, or affection 
 and thought, yea, no more than essence and form. Wherefore, 
 as man takes science from others, so love adjoins itself to it as 
 i«s companion. The universal love, which adjoins itself, is the 
 love of knowing, of understanding, and of being wise . . . 
 Man is born into tlie inclination to love, and thence into the 
 faculty to receive sciences, not from himself, but from others, 
 that is, through others. It is said through others, because these 
 do not receive anything of a science from themselves, but from 
 God.— G L. 134. T. C. R. 48. 
 
 The first knowledge, called forth by the universal 
 love of knowing, enters through the senses, and accord- 
 ing to the genius of the iiiftmt, one or the other sense 
 may be the medium of ihis first science. 
 
 That man has no coimate ideas, may <^vidently appear from 
 this, that he has no connate thought, and where there is no 
 thought there is no idea; for one is of the other, reciprocally. 
 This may be concluded from infants newly born, that they can- 
 not do anything but suck and breathe. That they can suck is 
 not from anything connate, but from continual suction in the 
 mother's womb ; and that they can breathe is because they live, 
 
26 CONVERSA TIONS ON EDUCA TIO N. 
 
 for this is a universal of life. The very senses of their body are 
 in the greatest obscurity, and from this they emerge successively 
 by means of objects; in like manner, their motions [are ac- 
 quired] by habits. And successively as they learn to lisp out 
 words and to sound thera, at first without any idea, there arises 
 Something obscure of phantasy, and as this grows clear, there is 
 born something obscure of the imagination, and thence of 
 thought. According to the formation of this state, ideas exist, 
 which, as was said above, make one with thought ; and thought 
 from none increases by instructions. Wherefore men have 
 ideas, yet not connate, but formed, and from these flow their 
 speech and actions. — T. C. R. 335. 
 
 Thus is taught the order of progression iu the devel- 
 opment of the mind. Phantasies are the first begin- 
 nings of ideas ; a child cries for the moon or tries to catch 
 a sun-beam. These beginnings become ideas, when the 
 child can connect things together in series. First is the 
 phantasy, then, by degrees, come ideas less fallacious 
 and obscure ; finally, thoughts, and from these speech 
 and action. An idea is the image of the thing itself in 
 the mind. Ideas come slowly. Inasmuch as the first 
 five years of a child's life is the age of phantasy, fallacy, 
 and obscurity of thought, where the Lord is doing the 
 work of storing up remains and preparing the mind for 
 ideas, no systematic instruction should be begun during 
 that age. In these years and in succeeding years of 
 childhood up to the time when a person can decide be- 
 tween right and wrong, the faculties of will and under- 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 27 
 
 stauding are being formed ; and are, therefore, as yet 
 Dot predicable of the person. 
 
 Of these faculties Doctrine teaches further : 
 
 All of tlie life of man consists in the faculty that he can think 
 and that he can will; for if the faculty of thinking and of will- 
 ing is taken away, nohing of life remains; and the very most 
 of life lipsissimum vitce] consists in thinking good and willing 
 truth, as also to will that which one believes true.— J.. C. 4151. 
 
 The faculty of receiving good comes from good, that is, 
 through good from tiie Lord. For unless the good of love in- 
 flowed from the Lord, no man would ever have the faculty of 
 receiving truth or good. The influx of the good of love from 
 the Lord makes all things within man to be disposed to recep- 
 tion. . . . The faculties of receiving truth and good are in 
 man immediately from the Lord, nor does any help to acquire 
 them for himself come from man; for man is always kept in the 
 faculty of receiving good and truth ; from that faculty he has 
 understanding and will. — A. C. 6148. 
 
 In the heavens there are three things that succeed in order; 
 namely, the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural. The celes- 
 tial makes the inmost heaven ; the spiritual the middle heaven ; 
 and the natural proceeding from the spiritual the ultimate 
 heaven. These same three things are in man, and in him they 
 succeed in like order as in the heavens (for the regenerated man 
 is a heaven in the least form corresponding to the Greatest One), 
 but the faculties receiving them are called the Voluntary, the 
 Intellectual, and the Scientific, from which is the cogitative or 
 imaginative of the external or natural man. The voluntary 
 receives the celestial or good; the intellectual receives the 
 spiritual or truth thence; and the scientific, which makes the 
 
28 CONVEBSA TIONS ON EI) UCA TION. 
 
 intellectual of the natural man, closes them [^eondudit illas\. In 
 the Word the voluntary is signified by the "weaver" . . . 
 because the voluntary inflows into the intellectual and weaves it, 
 even so that the things in the intellectual are textures from the 
 voluntary ; for what the voluntary wills, this it forms so that it 
 appears to the sight in the intellectual, that sight is thought. — 
 A. 0.9915. 
 
 (See further on the two faculties D. L. W. 30, 240, 264, 267, 
 1G2, 266, 425 ; T. C. B. 658, 70; A. C. 5527, 3820, 9648.) 
 
 Man is thus a mere organ of life. ( T. C. R. 362, 364, 
 470, 504.) An orgau is an instrument by which some- 
 thiug can be done, or a condition which renders possible 
 the manifestation of a faculty ; a condition so organized, 
 i. e., arranged and ordered, that it can become an agent, 
 be acted upon, re-act, co-act, and thus bring into effect 
 an end or a purpose. In this sense man is an organ of 
 life. 
 
 Lif.ustheactivity of the DivineLove. Man, therefore, 
 i.^ an iustriuiunt or organ of tlds activity. He is .'•udi 
 an organ both spiritually and naturally. Aud t ) the c nd 
 that he may be such an organ there are in his spiritual 
 (or internal) and in his natural (or external), by crea- 
 tion, the two faculties of life, from the one of which he 
 has understanding, aud from the other, will. 
 
 These two faculties of acquiring knowledge or intelli- 
 gence, and of loving, become rationality and liberty. 
 The faculty of acquiring knowledges, when formed, is 
 rationality ; aud the inclination to love grows into liberty. 
 
EI^DS AND MEANS. 29 
 
 By the one he may understand what is true and good, 
 by the other he can do what is true aud good. 
 
 Man's position in the spiritual world is essential to 
 the formation of these faculties. Their formation in- 
 volves the extremest care and delicacy in protecting 
 them from injury. They require the most tender deal- 
 ing, and should be kept under a wise affection— not sub- 
 jected to hard reason, but to a firm yet tender affection. 
 
 The influx of the Divine Wisdom develops the fac- 
 ulty of the understanding ; but the inclination to love is 
 developed by the Lord's love, the influx of which is 
 universal. Tliere is no such thing as more or less 
 influx. The influx from the Lord is constant aud the 
 same with all, but its reception varies. 
 
 The two faculties are the Divinely given ability to 
 grow wise and to love. They exist by creation and are 
 preserved perpetually with man by influx from the 
 Lord. Taken together they make man an organ recip- 
 ient of the Divine and thus conjoiu him to the Lord. 
 Fur, be it borne in mind, faculty is rece])tibility— 
 ability to receive— and though at first in germinal form, 
 it can be increased indefinitely. 
 
 Instruction must first be in-formatiou, and afterward 
 successive formation. From a state of potential under- 
 standing and willing, man comes gradually into a state 
 of actual understanding and willing: This is f^rmr- 
 tion. In the proportion that the infant-man passes grad- 
 
80 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ually and slowly out of the animal state of his birth, he 
 comes more distinctly into the human state, or the state 
 of man. This entire formative period is the period of 
 the instruction and education of the child, and is the 
 period with which parent and teacher are concerned. 
 During this period, man actually acquires sciences, and 
 the beginnings of intelligence and wisdom, and his incli- 
 nation to love develops into actual loving. 
 
 Reckoning the average life of man at eighty years, 
 one-fourth of this time is devoted to his instruction and 
 education -his preparation to be a man. Any curtail- 
 ment of this time is an injury to the future, the real, man. 
 For this reason a child should not be forced to do a 
 man's or a woman's work before it reaches adult age. 
 And what is true of the whole period of instruction and 
 education in general, is true of all the lesser periods of 
 the child's life in particular ; parent or teacher must not 
 anticipate by forcing the natural development of the 
 child's mind. The child is not a man, but it is gradu- 
 ally becoming a man. 
 
 Kationality and Liberty, when formed, constitute the 
 understanding and the will. In their formation the co-op- 
 eration of the two worlds — the spiritual and the natural — 
 and of many beings in both worlds, is necessary. From 
 his organization man is a subject of the two worlds, and 
 the Divine Providence places him in the midst between 
 heaven and hell. 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 31 
 
 There are two faculties from the Lord with man, by Avhich 
 man is distinguished from beasts. One faculty is, that he can 
 understand what is true and what is good ; this faculty is called 
 Rationality, and it is the faculty of his understanding. The 
 other faculty is, that he can do the true and good ; this faculty is 
 called Liberty, and is the f:\culty of his will. For man can, from 
 liis rationality, think Aviiatever he pleases as well for God , as 
 against God; and for the neighbor and against the neighbor; 
 and he can also will and do what he thinks; but when he sees 
 evil and fears punishment he can from freedom desist from do- 
 ing [it]. From these two faculties man is man, and is distin- 
 guished from beasts. These two faculties are man's from tlse 
 Lord, and are continually from Him, nor are they taken away 
 from him ; for if they were taken away, his Inmian would perish. 
 In these two faculties the Lord is with every man, with the evil 
 and with the good; they are tlie Lord's abode [jniansio] in the 
 human race ; hence it is that every man, the good as well as the 
 evil, lives to eternity. But the Lord's abode is nearer with man, 
 as man, by means of those faculties, opens the higher degrees; 
 for by their opening he comes into the higher degrees of love 
 and of wisdom, thus nearer.to the Lord. From this it may ap- 
 pear, that as those degrees are opened, man is in the Lord and 
 the Lord in him.— 2>. L. W. 240. 
 
 Clearly, then, it is most important to the future man, 
 that during infancy and childhood the trainiDg of the fac- 
 ulties which may become rationality jind liberty shall he 
 most orderly and careful. Tho doctine just quoted shows 
 how the faculty, as a mere ability, heoomes an uuder- 
 standing formed, and a love formed, which give to man 
 
■32 CONVEBSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 rationality and liberty. These cannot exist with man 
 until he has passed through the formative period, which, 
 on an average, covers a space of twenty-one years. To 
 train the understanding is a comparatively easy matter, 
 but to educate the will is most difficult, and yet it is most 
 important to the child. 
 
 In punishing a child the idea should be impressed 
 upon its mind that evil spirits have been leading it on to 
 wrong-doing, only too glad that the child has allowed 
 them to be with it, and now they delight in the fact that 
 the child is being punished. The child should be taught 
 that in giving way to the influence of evil spirits it goes 
 to the punishment, not the punishment to the child. 
 
 Spiritual equilibrium in its essence is freedom, for it is between 
 good, which is from heaven, and evil, which is from hell, and be- 
 tween the true and the false, and these are spiritual; wherefore 
 to be able to will good or evil, and to think the true or the false, 
 and to choose one in preference to tlie otiier, is freedom. This 
 freedom is given to every man from tlie Lord, nor is it ever taken 
 away. In its origin it is indeed not man's but the Lord's, be- 
 cause it is from the Lord, still it is given to man with life as his 
 own. And this for the reason that man may be ref )rmed and 
 saved, for without freedom there is no reformation and salvation. 
 —H, H. 597. 
 
 (See further en the subject of Rationality and Liberty D.L. 
 W. 264, 425, 116, 258.) 
 
 Liberty and rationality are not man's but the Lord s 
 with man. They appear to be man's, bat he has no 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 33 
 
 right to claim them. The good he chooses is not his, 
 neither is the evil. If man chiims his proprium he can 
 never get rid of it. Evil spirits love to hold man in 
 the idea that he owns his evils, or has appropriated them. 
 '1 hus they keep possession of him, and he cannot shake 
 them off. 
 
 Man has tlie two faculties of Liberty and Rationality, in 
 order that he may become spiritual, which is to be regenerated. 
 For it is the love of man which becomes spiritual and is regen- 
 erated, and this cannot become spiritual or be regenerated, un- 
 less it knows by its understanding what is evil, and what is 
 good, and hence what is true and what is false. When it knows 
 these, it can choose the one or the other; and if it chooses good, 
 it can by its understanding be informed of the me:ins by whicli 
 it can come to good. All the mcnns by which man can come 
 to good are provided. To know and understand these meims is 
 from ^a</ona/i/y, and to will and do them is from Liberty; f<>r 
 Liberty is to will, to know, to understand, and to think them. 
 
 . . . But it is to be known that both faculties, Liberty and 
 Rationality, are not man's, but that they are the Lord's witii 
 man, and that they cannot be appropriated (o man as his, also 
 that they cannot be given to man as his, but that they are con- 
 tinually the Lord's with him ; and yet that they are never 
 taken away from man. The reason is that man cannot be saved 
 without them, for he cannot be regenerated without them; 
 wherefore man is instructed by the Church that he cannot think 
 of himself nor do good of himself. But since man perceives 
 not otherwise than that he thinks truth of himself and does good 
 of himself it is evidentlv manifest that he ought to believe that 
 
34 CONVEBSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 lie thinks trutli as of himself and that he does good as of himself; 
 for if he does not believe this, then he either does not think 
 truth and does not do good, and so has no religion ; or he thinks 
 truth and does good from himself, and then he ascribes to him- 
 self what is Divine.— i>. i. W. 425. (See also n.ll6, 258; 
 H, H. 597.) 
 
 This feature of the Lord's government of man : 
 granting him a freedom which appears to be his own, 
 while in reality it is not his own, but his only as his own, 
 should be a guide in the government or training of 
 children. They should gradually be led and trained to 
 do things as of themselves, in freedom. They should be 
 under constant supervision ; what they do, both good 
 and bad, should be seen by parent or teacher, but still 
 not all wrong-doing need be specially noticed ; the gov- 
 ernment should be felt only when restraint is seen to be 
 necessary. The Lord keeps a constant watch over 
 man, continually leading and guiding him, but man 
 does not feel this guidance; he imagines himself to be 
 in entire freedom, even restraint and punishment appear 
 to him to be avoidable. So the child, though it has no 
 liberty of its own, should be trained to have it as of 
 itself, and when doing wrong ought to be led to force 
 itself to desist from it. (^. C. 1937.) When the 
 child's desire for evil becomes overmastering, then it 
 will be well to cause restraint to be felt. In the govern- 
 ment of a child, this truth must be borne in mind, that 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 35 
 
 so far as man partakes of his hereditary and thence is 
 in self-love, the doing of evil constitutes his very life ; 
 and were he not permitted to be in evil, he would have 
 no life — consequently he would have no life were he not 
 left in freedom to do as he chooses. 
 
 This freedom is necessary that man may be reformed, 
 regenerated, and saved. All human beings born at this 
 time have hereditary tendencies to evils of every kind. 
 Evil predominates, since man is inclined downw^ard. 
 Love of the neighbor has been perverted into hatred of 
 the neighbor, and love of the Lord into hatred of the 
 Lord. Out of this evil state of love, man is to be 
 brought into a good state of love. But he cannot love 
 unless he have liberty to hate. Hence the necessity of 
 man's being placed 6dt(;ee?i heaven and hell. Here with 
 head bent down toward hell, he is nevertheless in 
 a condition to receive life from heaven, and as he 
 gradually comes into true liberty from the Lord, he 
 turns his head and then his face upward and stands 
 erect. If, however, he favors the influences from hell, 
 he continues to direct his face thither until his head is 
 below and his feet are above. Were man at once lifted 
 out of the middle plane, the more interior evils would 
 not be excited, and he would not come into temptations. 
 Hence is he kept under the influences of hell. By con- 
 tinuing between good and evil he may learn what is 
 spiritually good. He cannot be compelled to good, 
 
36 CONVEBSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 since that which is induced by compulsion does not ad- 
 here, but h3 may compel himself to fight against evil 
 and do good. (^. C. 1937.) Spiritual good can only 
 be appropriated by man in a stale of freedom, and hence 
 has he conjunction mediately with heaven by spirits in 
 the world of spirits, and with hell similarly, (if. H. 
 599, GOO.) This mediate conjunction changes in quan- 
 tity and quality as man progresses in life. From in- 
 fancy to old age there is a general change of man's 
 affections which causes appropriate changes in his situa- 
 tion in the world of spirits. (T. C. jR. 476.) These 
 chano-es are common to all men from infancy to boy- 
 hood, from boyhood to manhood, from manhood to old 
 age. Besides these general changes, there are particu- 
 lar changes, with every man, according to his ruling 
 love, according to the thought formed, and according 
 to the influences of circumstances. 
 
 Man cannot be reformed unless he lias freedom, because he is 
 born into evils of every kind, which, nevertheless, must be re- 
 moved that he may be saved. They cannot be removed unless 
 he sees them in himself, and acknowledges them, and then does 
 not will them, and finally is averse to them ; only then are they 
 removed. This cannot be done, unless man be in good and in 
 evil, for from good he can see evils, but not from evil goods. 
 The spiritual goods which man can thmk, he learns from in- 
 fancy from the reading of the Word and from preaching; and 
 moral and civil goods from life in the world. This is the first 
 [reason] why man should be in freedom. The other is, that 
 
E^DS AND MEANS. 37 
 
 nothing is appropriated to man except what is done from an 
 aflection which is of love; otlier tilings may indeed enter, but 
 no further than into the thought, and not into the will, and 
 what does not enter even into the will of man, does not become 
 his, for thought derives what it makes its own, from the memory, 
 but the will from life itself. Nothing is ever free which is not 
 from the will, or, what is the same, from the affection which is 
 of love; for whatever a man wills or loves, this he does freely. 
 Hence it is that the freedom of man and affection which is of 
 love or of his will are one. Therefore, also, man has freedom, 
 in order that he may be affected with truth and good, or love them, 
 and they thus become as liis own. In a word, whatever does 
 not enter in freedom with man, does not remain, because it is 
 not of his love or of his will, and the things which are not of the 
 love or of the will of man, are not of his spirit, for the Esse of 
 the spirit of man is h)ve or will. It is said love or will, since 
 what a man loves, he wills — H. IT. 598. 
 
 Things remaiu with man only when they enter by de- 
 lights. Whatever is stored up through delight or affec- 
 tion, remains deeply inrooted, and whenever the delight 
 returns the knowledge does ; and when the knowledge, 
 the delight. In the prevailing systems of tiie day where 
 learning things verbatim is held to be of paramount im- 
 portance, a mere memorizing is encouraged which is 
 artificial, and being unaccompanied by delight does not 
 penetrate further than the thought. It does not reach 
 the will, and therefore does not become the child's own, 
 and abide. It is not difficult to teach a child scientifics 
 so that they will remain. The mere love of knowing, 
 
88 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 when properly treated, will carry a child through a 
 lesson; the teacher always has this help. But the 
 teacher must have a thorough knowledge of the subject 
 in hand and be fully interested in the lesson himself; 
 his sphere of concentrated affection and thought will 
 effect much with the child. 
 
 When spirits come to man they enter into his memory 
 and thence into all his thoughts. They are not aware 
 that they are present with man, but they imagine that 
 his thoughts are theirs. He is held in his own life by 
 evil spirits and withheld from it by good spirits, and 
 through the agency of the two he is placed in equilib- 
 rium. Being in equilibrium, he has liberty, and can be 
 withdrawn from evils and inclined to good, (if. H. 
 292-3.) 
 
 Such spirits are adjoined to man, as he himself is as to affection 
 or as to thought, but good spirits are adjoined to him by the 
 Lord, but evil ones are invited by the man himself. But the 
 spirits with man are changed according to the changes of his 
 afiections, hence one kind of spirits are with him in infancy and 
 others in boyhood, others in adolescence and youth, and others 
 in old age. In infancy spirits are present who are in innocence, 
 thus who communicate with the heaven of innocence, which is 
 the inmost or third heaven. In boyhood spirits are present who 
 are in the affection of knowing, thus who communicate with the 
 ultimate or first heaven. In adolescence and youth those are 
 present who are in the affection of truth and good, and hence in 
 intelligence, thus who communicate with the second or middle 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 39 
 
 heaven. But in old age spirits are present who are in wisdom 
 and innocence, thus who communicate with the inmost or third 
 heaven. But this adjunction the Lord brings to pass with those 
 who can be reformed and regenerated. It is otlierwise with those 
 who cannot be reformed and regenerated; to these, good spirits 
 are also adjoined, that by them they may be withheld from evil 
 as far as it is possible.— if, H. 295. (See also A. C. 2303, 3183, 
 6342. 1555, 1495, 6751, 5126, 5127, 2306-2309; A. E. 803.) 
 
 This explains why some children cannot be reached in 
 the same manner as others. What is done with some, 
 with others will be of no effect because they " cannot be 
 reformed and regenerated." It is, therefore, necessary 
 to recognize the individual child, and not treat all chil- 
 dren alike, or in mass. To do this it is well to observe 
 carefully what use the child makes of what it learns ; 
 from this the affections of the will may be known. 
 Hence are these two things essential in teaching : a clear 
 idea of the subject to be taught, and as thorough a 
 knowledge of the child as possible. 
 
 But the Doctrine just quoted from Heaven and Hell 
 continues: 
 
 Man is governed through spirits by the Lord, because he is 
 not in the order of heaven, for he is born into evils which are of 
 hell, thus altogether contrary to Divhie order, wherefore he 
 must be brought back into order, and lie cannot be brought back 
 except mediately through spirits. It would be otlierwise if man 
 were born into good which is according to the order of lieaven; 
 then he would not be governed by the Lord through spirits, but 
 
40 CON VERSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 througli order itself, thus through common influx. Man is gov- 
 erned through this influx as to the things which proceed from 
 thought and will into act, thus as to speech and actions, for these 
 hotli flow according to natural order ; with which therefore the 
 spirits who are adjoined to man have nothing in common. — H. 
 H. 296. (Read also H. H. 297.) 
 
 Thus, if man were not evil, the government would be 
 by influx iuto his will, disposing him to good. As it is, 
 the LoED uses spirits to govern men on earth — by evil 
 spirits He holds man in his evils, and by good spirits He 
 withholds him from his evils. By both He holds man 
 in freedom ; and, indeed. He holds man in this state for 
 the purpose of reducing him to order by bringing him 
 under the power of truth. 
 
 Hence, in the education of children respect must be 
 had to their position in the world of spirits, and there- 
 fore also to their associations with children and others 
 on earth. There is a general change of consociation 
 with the spirits in the other world, due to the general 
 changes of life or changes of state consequent on growth 
 and development. These changes are not dependent upon 
 particular or individual stages, though these are in the 
 general. 
 
 In infancy, the period of the innocence of ignorance, 
 which lasts until about the age of five years, children 
 should be kept in the sphere of good affections and in- 
 nocence, and everything that would injure the state of 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 41 
 
 innoceDce should be kept away. Their surroundings 
 aud companions must be carefully watched. Great mis- 
 chief to children at this time arises from spheres; from 
 the exciting, impatient, or otherwise unheavenly spheres 
 of parents or playmates, companions and servants, and 
 also from the spheres of things. Children cannot as yet 
 be in real evil, for the hereditary is not excited into ac- 
 tivity in early infancy. Loving aud gentle treatment of 
 children leads them to act lovingly and gently toward 
 their playmates and is a means of storing up in them 
 remains of good. This use to them is strengthened and 
 extended by surrounding them with natural forms and 
 objects which are innocent, harmless, tender, harmonious, 
 with whatever is orderly, good, and beautiful. This is 
 not to be done with any idea of stimulating them, but 
 because it is orderly and good, and hence in keeping 
 with their spiritual associations. Things harsh and 
 harmful, even pictures of serpents, ferocious beasts, 
 and the like, should be kept out of their sphere. Since 
 they are at this time in communication with angels of 
 the inmost or third heaven, the heaven of the innocence 
 of wisdom, parents and teachers should carefully study 
 the life of these angels as unfolded in the Writiuirs. so 
 that they may do no injury to the influx from them, but, 
 on the contrary, intelligently and rationally co-operate 
 with them in the Lord's work of storing up remains of 
 innocence. 
 
42 CON VERS A TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 It does not seem best at this early age to impart to 
 children systematic instruction, but rather to allow them 
 to absorb through the senses and the whole body what 
 is necessary for their proper development, and to this 
 end also is it requisite to look well to their surroundings. 
 For, as is evident from True Christian Religion (n. 335), 
 infants form habits by means of objects which are pre- 
 sented to their senses. Being surrounded with orderly, 
 beautiful, soft, pleasant, tasteful, odoriferous things, they 
 absorb, sponge-like. No need of training here. 
 
 But as the child passes the fifth year and goes on to 
 the seventh, it must be prepared by certain general in- 
 struction for the age of boyhood, when systematic in- 
 struction should begin. Now, when the child begins to 
 " want to know," and is associated with spirits connected 
 with the first or lowest heaven, angels from the middle 
 heaven flow in according as knowledges are formed 
 through the influence of angels from the first heaven. 
 Thus the mediate degree is built up from the highest by 
 lowest iuto mediate. This is the order of formation. 
 The first idea must be that of the Lord as Doer and 
 Giver. This will come naturally in the ordinary con- 
 versation with the mother. The instruction must in- 
 clude the Lord as the Divine Man and the literal sense 
 of the Word, with such explanations as the child can 
 receive, the genuine truths of Doctrine, also, in conver- 
 sations, the general forms of science, and the means 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 43 
 
 of acquiring knowledge, as drawing, writing, and the 
 like. 
 
 Thus the senses will gradually be developed, being 
 trained to note and observe things, and to be open to the 
 acquisition of ideas. The fundamentals of all spiritual 
 science and of all natural science should be imparted 
 during this age. 
 
 The third period, beginning about the twelfth or four- 
 teenth year, is the stage in which the affection of science 
 is developed out of the affections of the senses. The in- 
 struction begun in the preceding period must be con- 
 tinued. But now the child is no longer merely in- 
 quisitive or inquiring ; the rational is beginning to be 
 formed ; there is a desire to understand what is taught, 
 questions are asked, and something rational is seen in 
 the answers. Children should be encouraged to ask 
 questions, so that they may be instructed how to ask them 
 and when to ask them ; and be guarded against form- 
 ing habits of mental indolence. They need to learn to 
 see, hear, and discover things for themselves, to conclude 
 atd to think for themselves. 
 
 To form the rational rightly, the truth must be taught 
 as revealed by the Lord. The internal sense of the 
 Word cannot as yet be fully taught, but as much of 
 it should be communicated as the child can under- 
 stand. Things of correspondence should be taught by 
 presenting effects with their causes. History is very 
 
44 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 valuable to develop the rational ; all that refers to the 
 religions of the earth, mythology, language, laws of 
 government, theories of science, and of philosophy like- 
 wise. 
 
 The adult age is thus finally reached, where the affec- 
 tion of truth reigns. 
 
 In all these ages the studies should be kept up with 
 an object, and that object, itse; this is the good with 
 which the affection for knowing is united in marriage, 
 and affections will spring thence to delight and to stim- 
 ulate to renewed efforts to know. 
 
 What has been said concerning the instruction in the 
 various periods is of the mediate operation of the Lord 
 in man's regeneration. But the Lord's government of 
 man is both mediate and immediate. During all these 
 periods, therefore. He inflows immediately into man's 
 forming faculties and disposes them to receive what 
 flows in mediately. Thus a marriage takes place be- 
 tween the two influxes in the interiors of man, resulting 
 finally in actual marriage in externals. The marriage 
 in the interiors first appears in man as a disposition or 
 delight in doing or learning. Delight is operative in 
 every stage to receive the things which ordinate the 
 sensual and rational. Thus the Lord leads man to ac- 
 quire more and more truth ; man's rationality and liberty 
 are gradually formed, and then he has in him the real 
 human, he becomes truly a man. This process goes on 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 45 
 
 continually. Man may interfere, as he often does, but 
 he can never entirely stop it. 
 
 On the subject of immediate and mediate influx con- 
 sult Heaven and Hell (n. 297), Arcana Coelestia (ii. 6063, 
 6307, 6472, 9682, 9683, 6058, 6474, 6478, 8717, 8728, 
 5147, 5150, 6473, 7004, 7007, 7270). 
 
 Although man is not life, but a mere organ of life, 
 he nevertheless has life, not his own, but as his own, by 
 perpetual iuflux from the Lord. There is with him a 
 receptibility of life, consisting in this faculty of acquiring 
 science, intelligence, and wisdom, and in the incliuation to 
 live good. By this receptibility man has also the faculty 
 of feeling what inflows from without in himself as his 
 own, and likewise of producing what so feels /ro?)i him- 
 self as his oivn. What he so produces is imputed to him 
 as his. (T. C. B. 362.) This is for the sake of gifting 
 him with free determination, which consists in a free 
 choice from among the things he has learnt and felt of 
 whatever will promote his good, or of whatever he will 
 regard as promotive of his good. 
 
 This points clearly to the double duty of the educator 
 of first imparting a knowledge of things true and good, 
 and of then training the growing understanding to choose 
 rightly the things that shall make for essential freedom. 
 This training involves the formation of man's rational by 
 the Truth, from which he may think truly and conclude 
 justly. {A. a 2094, 2524, 2557 ; H. H. 309, 455, etc.) 
 
46 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION, 
 
 Because the Lord alone is Truth, such a formation of 
 the rational or of free choice will be a turning of the 
 mind to the Lord or to all Divine Truth. From this 
 man will take little or much according to state or recep- 
 tibility. As all Divine Truth inflows and is present, it is 
 evident that in all things from God are all things of 
 God, and therefore that the very inmost of all genuine 
 free choice or free determination is the idea of the all- 
 ness of the Divine, i. e., of the infinity of the Giver of 
 Truth, of the infinity of His gifting, and of the infinity 
 of His gifts. (T. a R. 364.) This idea places at the 
 very core of man's thinking and choosing the essence of 
 all freedom, which is nothing else than infinity, predi- 
 cable only of the Divine Love and Wisdom, and not ad- 
 mitting of any idea of limitation. The recognition of 
 the infinity of all the Truth when established in the 
 reason with man constitutes the very form of free deter- 
 mination or choice, and is the essence of man's freedom 
 from the infinity of the Divine Good. 
 
 There can be no limitations at the sources or fountains 
 of life and existence. Hence, in the formation of the 
 human in man, in his rationality and liberty, the true be- 
 ginning is in Eevelation. At every step of this synthetic 
 formation, analysis, by its apparent limitations and ultima- 
 tions, performs the work of fixing and confirming what 
 enters from the Divine, and by degrees the mind is estab- 
 lished in the Truth that " in God infinite things are one,'* 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 47 
 
 and to think in every thought that in every one thing of 
 nature there are indefinite things, indefinite forms and 
 uses, and in every one thing of the Spiritual and Divine 
 there are infinite things of love and wisdom and use. In 
 this idea is full freedom of thought, feeling, and deter- 
 mination. 
 
 The heat and light proceeding from the Lord as a sun, eon- 
 tain in their bosom all the infinities that are in the Lord ; the 
 heat all the infinities of His Love, and the light all the infini- 
 ties of His Wisdom, thus also to infinity all the good which is of 
 Charity, and all the truth which is of Faith. The reason is, 
 because that Sun itself is present everywhere in its heat and in 
 its light; and that Sun is the proximate sphere surrounding the 
 Lord, which emanates from His Divine Love, and at the same 
 time from His Divine Wisdom. ... for the Lord is in the 
 midst of that Sun. From this it is evident that nothing is 
 lacking to enable man to take from the Lord, because He is 
 omnipresent, every good which is of Charity, and every truth 
 which is of Faith. . . . That there are infinite things in the 
 heat and light which proceed from the Lord, although they 
 appear as simply heat and light, may be illustrated by various 
 things in the natural world, as by this : the sound of the voice, 
 and of the speech of man is heard as a simple sound, and yet 
 the angels when they hear it perceive in it all the affections of 
 his love, and likewise discover what they are, and what their 
 quality. That these things lie hidden in the sound, man may 
 also in a measure perceive from the sound of the speaker's voice, 
 as whether there is in it contempt, or mockery, or hatred; so 
 also whether there is in it charity, benevolence, or gladness, or 
 
48 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 other affections. Similar things lie hidden in rays of the eye 
 wlien it looks at any one, etc. — T. C. R. 365. 
 
 Receptibility, i. e., the faculty of acquiring intelli- 
 gence and wisdom, of course, differs with men, as men 
 differ from heredity, genius, position in the Spiritual 
 World, etc. Influx is according to form, and forms vary. 
 These varieties must be recognized in children and 
 respected, as they are all recipient of the same life from 
 the Divine, which appears in them variously. ( T. C. R. 
 366.) The variety of life and form belongs to the free- 
 dom of man, which, indeed, is from the Spiritual World ; 
 for he is held in the middle of the World of Spirits, 
 where he is always under twofold influences, and free 
 to give himself up to the one or the other. 
 
 The origin of man's free determination is from the Spiritual 
 World, where the mind of man is Icept by the Lord. The mind 
 of man is his spirit, which lives after death. This spirit is con- 
 tinually in consort witli his like in that world, and his spirit by 
 the material body, with which it is clothed about, is witli men in 
 the natural world. . . . Man's mind is interiorly spiritual 
 and exteriorly natural ; wherefore by its interiors he communi- 
 cates with spirits, and by his exteriors with men. By this means 
 of eommunication man perceives things and tJiinks them analytically — 
 if man had not this he would not think more nor otherwise than a beast, 
 as also, if all intercourse with spirits were taken from him, he ivould 
 instantly die. But that it may be comprehended how man can be 
 held in the middle between Heaven and Hell, and thereby in 
 Spiritual Equilibrium, when he has Free Determination, a few 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 49 
 
 things may be said. The Spiritual World consists of Heaven 
 and Hell. Heaven is above the head, and Hell then is beneatli 
 the feet; nevertheless not in the middle of the Earth, inliabited 
 by men, but under the earth of that World wiiich is also from a 
 s|)iritual origin, and thence, not in an extense, but in an appear- 
 ance of extense. Between Heaven and Hell there is a great 
 Interstice, which to those who are there appears like a complete 
 orb or globe ; into this Interstice evil exhales from Hell in all 
 abundance, and on the other hand good inflows thither from 
 Heaven also in all abundance. Of this Interst'ce the Lord 
 speaks in Luke xvi, 26. In the midst of this Interstice is every 
 man as to his spirit — solely to the intent that lie may be in free 
 determination. This Interstice, because it is so large and ap- 
 pears to those who ai-e there like a great orb, is called the 
 World of Spirits ; it is also full of Spirits.— T. C.i^. 475; cf n. 476. 
 All who are in that great Interstice, as to their interiors, are 
 conjoined either with Angels of Heaven or with devils of Hellj 
 but at the present day with the Angels of Michael^ or with the Angels 
 of the Dragon.— T. C. R. All . 
 
 Man at birth is in entire equilibrium between good and 
 evil. His faculties are but germinal form?, and thus 
 general forms, to be cultivated into particular or in- 
 dividual forms, and to constitute the Rationality and 
 Liberty of particular men in whom they manifest them- 
 selves in the most individual forms of free-determination, 
 according to which every man acts out his own life. 
 Thus free-determination as to spiritual things is the 
 cause of free-determination in moral, civil, and natural 
 things. (T. a R. 480, 482 to 485.) 
 4 
 
50 CON VERSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 And free-determination in natural and spiritual things, 
 like the faculties in which it rests, is for eternal life. 
 This is their use. But they may be unused, or they may 
 be abused ; this lies in their very nature, and is of their 
 liberty. A man can think and will, and this is spiritual 
 liberty ; and he can speak and act, and this is natural 
 liberty ; and he can also think and will what he does not 
 speak and act, and viee versa. These liberties must not 
 be confounded. They may be distinguished as liberty 
 and license. And a man cannot pass over from the one 
 that exists with him to the other that does not exist with 
 him unless he passes through the door of determination — 
 the determination of his thought from his will to this act. 
 
 This door of determination is open with those who 
 think and will according to the civil laws of the land 
 and the moral laws of society, for these speak as they 
 think and act as they will. But this door is closed 
 with those who think and will contrary to these laws. 
 •' Whoever attends to his wills, and acts thence, will per- 
 ceive that such a determination intervenes." (D. P. 
 71.) Man's liberty, being in fact man's love — for the 
 one is of the other — he has as many liberties as he has 
 loves and affections of love, and since delight is from 
 love, and is love and affection in Its activity, man has 
 as many liberties as he has delights ; and when he acts 
 from liberty he acts from delight, and when from delight 
 then from liberty. 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 51 
 
 In general, liberties are natural, rational, and spiritual. 
 All men from birth have natural liberty — the liberty of 
 self-love and the love of the world — and as these are 
 evil, it is clear that natural liberty is to think and will evils. 
 This natural liberty becomes natural rational liberty, 
 when man by ratiocinations confirms the things which he 
 speaks and acts from natural liberty, i. e., evil things. 
 In this liberty every man is hereditarily, and in it he 
 is kept by the Divine Providence for the end of salva- 
 tion. Rational liberty (properly so called) is when man 
 speaks and acts well and morally for reasons of right. 
 This liberty may be natural and also spiritual, accord- 
 ing to the quality of its reasons from its ends. If the 
 ends and reasons have respect to self and the world, man 
 will be acting according to his own reason, and his 
 liberty will be merely external and not internal, because 
 he does not really love and will the good which he does. 
 This liberty, therefore, is only interior, natural liberty, 
 which is a liberty of this world. Spiritual liberty difkrs 
 altogether from these two liberties, because it is from an- 
 other origin, i. e., from the love of spiritual or eternal life, 
 from which love a man thinks evils to be sins, and there- 
 fore does not will them. At first this does not seem to 
 be liberty, because a man, in this case, puts himself 
 under the obedience to the Truth, compels himself, and 
 deprives himself of his own natural, and natural rational 
 liberty. But as this liberty grows the others decrease, 
 
62 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 until it gradually forms to itself and enters into genuine 
 national Liberty by purifying and elevating into what is 
 spiritually rational. Into this liberty itself, in which 
 man acts from reason itself or truth itself, every man 
 can come if he wills, because the Lord continually 
 gives to every one the ability of coming into this 
 liberty.— D. P. 73 (cf. H. and H. 428 to 430.) 
 
 It is clear that Liberty itself from Reason itself is the 
 only Liberty that education can have in view as an end. 
 It is no less clear that natural Liberty at the beginning, 
 and afterward natural rational Liberty, are the condi- 
 tions with which education has to deal and the means 
 by which it is to attain its end of preparing the way for 
 the establishment in man of essential Liberty and essen- 
 tial Rationality. The two faculties of acquiring intelli- 
 gence and wisdom, and the inclination to love what is 
 good, in which are these liberties, are not only immedi- 
 ate gifts of the Lord to all men, but they are also gifts 
 inseparable from each other. In the faculty of acquiring 
 intelligence, etc., there is the inclination to love ; and 
 with the inclination to love, there is thought from the 
 other faculty to serve as means of bringing love into act ; 
 and this relation of these faculties is the relation of 
 possible future consorts, or mai ried partners, requires 
 the earnest and especial thought and attention of the 
 Educator. These faculties are to be prepared for mar- 
 riage, for conjugial life — for heaven which is the very 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 53 
 
 end of their existence from the Creator with man. 
 In their marriage is the completeness of a human life; 
 for, in Liberty with man, is the all of His Love and 
 Life; and in Kationality, the all of his Intelligence and 
 Wisdom. 
 
 Every affection lias its conijianion as a consort; the affection 
 of natural love has science, tiie afTection of spiritual love has 
 intelligence, and the affection of celestial love has wisdom; 
 because affection without its cnnpauionor consort is not any- 
 thing; for it is like esse without existence, and like substance 
 without form, of which not anything can be predicated. Thence 
 it is that in every created thing there is something which may 
 be referred to the marriage of good and truth, as h;is been shown 
 above in many places. In Beasts there is a marriage of affec- 
 tion and science; the affection then is of natural good, and the 
 science of natural truth. Now, because affection and science 
 with them act entirely as one, and their affection cannot be ele- 
 vated above their science, nor their science above their affec- 
 tion — and if elevated, tliey are elevated together — and because 
 they have no spiritual mind into wliich, or into the light of 
 which they can be elevated, therefore, they have not the faculty 
 of understanding, or of rationality, nor the faculty of willing 
 freely, or of liberty, but merely natural affection with its science ; 
 the natural affection which they have is the affection of nourish- 
 ing tiiemselves, of providing a habitation, of prolification, of 
 fleeing from and avoiding harm, with all the requisite science. 
 Because such is their state of life, they cannot think: "I will 
 and I do not will this," or, " I know or do not know that ;" still 
 less, "I understand this and love that," but they are carried 
 
54 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 along from their own affection by science, without rationality 
 and liberty.— i). P. 74 ; cf. n. 96. 
 
 It is otherwise with man, who has not only affection of natural 
 Jove, but also the affection of spiritual love, and the affection of 
 "celestial love ; for the human mind is of three degrees, where- 
 fore, man can be elevated from natural science to spiritual in- 
 telligence and thence to celestial wisdom, and from these two he 
 C&n look to the Lord and thus be conjoined with Him — where- 
 by he lives to eternity. But this elevation as to affection could 
 not be given unless he had the faculty of elevating the under- 
 standing from rationality, and of willing that (elevation) from 
 liberty. Man by these two faculties can /Am^-wiVAm himself of those 
 things which he perceives without himself by means of the senses 
 of his body; and he can also think in a superior plane concern- 
 ing the things which he thinks in an inferior plane ; for every 
 one can say: "I have thought that, and I think this," also, 
 *'I have willed that, and I will this,'' as also, ''I under- 
 stand this and that is so," " I love this because it is such," 
 etc. Hence it is evident that man thinks above his thought, 
 and also sees this, as it were, beneath him. Man has this from 
 Eationality and Liberty; from Eatlonality, that he can tliink 
 in a superior plane ; from Liberty, that from affection he wills 
 to think so; for unless he had the liberty of thinking so, he 
 would have no will, and thence no thought. — D. P. 75. 
 
 As the marriage of the two faculties of Rationality 
 and Liberty takes place in the World of Spirits, so will 
 all the preparation for that marriage take place there. 
 The affections of natural love are there married to their 
 sciences, the affections of spiritual love to their inteili- 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 55 
 
 gences, and the affections of celestial love to their wis- 
 doms. And so it becomes evident that the life of Pleaven 
 is not only an eternal marriage, as in a simple state, but 
 a progressive marriage, or a progressive series of mar- 
 riages, ascending perpetually into an ever fuller con- 
 junction with the Lord. When the consorts, which are 
 affections and their truths, find each other, they are 
 married, and children are born from this marriage, 
 which are words and acts spoken and done in the natural 
 world.» As these marriages, however, take place only 
 so far as man suffers himself to be reformed and regene- 
 rated by the Lord, it is evident that they belong to the 
 adult age, at which the work of the natural educator 
 ends. This work, therefore, has to do only with the 
 formation of Rationality by truths, and of liberty by 
 goods or affections. As man is in the middle between 
 Heaven and Hell, so also is his rational mind in the mid- 
 dle, to which tend two ways, the one from Heaven and 
 the other from Hell. For the rational mind whilst in 
 the course of formation corresponds to the world of 
 spirits. Heaven is above and Hell is beneath. (^T. 
 H. 430.) The educator's work is by no means confined 
 to the understanding, it is also concerned with the things 
 of the will. A love for use, which is good in all its 
 forms and varieties, is to be awakened and cherished, 
 these living affections, with their delights, will move the 
 understanding to the acquisition of such sciences, intel- 
 
56 coy VERSA TIONS ON h'B UCA TION. 
 
 ligence?, and wisdoms as may be consorted with them, 
 to the doing of the uses ioved. And these loves 
 themselves must be traintd to receive the guidance 
 of their sciences, intelligences, and wisdoms, so that 
 they may be continually purified, elevated, and per- 
 fected, and thus be prepared to produce successively 
 truer, i)iirer, and better, more spiritual and more celes- 
 tial, Avords and acts. And what is said of the w^ork to 
 be done by tl^ educator in his use to the children given 
 into his charge, is said of the work that will be gating on 
 within himself, so far as he looks to the Lord, performs 
 his use from a love of it, and as his charity towai d the 
 neighbor, faithfully, sincerely, and conscientiously. Let 
 him not cherish the fatal delusion, that in order to the 
 doing of this work he must first be regenerated into 
 perfect manhood, so that he may teach nothing which 
 he has not himself lived and done. If he falls into 
 this error he will not only fail in the doing of his work, 
 but he will also fail in having the work of regeneration 
 truly done in him. Every man is regenerated by the 
 Lord in the life's work of his use of Charity, whatever 
 that may be. 
 
 From all that has been said, it may be concluded that 
 the marriage of the Katiouality and Liberty of man 
 could n( t take place, and that he could not have a 
 Liberty to be married to his Kationality were he not held 
 constantly in the appearance that the affections of 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 57 
 
 knowing, living, and doing are his oivn. From this 
 appearance flows his delight, aud without delight not 
 any thing is received that inflows. By means of this 
 appearance, therefore, he gradually comes into intelli- 
 gence and Avi:?dom, aud they are made of his life. The 
 marriage of the faculties, to be true, must be from the 
 love of the one deiived into the other faculty ; as is 
 the love of the man into the love of the woman. As 
 truth is the form of a good, it has within it an affection 
 derived from that good, which is its very substance, and 
 leads it to desire aud seek re-conjunction with it. Hence 
 the inexpressible importance of exciting with the young 
 an affection for the sciences in which they are instructed, 
 by means of delights and pleasures flowing from the 
 methods of presenting the sciences. In affections so 
 excited sciences are readily and deeply implanted and 
 fixed in the memory. At the same time provision is 
 thereby made for their future marriage when the con- 
 sorts again find each other and come into conjunction 
 in the life of the adult man. Whatever is so conjoined 
 and made of the life, that remains, because it is received 
 in liberty, i. e., from the love of the man, and according 
 to his own thought, and thus it is appropriated to him 
 as his own. (Cf T. C. E. 493 to 596 ; D. P.*78 ; H. 
 H. 404.) 
 
 Every man from rationality that has not been obscured, nuay 
 see or coinpiehend tliat man, without the appearance that it is 
 
58 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 his, cannot be in any affection of knowing, nor in any affection 
 of understanding ; for all joy and delight, thus all of the will, 
 is from affection, which is of love. Who can will to know any- 
 thing, or will to understand, unless he has some delight of affec- 
 tion? And who can have this delight of affection, unless that 
 by which he is affected appears as his ? If it is none of liis but 
 all of another's, that is, if one from his own affections should 
 infuse something into the mind of another, who had no affec- 
 tions of knowing and understanding as from himself, would he 
 receive it — nay, could he receive it ? Would he not be like what 
 is called a brute or a stock? Thence it may manifestly appear 
 that although all things inflow which a man perceives, and 
 thence thinks and knows, and according to perception wills and 
 does, yet it is of the Divine Providence of the Lord that it 
 should appear as man's, for, as was said, otherwise man would 
 receive nothing, and tluis could not be gifted with any intelli- 
 gence and wisdom- For these considerations the truth of this 
 may be evident, that whatever a man does from liberty, 
 whether it be of reason or not of reason, so it be but according to 
 his reason, appears to him as his. — D. P. 76. 
 
 What a man makes to be of his love remains, because 
 it is made his life ; and this cannot be eradicated, because 
 it is not only of his love, but also of his reason. What 
 has been made of a man's life may, however, change its 
 relative position — it may be removed from the first to 
 the last place in his life, but, nevertheless, it remains 
 and is not cast out. (D. P. 79.) Such a removal of 
 what is loved and appropriated from reason, from the 
 centre to the circumference of a man's life, is, in fact. 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 59 
 
 an act of the regenerative process, which is effected by 
 his acting in freedom according to reason, enlightened by 
 the truth. And this again is of the marriage of good 
 and truth, in Liberty and Rationality, by which man is 
 conjoined wiih the Lord. Thus it is that by means of 
 the faculties of Liberty and Rationality are effected those 
 conjunctions in the life of man by which it is made to 
 be at one with the Divine, and thence becomes more 
 and more at one with itself, within itself, and without 
 itself Such a removal of things lived and thought by 
 man is effected by a change in his estimation of their 
 value. To provide and prepare the way for such 
 changes, it becomes the duty of the Teacher to teach 
 the real value and importance of things as they are 
 presented in the light of the Divine Truth, and to pre- 
 sent them in their order, and this according to the 
 Lord's words in Matthew vi, 33 : "Seek ye first the king- 
 dom of God and His justice and all these things shall be 
 added unto you.'' (D. P. 82-91, 92-95, 96.) 
 
 When man is reforming and regenerating he acts 
 from Liberty according to Reason, but when he is re- 
 generated, he acts from Liberty itself according to Reason 
 itself The man who is not regenerating also acts from 
 Liberty according to Reason, but his liberty is from self- 
 love and his reason is false, and, therefore, both are from 
 hell — i. e.y the one is servitude and the other insanity, 
 and yet both are of the Divine Providence, because man 
 
60 COX VERSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 is born into evils of all kinds, aiid if he were deprived 
 of the liberty of willing evil and thinking falsity, he 
 could ncit will or think at all, ahd therefore could never 
 be w ithdrawn from hell. For this reason is man's liberty 
 so well guarded by the Lord. For the same reason 
 should paienis and teachers most carefully guard and 
 protect from harm the tender faculties that are to be 
 formed into the rationality and liberty of the future 
 man. (i>. P. 97.) And thus it is clear that these facul- 
 ties are what make man to be man. They are the human 
 with man. As they are, so is the man ; as they vary, 
 so the man vaiiis. They are true and living faculties 
 with those alone who are regenerated ; for in them alone 
 is the human that is an imaire of the Divine Human of 
 the LoKD. 
 
 Every man, viewed from the Divine end, may become 
 a true man — but each man with a difference ; but, viewed 
 fnmi the evil into which man has fallen and the License 
 of evil, not every man can come into Liberty itself and 
 Rationality itself, i. e., into the truly human. 
 
 The faculties of liberty and rationality are, as it were, inherent 
 in man ; for the essential human resides in them. . . . Ko 
 others act from liberty itself, according to reason itself, but those 
 who suffer themselves to be regenerated by the Lokd; tiie rest 
 act from liberty according to thouglit, which they make like 
 reason. Nevertheless, every man, unless he be born an idiot or 
 in the highest degree stupid, may come to Eeason itself and by^ 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 61 
 
 it to Liberty itself. But that he does not come is owing to various 
 causes, which will be revealed in tlie following But here it is to 
 be said to whom Liberty itself, or essential Liberty, and, at the 
 same time. Reason itself, or essential Rationality, cannot be 
 given, and to whom they can with difficulty be given. 
 
 Liberty itself and Rationality itself cannot be given to idiots 
 from birth or to those who afterward become idiots, so long as 
 they remain idiots. Liberty itself and Rationality itself cannot 
 be given to those who are born stupid and gross or to those who 
 become such from the torpor of idleness or from sickness, which 
 perverts or entirely closes the interiors of the mind, or from the 
 love of a beastly life. Ndther can Liberty itself a ,d Rationality 
 itsplf be r/ivenw'th those in the Christian World who altogether deny the 
 Divine of the LoRD an I the Holiness of the Word and who have 
 kept this denial confirmed in themselves even to the end of life; 
 for this is meant by the sin against tiie Holy Spirit, which is not 
 remitted in this age nor in that to come. {Matth. xiii, 81, 32.) 
 Neither can Liberty itself and Rationality itself be given to 
 those wlio attribute all things to nature and nothing to the Di- 
 vine, and who make this of their faith by ratiocinations from 
 things visible; for these are atheists. Liberty itself and Ra- 
 tionality itself can with difficulty be given to those who have 
 confirmed tiiemp>lves much in the falses of religion, because the 
 confirmer of the false is a denier of the true; but they who have 
 notcoifirmed themselves, of whatscever religion they may be, 
 can [be gifted with liberty itself and rationality itself], (see S.S. 
 91 to 97.) Infants and ciiildren cannot come into Liberty itse'f 
 and Rationality itself before they grow up, because the interiors 
 of the mind in man are successively opened ; in the meanwhile 
 they are like seeds in unripe fruit, which cannot germinate in 
 the ground.— 2). P. 98 and 99. (Cf. H. H. 423 to 425.) 
 
62 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 It is evident that in man's receptibility of life from 
 the Lord, which consists of his faculties of Liberty and 
 Rationality, is also his ability to reciprocate the Divine 
 gifts of life, aud that from this is the coDJuuction of man 
 with the Lord. The internal coiijugial or marriage 
 with man is in the faculties themselves and in their de- 
 rivative forms, as also in the things received in them 
 from the Lord. From this internal conjugial proceeds 
 the external conjugial or marriage, and in the one and 
 the other are the Church and Heaven. For this reason 
 is the will called the very esse of life and the receptacle 
 of the good of love, and the understanding the exist- 
 ence of the life or the receptacle of the truth and the 
 good of faith. 
 
 The will of man is the very esse of his life, and the recep- 
 tacle of the good of love and the understanding is the exist- 
 ence of life thence, and the receptacle of the truth and good of 
 faith.— ir. H. 26. A. C 9282. 
 
 "To be" with any one, is to be more closely conjoined or 
 united. That "to be" [6-.se] is to be united, is because the 
 esse itself of a thing is good, and all good is of love, which is 
 spiritual conjunction or un"tion; thence, in the supreme sense 
 the Lord is called the "To Be" [Esse] or Jehovah, 
 because from Him is all the good which is of love or spiritual 
 conjunction. Heaven, because it makes one by love from 
 Him, and by a reciprocal to Him by means of reception and 
 by mutual love, is therefore called a marriage, by which it 
 is. It would be the same with the Church, if with it love and 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 63 
 
 charity were its To Be [Esse.] Where, therefore, there ia not 
 conjunction or union, there Esse is not, for unless there be 
 something to reduce to one, or to unite, tliere must be dissolu- 
 tion and extinction. So in civil society, in which every one ia 
 for himself and no one for another except for the sake of him- 
 self, unless there were laws which united and fears of the loss of 
 gain, honor, fame, life, society would be entirely dissipated; 
 wlierefore, the e^e of such a society is also conjunction or ad- 
 unition, but only in externals; but with respect to internals 
 there is no Esse with it; wherefore, also, such [persons] in the 
 otlier life are kept in hell, and likewise there are held together 
 by external bonds, especially by fears; but as often as these 
 bonds are relaxed, the one rushes to the destruction of the 
 other and desires nothing more than totally to extinguish the 
 other. In heaven it is different, where there is internal con 
 junction by love to the Lord, and thence by mutual love ; when 
 external bonds are relaxed there, they are mutually more closely 
 conjoined; and because they are thus brought nearer to ihe 
 Divine Esse, which is from the Lord, they are more interiorly 
 in affection and thence in liberty, consequently in blessedness, 
 felicity, and joy.— ^. C. 5002. (Cf. also A. C. 9282, 9995.) 
 
 Because man has his reciprocal ability, from the mar- 
 riage of the understanding and the will, there must 
 needs be something from the one and from the other in 
 every idea of his thought and every affection of his love. 
 Man cannot think with the understanding alone; for no 
 idea — i. e., no image of what enters from without can 
 be formed ffom which to think, inasmuch as there is 
 nothing in the understanding alone, with which what 
 
f)4 CONVERSA TIONS ON ED UCATION. 
 
 enters cau ba coujoiued so as to make a permanent im- 
 pression. The love, or the will, gives to the under- 
 standing the ability to receive and retain an impression 
 from without, because it is this that furnishes the siih- 
 staiice on which the impression is made, for love is sub- 
 stance and understanding is form. This is true of the 
 understanding as to all its forms, even the outermost, 
 namely, the external memory. {A. C. bd)b ; D. L. W. 
 410; A. C. 590, 803.) The understanding does not 
 conduct the will, it only teaches and shows the way. 
 (D.L. W. 241.) 
 
 Perception from the Divine Truth of the Rational is from the 
 Intellectual, but perception from Divine Good is from the volun- 
 tary ; but perception from the Intellectual is not intellectual, 
 but it is of the influent voluntary, for the intellectual is not any- 
 thing else than the voluntary in form; such is the intellectual 
 when it is conjoined to the voluntary, but before it is so conjoined 
 tlie intellectual appears to be by itself and the voluntary by 
 itself, although it is nothing else than tliat the external sepa- 
 rates itself from the internal, for wlieu the intellectual inwardly 
 . wi Is and thinks anything, it is the end from the will which makes 
 its life, ad rules the cogitative there. — A. C. 3619 [cS. A. C. 
 1<)09,3570. See also particularly, n. 10, 110; and n. 3325, 3494, 
 3'-o9, 3556, 3543> 3o()3, 3570, 4925, 4926, 4928, 4930, 6256, 6269, 
 6272, 6273 ; D. P. 226, 227.) 
 
 The faculties of Rationality and Liberty when formed 
 constitute man's receptacles of love and wisdom from 
 the Lord ; in other words, his will and understanding. 
 
E^DS AND MEANS. 65 
 
 111 them is the " human " of man, by which he recipro- 
 cates the Divine operati<»u of the Lord, and is con- 
 joined with the Lord. Tlie very substance of this 
 *' human " of man is the love which he receives from 
 the Divine Love, which is substance itself in its own 
 form of Divine Wisdom. Human minds are spiritual 
 forms organized of substances, from which they have 
 the power of thinking, seeing, and speaking. (A. C. 
 1533.) 
 
 There is but one life, wliich is of the Lord, which inflows 
 and causes man to live; yea [which causes] both tlie good and 
 the evil to live ; to this life correspond the forms which art sub- 
 stances, which are so vivified by continual Divine influx, that 
 they appear to live from themselves. Tliis is a correspondence 
 of the organs with life; but such as the recipient organs are, 
 such is their life ; those men who are in love and charity, are in 
 correspondence, for life itself is received by them adequately ; 
 but those who are in what is contrary to love and charit3% are 
 not in correspondence, because life itself is not received ade- 
 quately ; the life that exists thence is such as they are. This 
 may be illustrated by natural forms, into which the light of the 
 sun inflows; such as the recipient forms are, such are the modifi- 
 cations of that light. In the spiritual world the modifications 
 are spiritual, therefore such as are the recipient forms there, 
 such is their intelligence, and such is their wisdom. Thence it 
 is that good spirits and angels appear as the very forms of 
 charity ; but evil and infernal spirits as the forms of hatred. — 
 A. a 3484. (Cf. 3821, 4985, 8603.) . 
 
 Thus good and truth in man who is their recipient 
 
66 C ON VERSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 subject, are not abstractious, but things most substantial ; 
 they are Divine, angelic, and human substance and form. 
 The life of man which they constitute, is first in the 
 Brain and its parts, aud thence in the Body and its parts. 
 In its beginnings life is in the organic substances, 
 spiritual and natural, of the two Brains, and by their 
 cortical glands and medullary fibres, it is derived into 
 all parts of the body. luflux from the Lord into these 
 substances and forms produces with man affection and 
 thought. The Brain, therefore, in respect to the body, 
 is as the end to the effect. The end is that the body 
 may serve the soul, i. e., the man himself, who is created 
 to be an Angel of Heaven. (See A. C. 4042 ; D. L. W. 
 362-370; A. C 4054.) 
 
 Man's connection with Heaven, therefore, extends 
 beyond his affections and thoughts to the natural sub- 
 stances and forms of his Brain, and their derivations 
 even to ulti mates. On this connection depends his ex- 
 istence. (A. a 4218.) 
 
 Hence, man is man, aud hence also are all things of 
 the natural man and his world, in the relation of corres- 
 pondence to all things of the spiritual man and his 
 world. (A. a 4222 ; H. H. 418, also 87-102.) 
 
 We need to realize this truth, as a fact of true science. 
 It is not an abstract theory, that the organic forms of 
 the human body, consisting of natural substances, are 
 corresponding ultimate embodiments of the organic 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 67 
 
 forms cousisting of spiritual substances, which are them- 
 selves embodimeuts of functious existing iu the Grand 
 Man, as means of the end for which the Grand Man 
 exists. A function is even one with its organic form, it 
 caunot exist separately from it, nor can be conceived of 
 separately from it. In the Grand Man the organic 
 forms of the functions of use are angelic societies, com- 
 posed of angelic men, who are constituted of spiritual 
 substances in forms, and these make a one by corres- 
 pondence with the organic forms of these functions, 
 composed of natural substances in forms, in the men of 
 the natural world. The Brain, therefore, of the Grand 
 Angelic Man consists of angelic men, constituted of 
 angelic spiritual substances. These angels are organic 
 Brain forms consisting of organic Brain substances ; 
 each angel, and each particle of such an angel is Brain 
 in essence and in form, even to its ultimate covering. 
 What is true of this one function, is true of all other 
 functions ; and is no less true of the Grand Man of 
 Earth, of its organized forms or bodies, from the greatest 
 to the least, and of the substances and matters which 
 constitute them. Whatever makes Brain, is Brain, 
 whatever makes Heart, is Heart, etc. The function 
 cannot be separated from its organic form, nor the 
 organic from the substances of which it is made. 
 
 The same is true of affection and thought. They exist 
 only in organic forms, into the functions of which they 
 
68 CONVEBSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 inflow and which they actuate iu correspondence with 
 themselves. In the fuuction is the use of the organic 
 form, and by the use, which the affection aud thought 
 iuteud, they command the form of the use. The hilman 
 body is the ultimate orgauic form of the soul, or human 
 internal, in which the Lord dwells and by which He 
 inflows and gives to the faculties, forces and forms of 
 human existence, all of which are within the body, to 
 the end that the Spirit of man may by ultimatious be 
 formed for union with its own Soul, aud thereby for 
 conjunction with the Lord. On this important subject 
 let the reader study closely the Divine teaching (in 
 A. a 4223, 4224 ; D. L. W. 199 to 204 ; as also A, C. 
 3741, 7004, 88G1, 9410; D. L. W. 300.) 
 
 In the eyes of the Parent and the Teacher, who 
 will ponder seriously the instruction here presented, 
 the material bodies of the children committed to their 
 care will assume a value and importance entirely 
 apart from any merely natural affection they may feel 
 for them. They are created and they exist to the 
 end that in them and by them there may be formed 
 angelic men. Angelic men can be formed truly and 
 fully only in sound minds, and sound minds require 
 sound bodies. 
 
 All men, as all angels, are substances formed in de- 
 grees and according to degrees to receive the Divine 
 proceeding from the Lord. Hence ha^^e they love and 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 69 
 
 wisdom {Influx n. 14) and this is according to the quality 
 of their recipient vessels. 
 
 Hence, also, are there two Essentials in the Church, called 
 Charity and Faith, of which all things of the Church consist 
 and which must be in all and each thing of it; because all the 
 goods of the Church are of Charity and are called Charity, and 
 all the Truths of the Church are of Faith and are called Faith. 
 It is to be known that every good forms itself by truths and 
 likewise clotlies itself by them, and thus distinguishes itself 
 from another good ; and also that the goods of one stock bind 
 themselves in bundles, and, at the same time, clothe these, and 
 thus distinguish tliemselves from others. That formations are 
 so effected appears from all and single things in the human 
 body; that similar things take place in the human mind is evi- 
 dent from this, that there is a perpetual correspondence of all 
 things of the mind with all things of the body. Thence it 
 follows that the human mind is organized interiorly of spiritual sub- 
 stances and exteriorly of natural substances, and, finally, of material 
 substances ; — the mind, the delights of the love of which are good, 
 interiorly of spiritual substances, such as are in Heaven; but 
 the mind the delights of wliich are evil, interiorly of spiritual 
 substances, such as are in Hell; and the evils of the latter are 
 bound into bundles by falses and the goods of the former into 
 btmdles by truths. Because there are sucii bindings together of 
 goods and evils, therefore tiie Lord says that " the tares must be 
 bound into bundles to be btu-nt, and likewise things offending." 
 {3Iatth. xiii, 30, 40, 41.)— 7^. C. R. 38. 
 
 Thought, with man, is produced from the spiritual 
 substauces of the natural mind by influx from the Spir- 
 
70 CON VEBSATIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 itual World, but not from the natural substances of that 
 mind. The latter contain and fix the former and enable 
 a man to perform uses in the world (Z>. L. W. 257) 
 and they also supply the cutaneous covering of the 
 spiritual bodies of all spirits and angels, by means of 
 which these bodies subsist (D. L. W. 257 and 388) for 
 " the organization that is induced in the world remains 
 to eternity." (7>. P. 326.) These substances are also 
 the recipient and containing forms of the exterior 
 memory, as it is said in Arcana Coelestia (n. 2487): 
 
 I was instructed that tlie Exterior Memory, regarded in it- 
 self, is but an organized sometliing formed of the objects of the 
 senses, especially of the sight and hearing, in the substances ivhich 
 are the beginnings of the fibres, and that according to impressions 
 from them are effected variations of form which are reproduced, 
 and that those forms are varied and changed according to the changes 
 of the state of affections and persuasions. Also, that the Interior 
 Memory is in like manner an organized something, but purer 
 and more perfect, formed from the objects of interior sight, 
 which objects are disposed into regular series in an incompre- 
 hensible order. (Cf. A. C. 2471, 2475, 2486-6931, 3679.) 
 
 Although the exterior memory of spirits and angels 
 is closed (A. C. 2486, 2492), still it serves them for a 
 plane or a foundation in which the ideas of their thoughts 
 may terminate {A. C. 3679), and this plane is necessary 
 to the birth or the bringing into actual existence of the 
 goods and truths which inflow from the interior (A. C. 
 9723) ; for the natural memory is the permanent state of 
 
ENDS AND MEANS. 71 
 
 the changes and variations of the forms of the purely 
 organic substances of the mind. (Z>. P. 279.) For 
 man as a receptacle of life is finite. 
 
 Man, because he is finite, is created of finite things ; where- 
 fore it is said in the Book of Creation that Adam [man] was 
 made from the earth and its dust, from which he was also 
 named, for " Adam " signifies the soil of the earth, and every 
 man actually consists of such things as are in the earth and from the 
 earth in the atmospheres. Those things which are in the atmos- 
 pheres from the earth man takes in by the lungs and by the 
 pores of the whole body, and the crasser things by foods made 
 of earthy particles. But, with respect to the spirit of man, this 
 also is created of finite things. What is the spirit ot man but a 
 receptacle of the life of the mind? The finite things from 
 which it is are spiritual substances which are in the Spiritual 
 World, and which are also collated into our earth and therein hidden. 
 Unless these were within, together with material things, not any 
 seed could be impregnated from its iTimos/s, and thence grow up in 
 a wonderful manner, without any deviation from the first sta- 
 men even to the fruit and to new seeds; nor could any worms 
 be procreated from the effluvia of tiie earth and from the put- 
 ting forth of the exhalations of vegetables, by which the atmos- 
 pheres are impregnated.— T. C. B. 470 (cf. T. C. E. 471, 472, 
 473.) 
 
CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 "fTTE have reached a point in our study of the ends 
 * * and means of education when it may be useful to 
 present a practical application of some of the principles 
 adduced, and by such application to lead to a considera- 
 tion of other principles for further and future applica- 
 tion. This application is presented in the form of 
 suggestions to teachers ; first, to teachers of very young 
 children, and successively to such as are instructing 
 older children. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 
 
 Rellgioiis Instruction. — E-epeat daily the Lord's 
 Prayer, together with one or more of the following 
 portions of the Word: 1. The Ten Commandments; 
 2. One of the Ten Commandments ; 3. The Two Great 
 Commandments; 4. The Beatitudes; 5. One of the 
 Beatitudes; 6. The Law of Charity; 7. One of the 
 Parables of the Lord ; 8. The History of the Divine 
 Incarnation ; 9. Of the Lord's teaching and miracles, 
 etc., etc., etc. 
 72 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 73 
 
 Let these repetitions be made iu unison by all the 
 scholars, distinctly, but quietly, i. e., not in a loud or 
 boisterous manner, the teacher leading and training 
 the scholars to speak iu chorus. Reason : Speaking, 
 singing, and acting in chorus are ultimate forms of 
 unanimity, and inauguration into unanimity is essen- 
 tial to the establishment of heavenly order, and on 
 earth to the formation of true and extended planes for 
 the operation of the angels and for the reception of the 
 Divine Influx. Unanimity in Heaven and in the 
 Church is from the Divine Unity, which is the Divine 
 Love. Unanimity is the " one lip " of the Church and 
 of Heaven ; in ultimate form it is the connection re- 
 sulting from mutual love flowing from love to the 
 Lord. Unanimity is the living acknowledgment and 
 worship of the Lord. Into the ultimate form of this 
 unanimity children are first led on earth as in heaven, 
 by being trained to act together in choirs. After such 
 training they are more easily led into the externals of 
 mutual love, for the storing up of remains, into kind- 
 ness, good-will, forgiveness, generosity, courtesy, polite- 
 ness, etc., etc., etc. (A. C. 2595, 2596, 3350, 5182, etc.) 
 
 Unanimity is cultivated also by dancing and all sorts 
 of pla^s and games. {A. C. 8339.) 
 
 KoTE. — In learning the Lord's Prayer and the Com- 
 mandments from the lips of parents and teachers, by 
 means of the Word children imbibe the doctrine of the 
 
74 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Lord, and from this, as a first idea of God, they can be 
 further taught, in like manner by means of the Word, 
 concerning the Lord as the God-Man, the Creator, Pre- 
 server, Redeemer, and Saviour, Teacher, Provider, Pro- 
 tector, etc., etc. The particular forms of this general 
 teachiug from the Word will be derived more or less 
 unconsciously from instruction concerning natural things 
 and objects, their uses, forms, appearances, etc., etc. 
 
 Further Religious Instruction. — Read the historical 
 parts of the Word ; at first particular histories, and 
 afterward the history of Israel, Gospel narratives ; also 
 selected Memorabilia from the Writings descriptive of 
 the Spiritual World, of scenes in that world, and of the 
 life of spirits and angels ; also carefully written stories 
 calculated to excite good affections and affording occa- 
 sion for conversation with the children. Let this read- 
 ing be assisted in producing a strong impression by natu- 
 ral and prepared objects and by pictures relating to the 
 various subjects brought before the children. All pic- 
 tures representing happy and pleasant scenes from family 
 life, from nature, etc., scenes in which children will 
 always take delight, are most useful aids in early religi- 
 ous instruction. This instruction does not consist so 
 much in imparting mere knowledge as in exciting de- 
 light and pleasure by means of things expressive and 
 representative of good and truth, and so awakening an 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 75 
 
 affection for the good and truth, which are to become 
 known by subsequent instruction. 
 
 Note. — "■ Children are in love toward their parents 
 and in mutual love and innocence." {A. C. 1450, 1453.) 
 Let them be kept in the exercise of these loves as long 
 as possible. {A. C. 5342.) 
 
 Other Instruction. — In things of the world. 
 
 " From infancy to childhood man is merely sensual." 
 {A. a 5126.) 
 
 At this age the aim of all instruction, properly so 
 called, should be the right training and development of 
 the five senses of Touch, Taste, Smell, Hearing, and 
 Sight, as the first means for the attainment of the uni- 
 versal end of instruction, " knowledge of the Lord, a life 
 according to His commandments, and eternal conjunc- 
 tion with Him." Two general means of training the 
 senses are to be found in the delights of their exercise, 
 and in the pleasures of discovery, attained by their ex- 
 ercise. 
 
 When employing these means in the school, care 
 should be had to advance in the culture of the senses 
 according to the order in which they are arranged above. 
 All true instruction begins in generals and proceeds to 
 particulars, and Touch, which is the first of our order, 
 is the most general sense, while Sight, which is the last 
 of that order, is the most particular sense. Indeed, 
 
76 conv:ersations on education. 
 
 Touch is the universal sense, of which the other senses 
 are particular forms ; and so they are adapted to the 
 very Divine order, according to which the Lord in- 
 structs and informs and forms the mind or understand- 
 ing, that it may become the abode or habitation of the 
 new will. But as particulars derive their inmost quality 
 and form from their general, so do they also always re- 
 fer themselves to their general. " To the Touch all 
 sensations refer themselves which are only diversities 
 and varieties of touch." (J.. C. 322.) Hence it is that 
 the diversities and varieties of sensation, of which we 
 become cognizant through the other senses, can be ex- 
 pressed and are expressed in terms derived from the 
 sensations of Touch, and are thus brought finally to the 
 test of this inmost and universal sense, which is the 
 sense peculiar to conjugial love, the inmost and the uni- 
 versal or foundation love of the Church of Heaven. 
 (C L. 210.) On this last* point we have the following 
 instruction. 
 
 *'To touch," signifies the inmost and the all of perception . . . 
 because the whole sensitive refers itself to the sense of touch, 
 and this is derived and exists from the perceptive, for the sensi- 
 tive is nothing else than the external perceptive, and the per- 
 ceptive is nothing else than the internal sensitive. . . . Besides, 
 all the sensitives and all the perceptives, which appear so 
 various, refer themselves to one only C(jmmon and universal 
 sense, namely, to the sense of touch ; the varieties, such as taste, 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 77 
 
 smell, hearing, and sight, which are external sensitives, are 
 nothing but its genera, arising from the internal sensitive, that 
 is, from the perceptive. . . . Further, the whole perceptive, 
 which is tiie internal sensitive, exists from good, but not from 
 truth, unless from good by truth, for the Divine Life of the 
 Lord inflows into good, and by that into truth, and thus presents 
 perception.—^. C. 3528 (Cf. n. 3559, 3562). 
 
 Every love has its own sense. The love of seeing from the 
 love of understanding has the sense of sight, and its amenities 
 are symmetries and beauties; the love of hearing from the love 
 of hearkening and obeying has the sense of hearing, and its 
 amenities are harmonies; the love of cognizing those things 
 which float about in the air from the love of perceiving has the 
 sense of smell, and its amenities are fragrances ; the love of 
 nourishing one's self from the love of becoming imbued with 
 goods and truths has the sense of taste, and its delights are deli- 
 cacies ; the love of cognizing objects from the love of circum- 
 spection and self-protection has the sense of touch, and its 
 amenities are titillations. That the love of conjoining one's self 
 with a consort from the love of uniting good and truth has the 
 sense of touch is because that sense is common to all the 
 senses, and thence draws support from them. That this love 
 brings all the above-mentioned senses into communion with 
 itself and appropriates their amenities to itself is known. — 
 a L. 210. 
 
 To the above may be added the following, from the 
 Spiritual Diary : 
 
 That the Lord knows and disposes all things in the universal 
 heaven and in all the earth, even the most minute. This may 
 
78 CONVEBSA TIONS ON ED UCA TIO N. 
 
 appear also from the human body, in the viscera, cavities, mem- 
 branes of which, both within and without, are sensitive fibres in 
 such abundance that nothing can pas^ by but they perceive it. 
 That the case is the same in the stomach, the liver, and the 
 lungs is obvious ; the fibres are, organically, variously formed, 
 thence the soul of man knows whatever is changed anywhere in 
 the body and perceives it, and according to that perception dis- 
 poses the single things and induces states suitable for the re- 
 storation of those parts which are out of order. — S. D. 1758. 
 
 The more deeply we reflect on these Divine teachings 
 the more convinced shall we be of the imperative neces- 
 sity of beginning the work of rearing children for 
 Heaven by the most tender and solicitous education of 
 their senses from earliest infancy, as well as by their 
 most careful training and instruction. Each particular 
 sense is the sense of some love, and as the sensitive or 
 perceptive of that love it is the gate of entrance into 
 its very seat and habitation, as well as the means of 
 egress for its activities. And each particular love is but 
 a form of the ruling or universal love that makes the 
 life of man, proceeding from the Lord. Hence is the 
 life of man in the senses which are from his loves, and 
 in them the perceptions or internal sensitives come into 
 outward form and existence in the external sensitives. 
 Accordingly, it is said, concerning spirits and men, that 
 *' life consists in sense, for without sense there is no life, 
 which may be known to every one." (A, G. 322.) And, 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 79 
 
 further, as the common or universal sense furnishes a 
 test or a Touch-stone for the guidance and control of the 
 other senses — this sense being the common perceptive to 
 which the other perceptives with their sensitives ulti- 
 mately refer themselves — it is most evident that we can- 
 not overestimate the importance of a true, a thorough, 
 and a reverential education and instruction of the sense 
 of Touch. 
 
 With infants and young children the sense of touch, 
 by means of its sensations and their delights, is a means 
 of implanting those remains of good that shall serve for 
 the formation of the love of circumspection and protec- 
 tion of self, that there may be conjunctions, thus for the 
 sake of the love of uniting good and truth. This im- 
 plantation is effected by the sphere of innocence inflow- 
 ing from the Lord, also by means of the angels who are 
 in that sphere; by the sphere of conjugial love or of its 
 semblance, and of parental love or of its semblance, 
 which is a sphere of protection and support of those 
 who cannot protect and support themselves (C. L. 
 391), by the sphere particularly of maternal love 
 and by derivation from this of paternal love (0. L, 
 391—397). The interior spheres are in and operate their 
 ends by means of the last named, and these again by 
 their own corresponding ultimates. The soft and tender 
 touch of the mother's hand, supported and completed by 
 contact with the firm and strong hand of the father, 
 
80 CON VERSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 produces sensations of delight, forming iu the uncon- 
 scious mind of the infant a plane for the influx of the 
 Divine and heavenly love of uniting good and truth 
 in human lives. And by this influx, and the uncon- 
 scious reception of it so provided for, the Lord hides 
 away for Himself and for Heaven and the Church a 
 place within man, in which lies stored up the Divine 
 promise of the gift of eternal life. 
 
 What is true of the parental touch and its effects, is 
 respectively true of all other modes and forms of con- 
 tact. They produce sensations which constitute planes 
 receptive of influx corresponding in its operation to the 
 natures of these sensations. And these sensations affect 
 the soul, and thence again every other sense of the body, 
 and every other affection of the soul of which there is a 
 sense in the body. For we need to remember that 
 *' nothing can pass by or come in contact with the sensi- 
 tive fibres of the body without their perception, and 
 thence without coming to the knowledge of the soul." 
 {S. D. 1758.) 
 
 As by the touch are received impressions for the 
 storing up of remains of good and innocent affections, 
 so also by the touch are given impressions for thestoiing 
 up of remains of fear and aversion toward the evil and 
 the false, and from these are derived to the other senses 
 and their affections those inmost qualities which, enter- 
 ing into their primitive development as first principles, 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 81 
 
 will give to them a form more or less prepared to act in 
 harmony with the common sensitive or perceptive. In 
 general, the quality of the sense of taste, of smell, of 
 hearing, and of sight Avill be determined by the quality 
 of the sense of touch according as this sense by heredi- 
 tary form and by education has been made a gate of 
 entrance for the reception and implantation of things 
 good and true from the Lord to serve as remains to be 
 vivified and grow into charity and faith, into trust iu 
 the Divine protection and support, into confidence in 
 the Divine Providence, into the loving obedience, 
 spiritual intelligence, and interior wisdom of eternal life. 
 All these are communicated by the touch of the Divine 
 Hand, and for the reception of this touch has the Lord 
 given to man even in his ultimate human form the sensi- 
 tive of touch to be the universal sensitive by which the 
 natural world, entering into him, may be made the plane 
 for the full and perfect formation of the kingdom of 
 the heavens in him. 
 
 You will see, on reflection, that these general observa- 
 tions on the subject of the nature and use of the sense 
 of touch open to the view an interminable array and 
 endless variety of applications of the principle involved, 
 which are for the parent and for the teacher to consider, 
 to adopt, and to adapt, according to insight and sight, 
 according to capacity, ability, and liberty of action. 
 
 In respect to the instruction of the senses, it is to be 
 6 
 
82 CONVERSATIONS ON ED UCATION. 
 
 remarked, that the senses are trained and gradually de- 
 veloped by a regulated exercise of their activities in the 
 uses for which they were created and to which they are 
 formed. This is naturally effected by means of the 
 objects or the various material things of the world, 
 which, when presented to the senses, or, in other words, 
 when brought into such contact with them as is accorded 
 by their formation, enter into them and produce a 
 change in the form of their component substances. As 
 this change is transmitted to the common sensory, the 
 mind is affected by correspondence, and thus becomes 
 cognizant first of a substance and its form, and by slow 
 degrees from this primary formative, and by other and 
 many subsequent mutationsof the substances of the organ, 
 induced in a manner similar to the first, it is affected by 
 more and more particulars contained within the first 
 sensation and excited by the object presented. 
 
 A sensation has for its internal an affection with its 
 delight, or the opposite, and for its external that change 
 of substance from contact of which I have spoken. 
 Now, whatever affects man and gives him a delight or 
 its opposite, is impressed on this memory, and this im- 
 pression has its ultimate, as we have seen, in the very 
 substances of the natural mind ; thus, in the very sub- 
 stances of that organ of the natural mind which is 
 affected by the introduction of an object from the world 
 without. This newly formed memory now enters into 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 83 
 
 every succeeding activity of that organ, and, being itself 
 a plane of influx from the spiritual world, it adds this 
 new and less general influx to the former, and thus 
 expands and heighteus the mutability of the substances 
 of the organ, or increases its sensitive capacity, in other 
 words, its receptibility, and this ever-increasing recepti- 
 bility of life from the Lord is the one end of the in- 
 struction and education of every human faculty of mind 
 and body. And, since sensation is produced by a 
 change in the form of the substances of an organ, we 
 are brought back to our former position, that the uni- 
 versal or inmost cause of every organic change will be 
 found to lie in touch, by which alone, whether the con- 
 tact be from within or from without, such a change of 
 substantial form can be effected. 
 
 If, now, we return again to our primal illustration, 
 taken from the conjoint action of the parents of an 
 infant in placing, first, the maternal and then the paternal 
 hand on the body of the infant, under the influence of the 
 parental love derived from conjugial love, inflowing from 
 the Lord through the internal conjunction of good and 
 truth in their minds, we may see how much is involved 
 in the first change of substantial form brought about in 
 the person of the offspring by parental contact. Notice 
 in this that the first sensation produced is a sensation of 
 substance. For it is the substance of the hand that by 
 contact causes a change of the substances of the skin of 
 
84 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION 
 
 the child, which is the ultimate of the seuse of touch. 
 Thus, the first impression ou the sense and on the 
 memory, which is carried to the soul and made the 
 property of the human being, is that of substance — of 
 what is and exists of itself. On this impression, as a 
 plane receptive of influx, is formed the first perception, 
 thought, and thence idea or image of what is real and 
 actual; thence of the infinite and eternal, and of the 
 Lord Himself as the only Real and Actual. Again, as 
 the combined parental touch is the first, and therefore the 
 basis of all the subsequent sensations of touch, taste, smell, 
 hearing, and sight, and as this touch proceeds from the 
 Lord's love in the parent, which is the infinite love of 
 creating, preserving, and saving those whom He can 
 gift with all His own and make happy from Himself, 
 which is also the infinite love of giving all good and doing 
 all good, we may well believe that the first substantial 
 token of Himself given by the Lord to His creature, 
 man, is the sensation, and thus the sense, of His Infinite 
 Love, which is Life itself, and that the first impression 
 made ou the substances of the natural mind, and thus 
 fixed in the memory, to be the foundation for all other 
 sensitive perceptions, thoughts, and ideas, is that love is 
 substance, and Infinite Love is Substance Itself. Is not 
 this, then, the beginning of that knowledge by which 
 man " shall ascend up to meet the Lord at His Com- 
 ing" ? As "there is an influx into the souls of all men 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. ^b 
 
 from creation that there is a God, and that He is One" 
 ( T. C. R. 8), so does this influx find a plane in which it 
 can be received and stored up as an inmost saving rem- 
 nant in the first sensation from a hunjan touch that pro- 
 duces a change in the sub^stances of an infant body. 
 
 And again, wi'h this first imprei^sion from a human 
 touch, upon wliich we have been dwelling and which 
 introduces the rudimental form of the truth that love is 
 substance, there is made on the sensory the complemen- 
 tary impression of the form of that substance, which is 
 love. The human touch communicates the sensation of 
 the human form, and in this sensation is hidden away, 
 if you please, but most surely present, the sense of the 
 conjugial form — of the angelic form, of the heavenly 
 form, of the Divine Human Form of the Lord, 
 
 Let it not be thought that these general statements 
 concerning a subject that is inexhaustible are but the 
 play of imagination or the inventions of fancy. They 
 are simple presentations of most real truths, lying only 
 a little within the bar and the veil of sense, and vii^ible 
 to any eye which sees in the light of this great and uni- 
 versal truth, that nothing exists or can exist uncon- 
 nected with something prior to itself, and this uncon- 
 nected with a first, from which it proceeds. The 
 thought which I have sought to bring before you in its 
 larger scope may be illustrated to you on any day by 
 the little ones at play. Give them a lump of plastic 
 
86 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 clay, roll it into a smootli surface before them, and let 
 them press upon this surface their tender hands. That 
 impress on the clay, if you have at all learned how to 
 read things in the signs of things, will lead your thought 
 all the way up and through human life, natural and 
 spiritual ; through all its activities and possibilities in 
 the earths and in the Heavens, until you reach the 
 highest analysis of it in the infinities of the life of God- 
 Man, in the touch of whose Hand is the Omnipotence of 
 Eternal Wisdom from Infinite Love. And will you 
 read less than this in the impress of the parent's hand 
 on the soft and yielding substances of the tender infant 
 form ? You may not see the impress with your bodily 
 eye, but you will know that it has been there and that 
 a thousand little sensitive nerves have borne it instan- 
 taneously to the common sensory and laid it deep down, 
 imbedded in the soft but enduring substances of the 
 natural mind, to be a memory forever and the possible 
 foundation of a human Temple and habitation of the 
 infinite Lord. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on the Sense of Touch, 
 and on the reasons, drawn from the Teachings of the 
 Church, for a most careful education and instruction of 
 this sense, because it is the common or general sense to 
 which all the other senses refer themselves, and because 
 it is by the presence of this sense inmostly in all the 
 other senses that they are made capable of being media 
 
/SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 87 
 
 of communication between the world without and the 
 world within man. What, therefore, is true of this 
 common sense is true of all the others, which are related 
 to it as parts are related to a whole. 
 
 Before proceeding to some particulars in the subject 
 of the instruction of the senses, I wish to introduce here 
 a DivMue teaching from the Writings which may give us 
 more light to see and more strength to grasp the true 
 things involved in the matter of our present study. And 
 after this I may be permitted to attempt to meet a ques- 
 tion which I have fancied, or perhaps felt from the sphereof 
 your thought, was arising and taking shape in the minds 
 of some of the practical ones of the class. First, then, 
 we are taught as follows : 
 
 Man, from his infancy even to boyhood, is merely sensual, for 
 in that period he only receives terrestrial, corporeal, and mun- 
 dane things by the sensuals of the body ; from these, also, are 
 his ideas and thoughts at that time; communication with the in- 
 terior man has not yet been opened, only so far that he can seize 
 and retain those things; the innocence which he then has is 
 only external, but not internal, for true innocence dwells in wis- 
 dom. By the former, namely by external innocence, the Lord 
 reduces into order those things which enter by sensuals. With- 
 out (he influx of innocence from the LoRD in that first age not any- 
 thing fundamental would exist upon which the intellectual or 
 rational, which is proper to man, could be built up. — A. C. 
 5126. 
 
 The senses serve as means to open the organical vessels of the 
 
88 C ONVEnSA TIONS OK ED UCA TIOK 
 
 external man, and these, as they are opened, receive the influent light 
 of the internal. — A. C. 1563. 
 
 From the internal, i. e., I)y the internal from the Lord, comes 
 all perception — it is from no other source — not even sensation. 
 It appears that sensation, and also apperception, come from in- 
 flux from the external ; but this is a fallacy, for it is the internal 
 which feels hy the external ; the senses placed in the body are 
 nothing but organs or instruments servino^ the internal man, that 
 he may feel the things which are in the world ; wherefore the 
 internal inflows into the external that it may have sensation in 
 order that thence it may apperceive and be perfected, and not 
 vice versa. — A. (7. 5779. 
 
 And now for the question. It has appeared to me that 
 this query has taken form in the minds of some who are 
 deeply interested in the practical work of teaching : 
 *' Why are the things which have been advanced pressed 
 upon our attention when we have no opportunity of ap- 
 plying them in the discharge of our special functions? 
 Infants and little children are not placed in the care of 
 Teachers, but, as a rule, remain in the parental home 
 during the period when the first education, of which you 
 have spoken, ought to be going forward." In reply I 
 would say that, aside from the important point that 
 Parents — all Parents, mothers and fathers — are or ought 
 to be the first Teachers of their children, and that learn- 
 ing how to perform their duty as Teachers ought to be a 
 serious part of the preparation of all young persons for 
 the Married State ; — aside from this, I say, the objection 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 89 
 
 implied in the question will not avail to take the know- 
 ing and doing of the things before presented out of the 
 sphere of the Teacher's Avork. Theoretically, it is true 
 that all, or nearly all, of the first sensual education and 
 training of children is done at home; hut, practically, 
 little of it is done consciously, systematically, and with 
 due regard to the instruction that is to follow. What 
 work is done in this way is imperfect, and all experience 
 shows that the Teacher who would, in such cases, do 
 thorough and systematic work with the children placed 
 under his charge, must begin by largely supplementing, 
 amending, and ordering the sensual things of the little 
 minds before him. And, even under circumstances of 
 well-done home work, the conscientious Teacher will 
 carefully examine and review what has been done, and 
 what the actual result has been, with the view of know- 
 ing the foundations upon which to rest his own work, 
 and for the purpose of renewing, reviving, and deepen- 
 ing the early-made impressions, and of extending and 
 strengthening the store of remains laid by as seeds for 
 future growth and cultivation. 
 
 But to proceed. We are taught that 
 
 In all and single things which exist, not only in the spiritual 
 world, but also in the natural, the Common or General precedes, 
 and into it are afterward inserted things less commf)n, and finally 
 particulars. Without such an insertion and fitting in nothing 
 can possibly inhere, for whatever is not in some common or gen- 
 
90 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 eral and whatever does not depend from some common or gen- 
 eral is dissipated. — A. C. 5208. 
 
 With the man who is reforming, common or general truths are 
 first insinuated, then the particulars of common or general truths, 
 and lastly the singulars of particulars. Particulars are arranged 
 under generals and singulars under particulars. — A. C. 5339. 
 
 To these teachings we add the followiDg : 
 
 So long as common things are not known, the single things 
 of the same subject cannot fall into any light, but into mere 
 shade. Common ideas precede ; unless they do, the singulars 
 have no lodging into which to enter. In a lodging in which is 
 mere shade they do not appear, and in a lodging in which there 
 are falsities they are either rejected or suffocated or perverted, 
 and in one in which there are evils they are derided. — A. C. 
 4269. 
 
 If common or general things have not been previously re- 
 ceived, particulars cannot be admitted — yea, they cause tedium, 
 for no affection of particulars exists unless the common or gen- 
 eral things have previously entered with affection. — A. 0.5454. 
 
 The order of teaching and learning in the Word is from the 
 most common or general ; wherefore the sense of the letter 
 abounds in such most common things. — A. C. 245. 
 
 Regarded iii another way or in another series, the 
 most common or general is the Most Ultimate or the 
 very last, in which all prior things are together. ( T. C. 
 R. 210.) " The ultimate is the complex and containant 
 of all prior things." (D. L. and W. 215.) And this ulti- 
 mate is " the gate of heaven ;" for it is the earth or the 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 91 
 
 lowest natural on which is set the ladder, the head of 
 which reaches to heaven, on which the angels of God 
 ascend and descend, and standing above it is the Lord. 
 (^Gen. xxviii, 12-15.) All order closes or terminates in 
 the ultimate — i. e., in nature — and this closes or termi- 
 nates in its last or most ultimate plane, the Mineral 
 Kingdom. Out of this ultimate there is apparently an 
 entrance and a lifting up to interior things, because it is 
 the natural mind of man by wlii^ h the things of heaven 
 — that is, of the Lord — inflow and desceud into nature, 
 and by the same mind the things which are of nature 
 ascend. (J.. C. 3702.) The natural mind, however, is 
 only apparently an entrance to interior things. 
 
 It appears to man tliat the objects of tlie world enter by liis 
 bodily or external senses and affect his interiors, and tlins that 
 the entrance is from the ultimate of order to those that are 
 within. But that this is an appearance and a fallacy is evident 
 from the general law that posterior things cannot inflow into 
 prior things, or, what is the same, inferior into superior things; 
 or, what is the same, exterior into interior; or, what is still the 
 same, the things which are of the world and nature into those 
 which are of heaven and the spirit; for those are crasser— these 
 are purer ; and those crasser things which are of the External 
 or Natural Man exist and suhsist from these, which are of the 
 Fnternal or Rational Man. The former cannot affect the purer 
 things, but are affected by the purer.— ^. C. 3721. 
 
 From these teachings it is evident that when an ulti- 
 
92 CONVERSA TIONS ON JED UCA TION. 
 
 mate or common thing enters into the natural mind this 
 does not affect the interior by flowing into it, but by 
 offering a plane for the inflowing oj the interior into that 
 exterior or ultimate thing. Aud hence do we learn the 
 use of tliis apparent gate of entrance to heaven to be the 
 formation of successive planes in the natural mind, into 
 which heaven may descend and there build up for itself 
 a sure and everlasting foundation. Hence is it of order 
 that the most common or general things of the Word — 
 its letter and literal sense — should fir^t enter the natural 
 mind for the laying of a foundation of spiritual and Di- 
 viue things, and that the most common or general or 
 ultimate things of the natural world should first enter 
 the natural mind, or the sensual plane of the natural 
 mind, to the end that there may be an earth provided 
 and prepared ou which to lay the foundation-stones of 
 the Word, or (.f the knowledges of spiritual and Divine 
 truth, which are the angels ascending the ladder to 
 the Lord standing above and descending thence again 
 to the man lying on "the holy ground, which is none 
 other than the house of God." 
 
 We have spoken of the sense of Touch as the common 
 and most ultimate perceptive of the sensual part of the 
 natural mind. We can now see how by creation it has 
 been provided and adapted to be the threshold, as it 
 were, of the "gate of heaven." By the ultimate or 
 common sense of Touch the ultimate or most common 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS, 93 
 
 thing of the world of nature, the Mineral Kingdom, enters 
 into the natural mind and forms the foundation-plane 
 for the influx of interior things out of heaven from the 
 Lord ahove heaven. And, as we have also seen, all 
 the other senses refer themselves to this common sense 
 and are this sense in their inmost forms; so also do all 
 the things of the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms of the 
 earth, which enter by the senses into the natural mind, 
 refer themselves to this common or ultimate kingdom 
 and are this kingdom in their very inmost forms ; for to 
 this kingdom, in the fullest and highest analysis, belong 
 the natural fire and light, the atmospheres, the waters, 
 as well as the rocks or earths, which hold all things 
 together and terminate and fix them in one solid globe. 
 And so we can see why it is that we are taught concern- 
 ing man, in application to our subject, that 
 
 As to his bofly, heu:is created a little world, f(ir all the hidden 
 things of the natural world are reposited in him; for whatever 
 hidden thing there is in the ether and its modifications, this is 
 repf'sitedin his eye; and wliatever isin thenir,this is in his ear; 
 and whatever invisible tiling floats and acts in the air, this is in 
 the organ of smell where it is perceived; and whatever invisi- 
 ble thing is in the waters and other fluids, is in the organ of 
 taste; even tlie chimges of state themselves are in the sense of 
 touch everywhere; besides that, things still more hidden wou^d 
 be perceived in his more interior organs, if his life were accord- 
 ing to order. Thence it is evident that the descent of the 
 Divine would be by man into the ultimate of nature, and from 
 
94 CON VERS A TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 the ultimate of nature the ascent to the Divine, if only the LoED 
 were acknowledged in the faith of his heart — that is, in love, as 
 his Last and First End.— .4. C. 3702. 
 
 The life of man, according to order, is the one great, 
 ultimate end of all the giving and doing of the Lord. 
 This is the end of His giving the Word, or coming to 
 men in the form of the Word ; this is the end of His ful- 
 filling the Word, or Himself, in the human on earth; 
 this is the end of His coming again in the clouds of 
 heaven, with power and great glory, and this is the end 
 of all education and instruction. The Divine Doing is 
 One, and the Interpretation is One. 
 
 To repeat, the human senses receive their instruction 
 by meaus of the objects which are material things of the 
 natural world. By these objects are produced sensations; 
 by sensations the mind is affected, and the man, who is 
 the mind, becomes cognizant of a thing or of things. 
 A thing, thus introduced into the mind, constitutes by 
 impression on the substances of the outermost of the na- 
 tural mind, in which all influx from the spiritual world 
 terminates, a plane or condition of reception. In point 
 of fact, as we have seen, the first plane so produced is 
 from a most general and obscure sensation and impres- 
 sion of substance and form, introduced by the common 
 sense of Touch. And being the first and also the most 
 ultimate plane in which influx terminates (A. C. 5651), 
 it is a general or common ground on which all succeeding 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 95 
 
 instruction is to rest, for by meaus of it there have been 
 posited in the lowest sensual forms of the human mind 
 the ultimate correspondent images of the Divine Love 
 and Wisdom of the Lord, into which can inflow and be 
 deposited from Him the ideas that there is a God, that 
 He is One, that He is Man, and that He is the Creator 
 of the universe and the all in all of life and existence, 
 etc., etc., etc. Given the first sensation and most ob- 
 scure perception of substance and form, and the plane 
 receptive of influx from the Divine produced in the 
 outermost forms of the natural mind, it is evident that 
 succeeding sensations proceeding from the same cause 
 will impress on the sensory and introduce into the first 
 receptive plane the rudimentary forms of a perception 
 of extension and duration, or of space and time, as the 
 two universal conditions of nature, and thence proper to 
 every natural substance and form. By this addition to 
 the first plane there is given to it an ultimate form, recep- 
 tive of influx, depositing the seeds of ideas concerning the 
 infinity and eternity of the Lord, of His Love and 
 Wisdom, and of all good and truth from Him ; for the 
 extension of space corresponds to the Infinity of the 
 Divine Love or Good, and the duration of Time corres- 
 ponds to the Eternity of the Divine Wisdom or Truth; 
 and Substance itself is the Divine Love, and Form itself 
 is the Divine Wisdom. 
 
 As the rudimentary forms of the ideas of extension 
 
96 CO:^' VLRSA TIOSS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 and duration or of space and time are derivtdfrom a 
 collocation of many sensatious and impres^ioDS of sub- 
 stance and form, introduced by means of Touch, so will 
 the contact of a substance taken from the ultimate Min- 
 eral Kingdom produce a series of sensations, forming a 
 series of planes receptive of influx for the storing up of 
 remains, all deriving their quality from the first sensa- 
 tion and impression of the Divine Love of God-Man. 
 
 Let, for example, a stone be placed in the hand of an 
 infant, there will follow on the first sensation produced 
 by the contact with the mineral substance a feeling of 
 pressure succeeded by a sensation of weight, causing the 
 hand to drop down to some place of rest, and the fingers 
 to close upon the object held in the hand, and thus 
 will the sensation be communicated to the whole 
 palm. In the pressure there is the fact of an acting 
 force and of a re-acting force; in the weight there are 
 the same forces, acting and re-acling with the solidity, 
 density, quality, quantity of the mineral substance, 
 added to the superincumbence of the atmosphere and 
 the attraction to a common centre, involved in what is 
 commonly denominated gravitation ; in the dropping 
 of the hand or yielding to the pressure, there is intro- 
 duced a new element into the series, or, if you please^ a 
 new series, which is continued in the contraction of the 
 fingers and the closing of the whole hand on the object. 
 Pressure and weight produce a muscular expansi< n 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 97 
 
 when they are uot or cannot be resisted, which is ar- 
 rested only when the hand is freed from them by the 
 removal of their cause, or when it finds a support iu 
 some substance capable of resisting them. When re- 
 sisted, on the other hand, pressure and weight in the 
 l)alra produce a muscuhir contraction, iu consequence of 
 which the palm of the liand and the fingers are brought 
 into contact with the substance which causes the sensa- 
 tions of pressure and weight, and by this contact there 
 is produced iu the common sensory a perception of the 
 dimensions of that substance. The little hand ot the 
 infant measures the stone lying in its feeble, unconscious 
 grasp. 
 
 Now let us take account of this simple experiment. 
 We have, first, the sensations, and thence the impressions 
 on the sensory, of pressure and of weight, or of forces 
 acting by the superincumbent atmospheres and by the 
 attraction of gravitation. To these come, secondly, the 
 sensations, with the actions of mu cular expansion and 
 contraction, or the sensations of action and reaction ; and 
 following upon these are, thirdly, the sensations of 
 dimension, or of the actual measurement of a body oc- 
 cupying a certain space in nature. All these sensations 
 lie in the immediate sphere of the sense of touch, and 
 as they pass from the sensitive and its sensation into the 
 substances of the sense itself, which are natural sub- 
 stances of the natural mind, they produce therein their 
 
98 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 own plane receptive of ioflux from the spiritual world, 
 corresponding to the forms and qualities of the things 
 impressed. Thus there are inscribed on the memory, 
 the beginnings of the ideas of force acting and re-acting, 
 of weight, and of dimension, or of measure, all connected 
 with the fundamental idea of substance and of form. 
 According to the terms of our example, the record is 
 " the testimony of the rocks," communicated to and 
 imprinted on the yielding substances of the natural mind 
 through the sense of touch, and there storing up for 
 future use first and ultimate forms of the highest good 
 and truth. For, the substance held in the hand of the 
 child is love and its good ; the pressure is force acting 
 mediately, or the operation of love by truth, which is 
 the form of love; weight is a state as to good; in other 
 words, weight means the quality and degree of the re- 
 ception of good, manifested by the re-action upon its 
 pressure or influx, and this implies a change in the forms 
 of the spiritual substances of the mind of the recipient, 
 corresponding to the change of form in the substances 
 of the hand, produced by impact with the stone and by 
 the gravity of its substance. And if we now add to 
 Aveight or gravity, measure or extension, we may see 
 that we have in our illustration the very foundation 
 forms and ideas of every state of good and truth in man 
 and angel produced by influx of the Divine Love and 
 its activity in man, affecting his reactive or receptive 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 99 
 
 forces and their ulti mates. {A. C. 5658.) Measure is state 
 {A. C. 7984), aud measure or dimeusion has its three- 
 fold form of leugth, which is holiness, breadth, which is 
 truth, and length, which is good. {A. C. 650, 9487, 
 10179,3433,3434.) 
 
 Breadth signifies the truth of the Churcli, because in the 
 Spiritual World, or in Heaven, the Lord is the centre of all, for 
 He is the Sun there ; they wlio are in the state of good, are more 
 interior according to tlie quaUtj and quantity of the good in 
 which they are; tlience height is predicated of good ; they who 
 arc in a like degree of good, are also in a like degree of truth, 
 and thus, as it were, in a similar distance, or, as it is said, in the 
 same periphery, thence breadth is predicated of truths; where- 
 fore nothing else is understood by breadth by the Angels who are 
 with man when he reads the Word : as in the Historical of the 
 Word, where the Ark is treated of, the Altar, the Temple, the 
 spaces without the cities ; also by dimensions there as to lengths, 
 breadths, and heights, are perceived states of good and truth. 
 . . . Things interior in the spiritual world are described by 
 things superior, and things exterior by things inferior (n. 
 2148); for man no otherwise understands interior and exterior 
 things when he is in the world, because he is in space and time, 
 and the tilings which are of space and time enter into the ideas 
 of his thought and imbue the greater part of them. Thence 
 also it is evident that the things relating to measures, which are 
 limitations of space, like heights, lengths, and breadths, in tiie 
 spiritual sense are those things which determine the states of 
 the affectio.iS of good and of the affections of truth.— ^. (7.4482. 
 
 By the same or by varied means of producing the 
 
 01 U. 
 
100 CO^ VERSATIONS ON ED UCA 2 ION. 
 
 sensation of touch, there may be iiuplauttd, indeed, 
 there are implanted, in the sensual memory the ultimate 
 and fundamental forms of less general affections and 
 ideas — as heat and cold, softness and hardness, of what 
 is smooth and what is rough, solid and liquid, round aud 
 angular, etc., etc. — in which will be embraced all suc- 
 ceeding aff^ectious and ideas. Aud before closing this 
 portion of my suggestions, I would remark that even as it 
 is well for the infant and the young child, and in the 
 order of things, to derive its first impressious in the com- 
 paratively limited sphere of the home life and family 
 affectiou, so does it appear to be right aud orderly not to 
 multiply greatly the number of the objects, and the vari- 
 ety of the objects, presented to the forming senses at any 
 given time. Many objects, especially many different ob- 
 jects, will have the effect of producing distraction and of 
 preventing the early formation of the habit of concen- 
 tration. Toys and playthings, whilst they please and de- 
 light and thus amuse the child, should be of a kind 
 as to material and of a shape or make to impress most 
 ultimate and general ideas, and they should be kept 
 within reach of the child so long: as it manifests any 
 pleasure and delight in touching aud playing with them, 
 and even after that they should occasionally be pro- 
 duced as a means of conserving the connection of the 
 successive formative impressions with the first and most 
 general impression. The preservation of this connec- 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 101 
 
 tiou is necessary for the perfect growth of the mind, for 
 iu it is involved a conscious and rational connection of 
 thought and affection with the Divine Truth and the 
 Divine Good of the Lord established in the reforming 
 jind reireneratine; mind, cm the basis of the remains im- 
 planted in infancy and childhood. No ladder can stand 
 with its top in Heaven, if at any intervening point it be 
 separated from the supporting foot that rests on the solid 
 earth. No tree can live if its stem be cut off from tiie 
 roots or if the roots be torn out of the ground. (Cf. 
 A. a 5126, quoted on p. 125.) 
 
 I have spoken of the primary forms of ideas intro- 
 duced into the outermost plane of the infant mind by 
 means of impressicms made through the sense of touch, 
 which is the common sense, and we have seen that these 
 primary forms are indeed fjrms of the highest ideas 
 which the human mind is capable of entertaining. In 
 them are latent the very ends of life, from which pro- 
 ceed all the endeavors or forces, and all the beginnings 
 producing the active powers of existence. 
 
 The ideas bearing in their bosom these momentous 
 things of life — Divine, spiritual, and natural — have en- 
 tered silently and been stored away unconsciously in the 
 crude and unformed receptacles of the little man-animal. 
 The Lord provides them for the future man and angel 
 from Himself by angels and by men operating together 
 upon substances spiritual and natural, so constituted by 
 
102 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 creation and so delicately adjusted to heavenly influences 
 and earthly impressions, that every tremor of love pene- 
 trates to their heart, and every breath of wisdom writes 
 upon them its own indelible record. 
 
 And here two things may be noted. The first is, that 
 because the Lord's giving of life and of all the things 
 of life is infinite, but very little of it can possibly come 
 to the consciousness of the wisest of men, or even of 
 angels, or be taken in and appropriated by any conscious 
 act of reception. Man is in the highest sense an ab- 
 sorbent, as is manifest from the well-known facts of his 
 bodily existence, which in every detail corresponds to 
 his spiritual existence. This is especially true of infants 
 and children, and for obvious reasons. Their absorbing 
 capacity is relatively unlimited, because of non-resistance 
 to internal and external influences — a non-resistance 
 owing to the abseuce of any will and understanding of 
 their own, and also to the yielding softness of the as yet 
 unformed and unhardened bodily frame. When dealing 
 with the training and development of the senses, this 
 quality of absorption — a quality which man has in com- 
 mon with all created forms, but which is a marked 
 characteristic of the senses — demands a very thoughtful 
 consideration. 
 
 We have in common use a cautionary saying when 
 children are in the presence of their parents, and subjects 
 are discussed which it is not desirable for them to hear; 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 103 
 
 we say: *' Be careful; little pitchers have ears." But 
 these same little vessels, eveu the least of them, have 
 eyes as well as ears, aud uostrils, and a tongue, and touch, 
 and for all of these is it needful to have the greatest 
 care, lest " one of them should be ofF.nded " by what is 
 hurtful to their tender innocence. As the natural at- 
 niosj)here enters through the pores of the skin into the 
 whole body of man and invigorates or weakens the sys- 
 tem, according to its state and quality, so does the spiritual 
 atmosphere, or the sphere surrounding him, enter through 
 his spiritual pores into his interior life, and affect it accord- 
 ing to the state and quality of that sphere. And if we 
 reflect that every natural object of which the senses take 
 cognizance, has a natural sphere and at the same time a 
 spiritual sphere from the plane of influx which it forms 
 in the mind when introduced by the senses as gates of 
 entrance, we may see that these natural objects are not 
 trifles, but matters of grave concern. Utmost care is to 
 be taken that they be good and true in substance and 
 form, of use and beauty, gathered, first from nature, as 
 the work of the Divine Hand, and then fj-ora the best 
 aud truest art of man. And in the choice of these 
 objects all possible care is to be taken that there be a 
 gradual and orderly formation of images or beginnings 
 of ideas resting on and in continuity with the first 
 image impressed on the memory. We are now dealing 
 with the remains to be stored up in the infant man, who 
 
104 CONVERSA TIONS ON ED UCATION. 
 
 is as yet a man-animal. The first of these we have sup- 
 postd to be derived through the sensitive of touch from 
 the human parent — thus from the highest natural form 
 in the order of creation. And this is according to the 
 order in which saving remains are stored up by the 
 Lord in every man m his earliest infancy. The first 
 and inmost remains are from Himself in the innocence 
 in which man is bom; the next from the angels, whose 
 sphere is active on the forming child before and after 
 birth ; and thereafter from the human parents. This 
 beginning indicates the order that is to be followed in 
 the implantation of remains — so far as this work comes 
 under our conscious direction — from the first infancy up 
 to the period — say the fifth year, or about the fifth 
 year {A. C. 10225) — when instruction commences. In 
 this order we have, first, the parents and family, other 
 infants and children, youths, adults, men and women, 
 as objective means for the implantation of remains, 
 the seeds of ideas and of lives. Succeeding these are 
 all good, useful, and gentle animals of the Animal 
 Kingdom and their products, carefully chosen and pre- 
 pared by men, followed by good, useful, beautiful, 
 and delicate objects belonging to the Vegetable King- 
 dom, and, finally, by like objects taken from the low- 
 est or Mineral Kingdom. This order, maintained in 
 what may be called the corporeal, absorbing period of 
 human existence, brings us by a true gradation to the 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 10-^ 
 
 right startiiig-p(nnt for tlie uext period — the corporeal- 
 sonsual poriotl — iu wliich instruction takes its com- 
 mencement by means of ultimates, which are things 
 most general. The two years of the fiist term of in- 
 structiou — that is, from the fifth to the seventh year, 
 continuing wliat has been begun in the preceding period 
 — belong to the infant-school proper or to the "Chil- 
 dren's Garden," Avhen teachers may rightfully come in 
 to take up the work of the parents and by degrees 
 assume its entire direction. 
 
 The second thing to be noted is, that although the 
 sense of touch is the first to be brought into exercise, 
 this is not effected without a simultaneous excitation of 
 that which the other senses have in common with, or 
 from, this universal sense. They are all aflfected by 
 contact, and all are made partakers of that which enters 
 by means of each. What so enters is instantaneously 
 carried to the soul, and thence goes forth again in an 
 activity producing in all the other senses an endeavor to 
 sensate, or, in other words, causing a beginning of the 
 exercise of their living forces. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that Taste, Smell, Hearing, 
 and Seeing are but modified forms of Touch and its 
 sensitive, and that back of them all lie their loves, their 
 own loves or lives, from which they are and for which 
 they exist ; and that these loves have in the sense of 
 touch a common principle, the principle of self-protec- 
 
106 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION, 
 
 tioD, and of conjoiuing good and truth. This principle 
 communicates to all its companion-loves such word of 
 its impressions from impact as they can receive, to the 
 end that they may share in its delight, or, if needful, that 
 they may be guarded against injury. And what is true 
 of the one sense, with its love, is true of all the rest. 
 The delight, fur example, felt in consequence of the 
 materual touch inevitably excites the activities of the 
 eye, the ear, the smell, aud the taste. They come under 
 the force of endeavors, which cause them to reach forth 
 to the mother, and to take in or absorb from her sphere 
 the thiugs that severally delight and nourish their ex- 
 istence. And this is of the Lord's infinitely good and 
 wise Providence, and illustrates the wonderful leading 
 and working of that Providence in the unconscious states 
 of infancy, and, if we will believe it, by correspondence, 
 in the unconscious states of the reforming and regenera- 
 ting adult. 
 
 The infant's food is received by contact with the 
 mother, and has been so prepared in the marvelous 
 laboratory of her system as to be the very delicacy of 
 delicacies to the sense of taste, and to fill its sensitive 
 with a delight that is both intensified and elevated by 
 conjunction with the perception of the sphere proceeding 
 from the mother's person, and taken in by the sense of 
 smell, made sympathetically active. These distinct yet 
 harmonious delights are still further intensified and ele- 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 107 
 
 vatf d by the sound of the mother's voice ia the harmo- 
 nies of song or lullaby, or in the caressing tones of ten- 
 der love falling gently on the ear, and by the sight of 
 the mother's gracious and loving face as it bends over the 
 little one enfolded in her arms, and lays the foundation 
 of every future idea of symmetry and beauty. And are 
 not all these distinct impressions, produced through the 
 open gates of the senses, brought into one general im- 
 pression in the common sensory, and harmonized into a 
 primal idea of the human form, presenting to the atten- 
 dant angels the image of the Divine Man, who is Inno- 
 cence Itself, in the unconscious innocence of a little 
 child? 
 
 Enough has been said to show that the sense of Touch 
 is of prominent importance in the work of storing up 
 remains during the period of infancy, and that it is a 
 no less important factor in the subsequent work of im- 
 parting knowledge to the mind of the young. This 
 sense, as we have seen, is the common gate of entrance 
 to the mind, and by it there is excited the endeavor, or 
 the living force, which serves to open the other gates 
 or senses. 
 
 Assuming, then, that the gates to the mind have been 
 laid open, that through them have successively entered, 
 during the period of infancy, the requisite formatives of 
 the understanding, by which it is gradually built up 
 into a suitable habitation for the will, we may ask. What 
 
1 08 CON VERS A TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 ^^ill the instructor expect to iiud when the child, at 
 about the age of five years, is placed in his charge for 
 the purpose of beginning a regular course of instructi( n? 
 I ought rather to have said, What will the instructress 
 expect to find, because at the age named a child should 
 come under the influence and training of a cultivated 
 female mind, and at a later period under the care and 
 instruction of the male mind. This observation has 
 reference, of course, to boys. Our Doctriues do not 
 leave us in doubt in respect to the proper tutors of 
 young girls. In the ciise assumed, the instructress may 
 expect to find, first forms of ideas concerning the Lord , 
 that He is the Divine Man, the Creator of all things, the 
 Giver of all things good and true; that He is Love and 
 Wisdom ; that He teaches men in His Word, and com- 
 mands them what to leave undone and what to do ; 
 that men ought to obey Him, and ought to pray to Him 
 to help them to obey Him : that there is a Heaven and 
 a Hell ; that there are spirits and angels, who are men, 
 and that we live with spirits and angels, as well as with 
 mm, etc. Added to these first forms of ideas in respect 
 to the Lord and life from Him, the instructress may 
 look for the beginnings of ideas concerning man, human 
 society, and human relations, connected with soft and 
 tender affections, moving on an interior axis of inno- 
 cence and simple trust and confidence, and coming forth 
 in good will and kindness, with delight in the association 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 109 
 
 with friends and companions. And beyond these she 
 will discover first forms of ideas concerning the exist- 
 ence of things created for man and his use, with active 
 affections springing from the delights of caring for and 
 making use of such created objects. And then there 
 will be noted especially five active little loves, with their 
 keen and watchful senses, and more or less developed 
 sensitives, ready to seize upon and draw in through their 
 open doors, and make altogether at home in the habita- 
 tions of the will and understanding, all that is of man 
 and his life on earth, of animals and their living, of 
 vegetables and their existence, of minerals and metals, 
 of land and water, of air and light and heat. All these 
 things, and how many and how great they are, can be 
 realized only by one who sees clearly that all life and 
 existence have their inmost quality in the seeds from 
 which they spi ing— all these things will be found in first 
 forms, or as beginnings and germs, stored up in the 
 memory of the child more or less perfectly— rather let 
 me say, more or less imperfectly, and with them all, 
 and common to them all, an affection in importunate 
 activity — the affection of learning. 
 
 This affection, with its indefinitely variable delights 
 and pleasures, is the agency especially provided by the 
 Lord for the successive introduction of the knowl- 
 edges by which man is to be prepared " to ascend np to 
 meet God at His coming," the one use of all knowl- 
 
110 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 edges ; and it is to this affection that the teacher is to 
 apply himself, as to the living instrumentality put into 
 his hands for the performance of his great work. This 
 affection he is to nourish with good and wholesome food, 
 and none other ; this affection he is to stimulate with 
 innocent and pure delights, and none other; and by 
 this affection and its delights and pleasures, pure and 
 simple and true, he is to lead the child to the fountains 
 of the clear and fresh waters of all knowledge of the 
 Lord, of His Word and of His works. Let this af- 
 fection be to him a most sacred charge. In it is the 
 life of the future man — of the future angel. In the 
 affection of learning, common to all children and men, 
 the Lord has saved for Himself a remnant from the 
 human love corrupted and destroyed by evil, by which 
 to effect the regeneration of man. It is a simple affec- 
 tion from the love in the will, having its place in the 
 understanding; from it springs the desire and con- 
 sequent endeavor to learn and to know, at first uncon- 
 nected with any purpose or use ; thus it is, as it were, 
 void and empty, an open vessel for the free and ready 
 reception of any end, purpose, or use that may be intro- 
 duced, and give determination to its roving activities. 
 The end or use of this love or affection from love, there- 
 fore, appears only by slow degrees, as from an indeter- 
 minate form of mental activity, characterized sometimes 
 as inquisitiveuess ; it is guided and trained into a deter- 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 111 
 
 minate form of inquiry, or quest of knowledges, which 
 leads to the formation of a spiritual rational quality of 
 mind and life and a consequent conjunction of man 
 \vith the Lord. 
 
 The affection of learning, as is obvious, comes from the 
 will in the understanding, as a simple spiritual-natural 
 endeavor or force tending toward the acquisition of 
 knowledge or causing the opening of the senses to the 
 world without the mind, and the admission of the things 
 or objects of that world into the sensory, for the forma- 
 tion of the first planes receptive of the influx of the light 
 of Truth. At first it acts from general influx. It is 
 without end or use, i. e., without individual quality, and is 
 thus between good and evil. Neither good nor evil can 
 be predicated of this affection in all its first activities, 
 and therefore can the first forms of ideas concerning the 
 Lord and His life and work be introduced without 
 special taint from the form or medium by which they 
 enter into the mind. 
 
 Now, because these first forms are the very remnants 
 stored up by the Lord to be the beginnings or founda- 
 tions of His Divine work of man's regeneration, and be- 
 cause this work of regeneration is effected by the Lord's 
 first reforming the understanding or causing Truths to 
 take the place of fallacies and falsities in the understand- 
 ing and afterward by the formation of a new will from 
 Himself in the reformed understanding, it is evident that 
 
112 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the love of learniug, by which the mind is first opened 
 to Truth, is the very germinal form of that new will 
 which the Lord creates in the re-creating man to be the 
 receptacle of His Divine Love. Herein lies the unspeak- 
 able value and importance of the affection of learning, 
 with the series of affections — as of knowing, understand- 
 ing, seeing, and thinking Truth — which follow in the 
 order of its beginning for the new or regenerate will of 
 man, the formation of a suitable and beautiful habitation 
 in the uuderstanding. And as the new will is formed by 
 the Lord's leading man by means of his delights and 
 pleasures, it is further evident that the Teacher, if he 
 would learn of the Lord, and if he would follow the 
 Lord, needs to deal with the instrument by means of 
 which his work is to be effected, as the Lord in His 
 Infinite Wisdom from Love deals with it ; he needs to 
 lead it loviugly, gently, though firmly, by its delights and 
 pleasures — not by its capri<'ious delights and pleasures, 
 but by such true and orderly amenities as from revela- 
 tion and experience he well knows will fill to the full 
 the young affection with the food that shall bring joy to 
 its life. Let him see to it that this be done, and that no 
 hurt come to that affection from willfulness, excited by 
 the sphere of mischievous and evil spirits acting through 
 his own sphere or through that of surrounding condi- 
 tions. 
 
 The affection of learning, and the other affections in 
 
SUGGESTIO^^S TO TEACHERS. 113 
 
 the series of which that affl^ctiou is the first (and wliich 
 are treated of m D. L. W. 404, A. C. 3982, C. L. 
 122, aud elsewhere), will be treated more in detail when 
 we resume tlie regular study of our subject, aud espe- 
 cially when we cousider the doctriue of accommodation. 
 
 Haviug reached this point in our preparatory sugges- 
 tioHS, it would seem that our further orderly advance- 
 ment required the introduction of an ultimate presenta- 
 tion of the subjects aud the objects of the Teacher's 
 work, so arranged aud tabulated that the general scope 
 of this work, as well as its particular order and se- 
 quences, may come into view and be subjected to careful 
 study and analysis. 
 
 First, then, the subjects of instruction are human 
 beino-s, who come into the charge and under the care of 
 the Teacher at about the age of five years, and who re- 
 main in that relation, if the conditions be normal, until 
 about the age of twenty-one. Now let us, for the sake 
 of convenience aud also according to the order of things, 
 divide the whole period of instruction into three terms, 
 adding to the first term the five years of infancy, when 
 the child is iij the Family School, aud we shall have the 
 three terms commensurate with three complete periods 
 of time or of age, and agreeing with the three states of 
 the understanding in the subjects of instruction, described 
 by — firsts the corporeal-sensual state; second, the f-en- 
 sual-scientific state, and third, the scientific rational 
 8 
 
114 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 state; the first comprising the period from birth to the 
 seventh year, the second the period from the seventh to 
 the fourteenth year, and the third the period from the 
 fourteenth to the twenty-first year. 
 
 Let me observe here that the terms of this division are, 
 of course, to be regarded iu the nature of averages, be- 
 cause of the patent fact that children vary greatly, as 
 well in genius and mental quality as in development, 
 and also this — that the one term passes over by imper- 
 ceptible gradation into the other, because states of mind 
 cannot be subjected to strict and exact delimitations. 
 For this reason the first state is denominated the cor- 
 poreal-sensual, the second the sensual-scientific, and the 
 third the scientific-rational. Knowledge of the scholars 
 and* of their progress, with great judgment, are required 
 in the Teacher's treatment of the children, especially 
 about the period or state of their transition from the one 
 term to the next succeeding. 
 
 Second, the objects of instruction are the things to be 
 learnt or to be introduced to the knowing subjects. 
 These objects comprehend all that the human being can 
 know of the Lord, of the spiritual world, of man, and 
 of the natural world. Having in mind the truth, that 
 man can learn and know of the Lord only through the 
 natural world, through man, and through the spiritual 
 world as communicating media of knowledge, we may 
 arrange the objects of introduction in three general di- 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 115 
 
 visions, each having a progression from the lowest to 
 the highest, like the first division of the subjects as to 
 states. [Consult plan I in Supplement.] 
 
 Cast your eye over the plan of study laid before you, 
 and you will observe that the objects of instruction 
 which relate directly to spiritual life are contained in 
 the left-hand column, the objects which relate to the 
 natural world in the right-hand column, and those which 
 appertain more immediately to man in the middle 
 column, and that they are all intended to lead man to 
 know the Lord. You will note further that these 
 objects are arranged in a successive order in each 
 column, and at the same time in a simultaneous order, 
 in the divisions of their successive order. The purpose 
 of this arrangement is to suggest the propriety of a 
 practically simultaneous study of objects relating to 
 spirit, to man, and to nature. Every child, like every 
 adult, from the order of his existence under the auspices 
 of the Lord is always in connection and relation with 
 spirits in the spiritual world, with his fellow-beings on 
 earth, and with nature; and this threefold connection or 
 relation is simultaneous. It is believed that this order 
 of existence ought to have a place in any plan that is 
 provided for the instruction of children ; in other words, 
 in any plan designed to be followed in preparing them 
 for their life and existence in this world and in the spir- 
 itual world. All the influences operating in the minds 
 
116 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATIOV. 
 
 of children, with the exception of those which proceed 
 immediately from the Lord and flow in by an inter- 
 nal way, are affected, qualified, and determined more or 
 less by the media or the forms by which they pass to 
 those minds. These media or forms may be true, orderly, 
 and good, or they may be false, disorderly, and evil. 
 Eecognizing these truths and the importance of their 
 bearing on the matter in hand, it would seem imperative 
 that provision be made in a plan of i-istruction, not 
 only that the objects of instruction, as media of influ- 
 ence, be true and good, but also that they be so related 
 to each other that the three streams of influence may 
 conspire together in simultaneous order and produce 
 concordant states of thought. As harmony of aflfec- 
 tion between Teacher and Scholar, the harmony of 
 the love of teaching, wath the love of learning, is es- 
 sential to good work and worthy results, so likewise is 
 the harmony of the various objects taught during any 
 given period essential to the effective doing of that good 
 work and to the full production of those worthy results. 
 Concord is order, discord is disorder. "God created 
 man from order, in order, and to order." (T. C. H. 71.) 
 And man can be truly instructed and educated no 
 otherwise than "from order, in order, and to order." 
 
 Asain, it is a truth that the Lord creates, forms, and 
 governs all things from first principles by ultimates, 
 and that man, as a form of life, intermediate between 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 117 
 
 the spiritual and natural worlds, was so created and is 
 so formed and governed. (A. C. 10,044 et al.) Apply- 
 ing this truth to our plan and to the order of instruc- 
 tion, it is suggested that the inmost or first object of 
 teachiug should be taken from the "Spirit" column,, the 
 second, from the " Nature" column, and the third from 
 the"Mau" columu, aud that this succession ought to be 
 observed, as far as possible, on each day, so that the 
 instructions, day by day, may be at least proximately 
 simultaneous. As first states enter into and qualify all 
 succeeding states, by making the first lesson of every 
 day a lesson in Divine and Heavenly things, the mind 
 of the child is turned upward to the Lord, and if the 
 lesson be such as to afiect the child with delight and 
 pleasure, this state, so formed in the Divine and angelic 
 sphere, will be interiorly in the following thoughts ex- 
 cited by obje -ts belonging to the column of "Nature," 
 and the light of that higher sphere will be cast upon the 
 things from the Lord's creation, entering in and form- 
 ing their images on the sensory. And, further, as Na- 
 ture is for the use of man, and was created solely to l)e 
 a clothing of things spiritual, it is evident that the suc- 
 cession proposed will carry the mind of the child from 
 the interior active thought of the Lord, through the 
 uses of Nature to INIan, as a form of use, " created from 
 Order, in Order and to Order," so that by Order he may 
 bring back to the Lord all that proceeds from Him, and 
 
118 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 being coDJoined with Him, may become the conjoining' 
 medium between Heaven and Earth. If, now, you will 
 add to these considerations the truth (taught in D. L. W. 
 285, 286 et al.) that " the first idea with man into which 
 angelic Wisdom can flow is that God is Man," you will 
 be disposed, I doubt not, to regard favorably the plan 
 proposed, as illustrated, for example, by the objects of 
 instruction presented in the last lines, where are given 
 the beginnings or the foundations of all spiritual, natural, 
 and rational knowledges, in the Lord, the Creator, the 
 Created Earth, and the Created Man. By such begin- 
 nings the mind is placed in correspondence with the 
 Heavens and made receptive of the influx that inflows 
 into the ultimate plane so corresponding, and by means 
 of these first sciences taken from Heaven, that is from 
 the Lord, preparation may be made for His building 
 within that mind an eternal habitation for Himself. 
 
 Having observed thus much concerning the Plan, 
 and the purpose of the arrangement noted, let me 
 pass to a few particulars not apparent in the Plan, but 
 which are involved in all its parts, and which need to be 
 kept in mind, in order to a right application of the pro- 
 posed course of instruction. 
 
 It is well known that man with difiiculty distinguishes 
 between thinking and willing, or between understanding 
 and will, and, therefore, also between truth and good 
 {A. C. 9995), and yet that these distinctions are indis- 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 119 
 
 pensable to the formation of a true rationality, i. e., of 
 a true humanity. The ability of judging or of forming 
 a judgment by reason and according to reason, depends 
 upon the ability of discriminating ideas or things, of 
 seeing the connections and the differences of ideas and 
 things, and of the parts of ideas and things, thus of dis- 
 tinguishing them and arranging them according to their 
 series and relations. And as such distinctions and 
 arrangements enter into order and constitute order, it is 
 evident that distinctions are absolutely necessary to order 
 —to the order into which man is to be regenerated, and 
 therefore to the order into which he is to be led by in- 
 struction as a preparation for regeneration. This in- 
 volves much for the Teacher and also for the Scholar. 
 For the Teacher much study of revealed Truth, much 
 thought and reflection and careful preparation ; and for 
 the Scholar much training and obedient following of the 
 Truths communicated and illustrated by nature without 
 and within him. Among other things and many, these 
 are involved: Love and Wisdom in the Lord; good 
 and truth, with their receptacles, will and understanding, 
 in angels and in men ; the things in angels and men, in- 
 ternal and external, in mind and body, relating to good 
 and to truth, or belonging to the kingdom of the will 
 and the kingdom of the understanding; thus these 
 kingdoms in the Heavens and in the Church ; thence in 
 the World of Spirits, in Hell, and in the Earths ; and in 
 
120 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the three kingdoms or divisions of the Earths, the Ani- 
 mal, Vegetable, and Mineral. In all these, in the whole 
 and in the parts of all these, exist the distinctions noted ; 
 they are as essential to their outermost as to their inmost 
 forms, to their existence as to their life. The human 
 soul cannot be known without a knowledge of these dis- 
 tinctions, the alphabet of a human language cannot be 
 correctly taught and truly learnt without a recognition 
 of the soul's ultimate expression of itself in the dual 
 form of the letters. And further, this also is involved 
 in what has been said concerning distinctions, that all 
 things in nature, as in spirit, are to be distinguished as 
 to use and as to quality, and that uses are good and 
 evil, and qualities are good and evil, true and false, and, 
 morever, that they are of degrees respectively as ends, 
 causes, and effects, which degrees are illustrated by the 
 three kingdoms of nature and their parts, the three atmos- 
 pheres, the three degrees of the human mind, and of 
 the Spiritual World, of Heaven, and of Hell. 
 
 Again, a clear recognition of the distinctions of objects, 
 as to use and value in the formation of the rationality, 
 is essential to their right-ordering and employment in 
 the work of teaching. They are means to an end, but 
 they are not all in the same degree of applicability. 
 Some are to be applied directly, others indirectly, and 
 others again still more indirectly to the formation and de- 
 velopment of the rational. Thus, some objects are means 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 121 
 
 of forming the sensual mind, some of forming the scientific 
 mind, and others of forming the rational mind. This rela- 
 tion being recognized, their relative importance can be 
 seen and realized, and just proportions can be maintained 
 in their employment. In general, the following points 
 may be suggested ?s aids in the formation of a just 
 judgment in respect to the relative use and importance 
 of the various objects of instruction within the reach of 
 the teacher. 
 
 1. Objects of the highest use and first importance are 
 those which have respect to the Lord, the Divine 
 Man ; to Heaven, and the Life of Heaven. 
 These 'objects maybe sensual in form, as the literal 
 sense of the Word ; scientific in form, as the historical 
 and internal-natural sense of the Word; or rational in 
 form, as the genuine truths of the Word and the spiritual 
 sense of the Word. The application, or in actual in- 
 struction, the relative importance of these three forms is 
 not to be determined by the position they hold in the 
 general orilerof succession, but bytheir adaptation to the 
 state or states which are to be formed at any given stage 
 of the instruction. Thus, in the first or sensual period, 
 information from the literal sense of the Word is of the 
 hio-hest use and of first importance, because this sense 
 is accommodated to that period, and introduces to the 
 mind the very knowledges required in its first formation, 
 
122 CONVEBSA TIONS ON ED UCA TIOK 
 
 and needed as a foundation of the knowledges to be in- 
 troduced in the succeeding periods, from or by means of 
 the other forms. 
 
 2. Objects next in the order of use and importance are 
 
 evidently such as relate to man and his life, spiritual 
 
 and natural. 
 These may be classified in the same manner as those 
 which come under the first head ; and their application 
 to actual instruction will be determined according to the 
 rule above indicated. 
 
 3. Objects belonging to the world of nature and derived 
 
 from that world, which is for the use of man, will 
 in the very order of things hold the last place in 
 importance. 
 The classification and the employment of these objects 
 in instruction will, of course, follow the order of their 
 existence in the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral King- 
 doms, answering to the three degrees of the natural mind 
 which are to be formed by means of them. A simple 
 and comprehensive statement of the relative use and 
 importance of the instrumental scientifics at the disposal 
 of the Teacher in the performance of his work, may be 
 derived from the relative importance of the degrees of 
 the mind, to the formation of which the various objects 
 of study are chiefly serviceable. But as such a statement 
 might not prove as practically useful as the one given. 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 123 
 
 I will let the suggestion stand, without further exten- 
 sion. 
 
 I have referred to the just proportions to be observed 
 by the Teacher in the employment of his means of in- 
 struction, and have suggested some points that may aid 
 him in determining and maintaining these proportions. 
 Two other conditions of judicious and fruitful instruction 
 remain to be noted, and these are coherence and con- 
 tinuity. 
 
 Coherence and continuity are essential conditions of 
 whatever proceeds from and is created by the Lord. 
 They express in a varied way the idea of the unity of 
 end, cause, and effect, in successive and in simultaneous 
 order. All true knowledge, sensual, scientific, rational, 
 and spiritual, being derived from the Lord, i. e., from 
 His proceeding Truth, and by means of the universe, 
 created by His Truth from Good, must needs be in a like 
 unity of end, cause, and effect, and therefore in a like 
 coherence and continuity of the parts in the whole, and 
 of the whole with the parts. As in the order of Creation 
 and Preservation, so in all true knowledge, not anything 
 stands alone or unconnected, for what is unconnected 
 perishes. Every single thing coheres with its prior and 
 with its posterior, and with what is homogeneous ; and 
 every single thing is in continuity with that from which 
 it comes forth, and with that to which it goes forth. 
 
124 CONVERSATIONS ON ED UCATION. 
 
 This is the order of the Divine Creation ; this is the 
 order of Heaven and the Church, and this is the order 
 of all true knowledge derived and formed from them ; 
 and therefore is this also the order according to which 
 such true knowledge is to be imparted for the formation 
 in the human mind of a genuine rationality prepared to 
 be married to genuine liberty, which is a state truly 
 human, capable of conjunction with the Divine. 
 (A. C. 8603.) Of this state, as formed by the Lord, 
 it is said in Isaiah xix, 23 : " In that day there shall be 
 a path from Egypt to Aschur, and Aschur shall come into 
 Egypt, and Egypt into Aschur, and the Egyptians shall 
 serve Aschur. In that day Israel shall he the third to 
 Egypt and to Aschur, a benediction in the midst of the 
 land, which Jehovah Zebaoth shall bless, saying. Blessed 
 my people Egypt, and the work of my hands Aschur, and 
 Israel mine inheritance.^^ 
 
 The Plan proposed for your consideration is intended 
 to suggest a course of studies in succession or continuity, 
 and in coherence; in continuity according to the order 
 of succession in creation and existence, and in coherence 
 according to the relation of Spirit, Man, and Nature, 
 the one to the other ; in other words, according to suc- 
 cessive and simultaneous order. 
 
 Beginning at the base of the columns, you will observe 
 that " The Lord," '' The Earth," and "Man " are pre- 
 sented in simultaneous order as the Inmost from Whom 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 125 
 
 are all things, the outermost by which are all things, 
 and the middle or intermediate for whom are all things. 
 At the extreme right of this line you will notice the 
 term " number." This is to suggest the idea of Order 
 and Arrangement, as a primary idea to accompany the 
 first and all succeeding instructions, because number, 
 and to number, mean Order, ordination, arrangement, 
 etc. Now, Order not only begins in One, or the Unit, 
 but it also euds in One, or the Unit ; for One is All and 
 Each — " Omnia et Singula," or the Whole and its Parts. 
 There is no such thing as a simple or absolute One. 
 '* An absolute One cannot possibly subsist, but a har- 
 monious One." (J.. C. 457.) And this because the 
 Lord, from whom all things are and exist, is the Divine 
 Man " in whom infinite things are One." (X>. L. W. 
 17-22). And from Him as the Divine Man it is that 
 "every One consists of various things" (^. 0.4263); or 
 as expressed in the Arcana (n. 4149) : " Every one is 
 composed not of the same things, but of various things 
 in form, which make one according to form." Hence it 
 is that when children are taught that there is one God, 
 who is the Lord, the Divine Man, and when the Book 
 containing the Divine Word is placed before them as 
 the Lord's Book and Most Holy, they receive as a One 
 the most complex of all ideas, the idea of infinite things 
 distinctly One in the Lord, and in the Word, which is 
 the Lord's visible presence among men on earth. And 
 
126 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 so, wlien Man and the Earth are presented to them by 
 the Teacher, they see one Man and one Earth, but in 
 neither case an absolute One. A Man, or one Man, is 
 not only a complex form composed of innumerably vari- 
 ous parts, but he is also himself a component part of an 
 indefinitely complex Man, the whole Human Race, the 
 whole Finite Man of the Spiritual and Natural Universe ; 
 and thus the idea of One Man is internally the idea of 
 the whole Man, and also of all men. 
 
 Turning again to the extreme right of our Plan (see 
 Supplement to New Church Life for November, page 
 177), you find "Number" followed by "Form." Form, 
 like Number, has a very wide range of meaning and ap- 
 plication. As Number is employed to express order and 
 arrangement and their constituents, so Form is employed 
 to express the products of the arrangement and order of 
 substances, material, natural, spiritual, and Divine, by 
 means of which products the uses which are the ends of 
 creation are carried into their fullness or effect. There- 
 fore, as there are means of uses in the three kingdoms of 
 nature, so there are forms of uses in the mineral, vege- 
 table, and animal kingdoms, and in man, and these forms 
 appear externally in the lowest plane of existence, in 
 shapes, figures, molds, fashions, and organisms. Such 
 appearances of Form are intended to be expressed by 
 "Form" in our Plan. (D. L. W. 307, 313, 316,388, 
 etc.) In the middle plane, Form, in our use of the 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 127 
 
 term, expresses the constitution of internal organisms, 
 such as those of the natural mind ; of substances, 
 spiritual and natural, as continents of uses and thus 
 of life ; their arrangement according to degrees, and 
 their disposition, together with the products of the 
 operations of the natural mind, which become means of 
 use, such as sciences, theories, and methods, etc. It is 
 evident that this definition of Form is intended to include 
 all things that enter into the science of ultimate forms or 
 figures, usually denominated Geometry, Mathematics, 
 etc., even as Number or arrangement necessarily involves 
 the science of numbering, counting, or Arithmetic. 
 And, if you will proceed a step farther you will see that 
 Form allies itself to all art, and becomes the means of 
 the use of all art, thus the means of the use to be per- 
 formed by the imagination, which is the interior sensual 
 of the human mind. {A, C. 3020.) For forms are con- 
 tinents of uses (Z>. L. W, 46), which vary according to 
 the excellence of the uses (Z>. L. W. 80), that is, ac- 
 cording as they have respect to things internal or ex- 
 ternal, spiritual or natural. On the higher plane, forms 
 are truths which are the laws of Order, the laws govern- 
 ing and determining the arrangement and disposition of 
 the parts of all spiritually organized beings, as men and 
 angels ; thus they are the means or causes of all heavenly 
 and Divine uses, and involve not only the constitution of 
 the spirit of every man, but also of the organized 
 
128 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 structure of aggregations of men, in Heaven, in tlie 
 AVorld of Spirits, in Hell, and lastly in the natural world 
 (D. L. W. 273), i. e., of Society, the State, of Races, 
 Nations, and Peoples — and thus of Mankind or the 
 Human Race. 
 
 These remarks are not to be understood as conveying 
 the suggestion that such things should be taught to the 
 child by the Teacher when presenting the idea of One 
 God, One Man, and One Earth ; but that they ought to be 
 actively and cousciously in the thoughts of the Teacher, 
 so that the sphere of this active thought may inflow into 
 the sphere of the forming mind of the child, and by un- 
 conscious operation cause the primary impressions made 
 on that mind to assume an <3rder and arrangement in 
 correspondence with the inmost thought of the One, 
 from which the outermost form of the Uint has pro- 
 ceeded. In addition, the remarks above made are in- 
 tended to suggest to Teachers that their own truer 
 conception of One, i.e., of number as Order, ought to 
 be allowed freely to permeate their instructions on the 
 subject, and by successive developments and applications 
 to the objects of instruction, to their nature and form and 
 quality, to remove the fallacies derived from the first im- 
 pressions of the Unit. All the first impressions of in- 
 fancy and childhood are mere fallacies, which have to be 
 gradually informed by truer ideas and thereby corrected, 
 to the end that mere appearances may be removed, and 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 129 
 
 the miud advance slowly into the conception of more 
 and more real appearances; in other words, in order 
 that it may be drawn away from fallacies toward truths. 
 
 Looking once more at the Plan, you will see that as 
 we proceed from the first idea of the Lord, the Divine 
 Man, the One— to His Divine Work of Creation, Re- 
 demption, etc., and from this to some general results of 
 Creation and Redemption, and thus begin to deveh>p 
 the idea of the Infinite One from whom are all things, 
 so do we also advance with nature and with man. The 
 Earth, as representing Natural and Material Substance, is 
 brought before the mind of the child in her larger parts 
 or kingdoms, and carried up to man, for whom all 
 natural and material substance was created, and the 
 idea of whom is, therefore, in all that substance, being 
 manifested in its re-agency, as a passive form, receptive 
 of influx and capable of entertaining active forces, which 
 tend toward what is higher, and which emulate what is 
 in man from the Lord. So, also, through the idea of 
 man, the child is introduced to the idea of mankind, of 
 the complex varieties of the human form, its appear- 
 ances, etc., until it reaches a concept of human living, 
 activity, and operation, in the " Story of Man." 
 
 " Color " is introduced after Form, because Color is an 
 appearance of Number and Form, when these are pre- 
 sented in Light. Colors are reflections of light from 
 substances, and they are varied according to the number, 
 
130 CONVERSA TIONS ON ED UCATION. 
 
 i. e., the Order and the Form or Quality of the sub- 
 stances upon which the rays of light fall. In the Ar- 
 cana we have this teaching : 
 
 In order that color may exist, there must be a something 
 dark and snowy, or black and white; when the rays of ligut 
 from the sun fall upon this, according to the various tempering 
 of the dark and snowy, or of the Hack and white, there exist 
 colors, from a modifif'ation of the inflowing rays of light, of 
 which [colors] some take more or less from the dark and black, 
 some more or less from the snowy or white, thence is their diver- 
 sity.—^. C. 1042. 
 
 According to this Doctrine, color is light modified by 
 the substances, and the forms or qualities of the sub- 
 stances upon which it falls, and presented again or 
 reflected in such modified form. Together with Number 
 and Form, Color is a quality predicable of substances 
 and forms in all the degrees of the Natural and Material 
 World, but coming to the cognizance of the mind of man 
 chiefly through the sense of Sight. Like Number and 
 Form, viewed in their higher meanings and aspects, Color 
 is also predicable of Spiritual substances and forms, and, 
 when rightly regarded, will be seen to express qualities 
 of mind and heart, or of understanding and will, thus 
 varieties of thought and affection, and varying states of 
 thought and affection. Human thought, as the form of 
 human affection, is but the reflection of the Divine Light 
 or Wisdom, inflowing by the heavens and the Spiritual 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 131 
 
 World in general, and modified by the spiritual and 
 natural substances composing its receptacles in man. 
 The color of human thought is derived, therefore, from 
 the Order (Number) and the Quality (Form) of the 
 scientifics aud knowledges entering into and constituting 
 the structure of the mind, and from the nature of the 
 affection present in the living force of the thinking. The 
 knowledges give the color to the thought — the affection 
 infuses the life, which is the essence of the color, com- 
 monly denominated the warmth or the cold of the color. 
 Such color of thought, in all varieties and diversities, 
 appears really or manifestly in the Spiritual World, 
 where internal states are re-presented in corresponding 
 externals. This is true of individual as of aggregate 
 thought ; of angel, spirit, and devil, as of the whole 
 Heaven, the World of Spirits, and of Hell. It is infinitely 
 true of the appearance of the Divine Truth of the Di- 
 vine Good in the radiant belts of flame-colored and 
 white Light proceeding from the Lord, and constituting 
 the Sun of the Spiritual World, in the midst of which 
 is the Divine Man. It may not be inappropriate in this 
 place to continue the extract commenced above. We 
 read: 
 
 The case is the same in the Spiritual [World as in the nat- 
 ural] ; there the dark [substance] is the intellectual proprium 
 or the false ; and the black is the voluntary proprium of man or 
 evil, which absorbs and extinguishes the rays of light ; but the 
 
132 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 snowy and the white is the truth and good which man thinks that 
 he does from himself, which reflects and rejects from itself the 
 rays of light. The rays of light which fall upon them, and 
 which they, as it were, modify, are from the Lokd, as from the 
 Sun of Wisdom and intelligence, for rays of spiritual light are 
 none other, nor from any other source ; because natural things 
 correspond to spiritual, it is that when in the other life this is 
 presented to the sight around the regenerate spiritual man there 
 is what appears similar to a bow in the clouds, which bow is the 
 representation of spiritual in his natural things. With the re- 
 generate spiritual man it is the intellectual proprium into which 
 the Lord insinuates innocence, charity, and mercy ; according to 
 the reception of these gifts by man, his iris [or bow] appears 
 when presented to the sight ; more beautiful the more the vol- 
 untary proprium of man is removed, subdued, and reduced to 
 obedience.—^. C 1042. 
 
 Proceeding upward along the line on the extreme 
 right of our Plan, you will fiud the terms " Force," 
 " Motion," and " Power " following upon " Color," 
 " Form," " Number." Like the latter, the former terms 
 are employed to cover ideas of conditions, states, and 
 qualities ranging from matter, through man, spirit, and 
 angel to the Divine. In order not to detain you too 
 long, let me condense the teachings of our Doctrines 
 concerning Force, Motion, and Power, so that you may 
 obtain a distinct idea of their application to our subject, 
 as well as of the extent of their bearing. 
 
 In all things created from the Lord there is from Him an in- 
 
SUGGi:STIONS TO TEACHERS. 133 
 
 flux, causing in tliem a perpetual conatus or endeavor, or striv- 
 ing to produce forms of uses. This quality exists in all the 
 substances and matters of the earths, as .it is in all the higher 
 forms of existence from the same Divine origin, — D. L. W. 310. 
 
 Conatus or endeavor is from the influx of the Divine; from 
 
 conatus is force, and from force is effect Every 
 
 effect without the continual influx of the cause would instantly 
 perish.—^. C 5116. 
 
 This conatus or endeavor of itself does nothing but by forces 
 corresponding to itself, and by them it produces motion. Hence 
 it is that the endectvor is the all in theforces, and by the forces in 
 the motion; and because motion is the ultimate degree of cw- 
 
 deavor, by this it has its power Endeavor is not 
 
 force, nor is force motion, but force is produced by endeavor, for 
 force is endeavor excited, and motion is produced by force; 
 wherefore, there is no power in endeavor alone, nor in force 
 alone, but in motion, which is their product. — JD. L. W. 218. 
 
 There is living endeavor, living force, living motion. Living 
 endeavor in man, who is a living subject, is his will united with 
 his understanding; living forces in man are those things which 
 constitute his body within, in all which are motor fibres vari- 
 ously interwoven ; and living motion in man is action, which is 
 produced by those tibre§ frum the will united to the understand- 
 ing.— i). L. W. 219. 
 
 Atmospheres, waters, and earths are . . . three generals 
 by which and from which all and single things exist with in- 
 finite varietv. Atmospheres are the active forces, waters are 
 the mediate forces, and earths are the passive forces from which 
 all effects exist. Those three are such forces, solely from the 
 Life, which proceeds from the Lord as a Sun, and which causes 
 them to be active. — D. L. W. 178. 
 
134 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 In everything spiritual there is an endeavor to clothe itself 
 with a body .... the spiritual furnishes a soul, and the 
 material furnishes a body. — D. L. W. 343. 
 
 All uses, both good and evil, are from a spiritual origin, thus 
 from the Sun, where the Lord is. — D. L. W. 348. 
 
 The uses of all created things ascend by degrees of altitude to 
 man, and by man to God the Creator, from whom they are, 
 (n. 65-68) and in the last things exists the end of creation 
 which is that all things may return to the Creator (n. 167-172), 
 and that conjunction may be effected. — D. L. W. 316. 
 
 These teachings will serve to present some idea of the 
 meaning and application to our subject of the terms 
 *' Force," " Motion," and '' Power." 
 
 In their progressions into ultimates, and in their ap- 
 pearances in nature. Force, Motion, and Power are 
 known as Vital, Physical, and Mechanical Force, Mo- 
 tion, and Power. 
 
 The repetition of the term " Use " in the Plan is for 
 the purpose of suggesting to the Teacher that the use of 
 the objects of instruction as means of forming human 
 rationality and liberty, and thus of attaining the end of 
 education is never to be lost sight of, but to be carefully 
 noted in the successive planes from which those objects 
 are drawn. 
 
 Before resuming our study of man, the subject of 
 education and instruction, it may be well to restate in a 
 summary form some of the leading points of Doctrine 
 heretofore considered. 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 135 
 
 Man is born an animal, and becomes a man by instruc- 
 tion. Being a mere organ, or form of receiving life, 
 nothing is connate with him except the faculty of ac- 
 quiring knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, and an 
 inclination to love. Life from the Lord flows into these 
 faculties as receptacles or forms organized of the finest 
 substances, and by this influx man is enabled to under- 
 stand and do what is true and good ; in other words, to 
 have rationality and liberty from the Lord, and to be 
 held in equilibrium between Heaven and Hell, thus, to 
 be reformed and regenerated. 
 
 The will is the very esse of the life of man, and the 
 receptacle of the good of love, and the understanding is 
 the existere of life thence, and the receptacle of the truth 
 and good of faith, and when the good of love and truth 
 of faith are received, then is man conjoined with the 
 Lord, and this conjunction is the esse or the "to be" 
 of man. (See A. C. 5002, 585, 9282.) To bring into 
 effect this end, or esse, the Lord by His inflowing love 
 disposes man's will in favor of the Truth, which inflows 
 mediately into the understanding. When the Truth is 
 followed, then is brought about an ad-unition or con- 
 junction of the will and understanding, or their marriage, 
 in which there is prepared a habitation for the Lord, or 
 man's conjunction with the Divine. This marriage is 
 spiritual, and is Heaven and the Church, and the Lord 
 with man. From the internal marriage proceeds the 
 
1 36 CONVEESA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 external marriage, which constitutes the very centre and 
 basis of human society, with its order, and laws of order. 
 On the Home rests the State, on the State, the Church, 
 on the Church, Heaven. It is of the province and 
 function of Education to prepare the planes in the human 
 mind that shall receive the Divine influx and become 
 the instrumental means for the fulfillment of this end of 
 creation according to the Will of Infinite Love. And 
 in order that there may be in the thought and work of 
 the Educator a conjunction and right coherence of ideas, 
 he ought to be in some affection flowing from a love of 
 teaching, or from a love of the sciences and -knowledges 
 to be tauglit, or from a love of being useful to children 
 and yonth, which is the love of the neighbor from love to 
 the Lord. According to the activity of one or other 
 of these loves, or, what would be the best, of these three 
 loves co-acting, will be the clearness of ideas as means 
 to the end, as well as the fullness of the knowledges 
 attained and to be applied in the work that is to be 
 done. For it must ever be borne in mind that " the 
 understanding does not lead the will, or that wisdom 
 does not produce love, but that it only teaches and shows 
 the way ; it teaches how man ought to live, and it shows 
 liim what way to follow .... The will leads the 
 understanding, and causes it to act as one with itself; 
 and the love which is of the will calls that wisdom in the 
 understanding which concords." {D.L.W.244. See -4. 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 137 
 
 C. 7342.) A Teacher therefore ought " to place the heart 
 to the truths " of his work, so that they may be made 
 effective in the work, and that he, together with his 
 work, may be preserved from evil influences, and kept 
 in the sphere of those helping angels who are sent by 
 the Lord to have a charge of the little ones that are the 
 subjects of his work. 
 
 It is evident that the one thing of greatest importance 
 in all living instruction, for Teacher as for Scholar, is 
 that of doing; in other words, that both must learn 
 to do, must do to learn, must learn by doing, and 
 must do in learning. The hand must complete and 
 supplement the mouth of the Teacher and the eye 
 and ear of the Scholar. For in doing, the will 
 and understanding are conjoined ; in doing, they are 
 married and in their very life — "He that hath my 
 Commandments and keepeth [or doeth] them, he it is 
 that loveth me," are the words of the Lord in John 
 xiv, 21. (See A. C. 9282.) 
 
 Doing is not only the completion of a former state, 
 but also the beginning of a new state (A. C. 4979), and 
 thus is it a very means of continuity, leading pleasantly, 
 and with the delight always experienced in ultimating 
 what has been learnt, — by presenting it objectively in new 
 and varied forms — to further instructions and further 
 openings of the mind. And, lastly, doing impresses the 
 thing done and whatever is connected therewith most 
 
138 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 deeply on the memory, imbeds it in the substances of 
 the memory, and by affording added means of recollec- 
 tion, helps to hold it more constantly in the thought and 
 ready for use. 
 
 These states of doing what has been learned ought to 
 be kept up until they have resulted in the formation of 
 a habit of doing. In this habit lie the possibilities of 
 the greatest good to the child and the future man ; the 
 good of eternal living according to Divine Order ; the 
 good of a genuine moral life and a true citizenship ; for 
 present needs an ever-available source of occupation as 
 a relief from the weariness of study ; a means of re- 
 straint for frivolous and mischievous moods ; and, on 
 the other hand, an opening of the way for the exercise 
 of the inventive faculty and an excitation of the love 
 of discovery. 
 
 Doing is use, and use is life. The child that finds de- 
 light in doing, unconsciously regards this delight as 
 something provided and not altogether of its own acqui- 
 sition. In this plane of feeling there may be implanted 
 by the angels gratitude, with love and reverence for 
 those who have prepared the way for the coming of 
 things so pleasant, and in these there will be some force, 
 more or less strong, to counteract the tendency to the 
 development of the pride of self-intelligence — that potent 
 foe to all true intelligence and wisdom. 
 
 Man, as a form recipient of life from the Lord, is 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 139 
 
 created of things finite as to the body and as to the 
 spirit, which are so organized as to receive both the life 
 of the mind and the life of the body. In the True 
 Christian Religion we have this teaching : 
 
 That man is not life, but a receptacle of life from God, appears 
 from these evident proofs that all things which are created are 
 finite in themselves, and that man, because he is finite, cannot 
 but be created out of finite things; wherefore it is said, in the 
 Book of Creation, that Adam was made from the earth and its 
 dust, from which he was also named, for "Adam" signifies the soil 
 of the earth, and every man actually consists of such things 
 only as are in the earth, and from the earth in the atmospheres; 
 those which are in the atmospheres from the earth, man takes 
 in by the lungs, and by the pores of the whole body, and the 
 crasser things by foods made of earthy particles. But with 
 respect to the spirit of man this also is created of finite things; 
 what is the spirit of man but a receptacle of the life of the 
 mind? The finite things of which it [is created] are spiritual 
 substances, which are in the Spiritual World, and which are 
 also collated into our earth, and therein hidden; unless these 
 were within, together with material things, not any seed could 
 be impregnated from its inmosts, and grow forth thence in a 
 wonderful manner without any deviation, from the first stamen 
 even to the fruit and to new seeds, nor could any worms be pro- 
 created from effluvia out of the earlh, and from the expiration 
 of the exhalations from vegetables with which the atmospheres 
 are impregnated. — T. C. R. 470. 
 
 But this life which inflows with man is also Divine, 
 for the Lord gives all His own. Man takes much or 
 
140 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 little accordiug to his receptibility — i. e., accordiDg to 
 the quality and state of his rationality and liberty, 
 from which he has thought and affection. And since 
 these, namely, thought and affection, are subjects of 
 reformation and regeneration, they are also subjects of 
 instruction and education. Therefore are instruction 
 and education prime factors in the work of preparing 
 man to receive the Divine life, to be thereby reformed and 
 regenerated, and to become a man in the order of human 
 life in which appears the image and likeness of the Life 
 of the Divine Man. (See T. C. R. 471-473, also D. P, 
 79, and T. C. B. 364 and 365.) 
 
 What, then, is the order of human life? 
 
 Man was created a form of Divine Order, because he was 
 created an image and similitude of God, and because God is 
 Order Itself, he was created in image and similitude of Order. 
 There are two things from which order exists, and by which it 
 subsists, the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, and man was 
 created a receptacle of these, wherefore also he was created into 
 the order, according to which those two things act in the Uni- 
 verse, and chiefly according to which they act in the Angelic 
 Heaven ; whence that Heaven is in the greatest effigy a form of 
 Divine Order, that Heaven in the sight of God is as one Man ; 
 and* there is also a plenary correspondence between that Heaven 
 and Man. For there is not in Heaven a Society which does not 
 correspond to some member, viscus, or organ in Man ; where- 
 fore it is said, in Heaven that this Society is in the province 
 of the liver, or of the pancreas, or of the spleen, or of the stom- 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 141 
 
 acli, or of the eye, or the ear, or the tongue, etc. ; the angels 
 themselves also know in what district of any part of man they 
 dwell. That it is so, has been given me to know to the life; I 
 have seen a Society consisting of some thousands of Angels as 
 one man; from which it was evident that Heaven in the com- 
 plex is an image of God, and that an image of God is a form of 
 Divine Order.— T. C. R. 65. (See also H D. 279.) 
 
 Truth and Good are the Principles of all things in both 
 worlds, in the Spiritual and Natural, and they are those things 
 by which the Universe was created, and by which the Universe 
 is conserved, and also by which man was made, wherefore those two 
 are the all in all.— T. C. R. 224. 
 
 The Word is the Lord as to Divine Truth ; by that Truth are 
 ordinated all things in heaven and in hell; thence also is all order 
 in the earth.— A. C. 8200; A. C. 5114, 4523; cf. H. D. 278. 
 
 From these teachings we can see that the Order of 
 human life is the Order of the Divine Truth, -which is the 
 Divine substantial form of the Divine Good or Love, in 
 other words, the Divine Man, the Lord. From the 
 Lord, therefore, by creation, there is given to man such 
 an arrangement, "disposition, determination, and ac- 
 tivity of the parts, substances, and entities" which com- 
 pose his form, that " he can receive the Divine into his 
 inmosts and thence in their derivatives in order, and by 
 this reception be elevated to the Divine and conjoined 
 with the Divine." {H. D. 278.) 
 
 And since the Divine is Infinite Love of all others 
 out of Itself, and Infinite Wisdom operating from this 
 
142 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Love for the eternal good of all others out of Itself, it is 
 perfectly clear that the true order of human life cousists 
 in man's liviug in love to the Lord aud in charity to- 
 ward the neighbor, according to every word, that is, 
 every Truth that proceedeth out of the mouth of the 
 
 LOKD. 
 
 But it is equally clear that man is not in this order 
 of his life, but in the very opposite, for, whilst the order 
 of the human race ought to be that the one love the 
 other as himself, now every one loves himself above 
 others, thus hates all others. (J.. C. 637, also n. 5850, 
 3623.) Hence is the human race in a life contrary to 
 the order of its creation, contrary to its own liberty and 
 its own rationality, contrary to its own human princi- 
 ple, and in the very hatred aud active destruction of 
 whatever makes it human and distinguishes it from 
 the life of evil and ferocious beasts. (See A. C. 2219 
 and 4219.) 
 
 Therefore is it of "the Divine Order [which is immut- 
 able] that man dispose himself to the reception of God, 
 and prepare himself to be a receptacle aud habitation 
 into which the Lord can enter, and in which He can 
 dwell as in His Temple." (T. G. R. 105.) In other 
 words, it is of Divine Order that man dispose himself to 
 receive wisdom and love, and thus the Lord at His 
 Coming. To this end he has been gifted with the facul- 
 ties of rationality and liberty ; to this end, also, is he 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS, 143 
 
 instructed in the truth, by which he can be led away 
 from evil and to good and Heaven. When man suffers 
 himself to be thus led, he is in the order of human life, 
 and all his determinations and activities, being from the 
 love and wisdom that inflow from the Lord, he is in 
 form a man, internally an angelic man, and externally 
 a spiritual-natural man — a man of the Church conjoined 
 with the Lord. (See A. C. 4839; also H. H. 30, 
 304; T. C.B.Ql.) 
 
 It is a primary principle of the order of the heavenly 
 man that he is formed from the Lord by the interior 
 degrees of affection and thought, and influx thence into 
 the external degrees and the adaptation of the latter to 
 the former. This is also a primary principle of instruc- 
 tion. The Teacher does not impart knowledge and in- 
 telligence to the mind of the child, but he presents to its 
 faculties, through the senses, objects of nature and things 
 of science, which, when received, constitute vessels or 
 forms prepared to receive that which flows in from the 
 Lord according to the order of human life. Thus the 
 truth enters from within into the mind, when forms, 
 corresponding and adequate, are introduced from with- 
 out. The teaching of the Church on this subject is as 
 follows : 
 
 It is of order that the celestial inflow into the spiritual, and 
 adapt this to itself; that the spiritual inflow into the rational, 
 and adapt this to itself; that the rational inflow into the scien- 
 
144 CONVERSATION'S ON EDUCATION. 
 
 tific, and adapt this to itself. But when man is instructed 
 during his first childhood, the order is indeed the same, but it 
 appears otherwise — namely, that he advances from scientifics to 
 rationals, from these to spirituals, and thus at length to celes- 
 tials. This appears so, because in this manner is to be opened 
 the way to things celestial, which things are inmost. All instruc' 
 tion is only the opening of away; and as the way is opened, or, 
 what is the same thing, as vessels are opened, they thus inflow 
 in order — from things celestial-spiritual, rationals; into these, 
 celestial spiritual things, and into these, celestial things. These 
 continually present themselves and also prepare for themselves 
 and form vessels, which are opened. 
 
 That it is so may also appear from this — that the scientific 
 and the rational in themselves are dead, and that they appear to 
 live is frorii the interior life which inflows. This may be mani- 
 fest to every one from thought and the faculty of judging, in 
 which lie concealed all the arcana of the art and science of an- 
 alysis, which are so many that they can never be explored, even 
 as to one-ten thousandth part. [These exist] not only with tiie 
 adult man, but also with chUdren, all whose thought, and all 
 whose speech thence is full of them, although man, even the 
 mo^t learned, knows it not — which would be impossible, unless 
 the celestial and spiritual thngs, which are within, presented 
 themselves, inflowed, and produced all those things.— J. C. 1495 
 (r/.n. 3151). 
 
 And thus do we again meet the vital question, What 
 are the true and orderly objects of instruction ? 
 
 It is evident that objects of instruction may be good 
 and also evil, true and also false. It is the duty of the 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 145 
 
 Teacher to know and discriminate them — to reject the 
 evil and the false and to retain the good and the 
 true. 
 
 It is certain that objects of instruction will make fal- 
 lacious impressions ; for they are appearances, and ap- 
 pearances are fallacies. But fallacies are also of two 
 kinds. There are fallacies that can be bent to truths 
 and fallacies that cannot be so bent. And these, also, 
 it is the duty of the Teacher to know and to discrimi- 
 nate. Fallacies that cannot be bent to truth close the 
 mind to influx from the higher planes and open it to 
 influx from the lower. Fallacies that can be bent to 
 truth, on the other hand, open the mind to higher or in- 
 terior influx, and thus they become the means of its 
 operation. For it must be remembered that whatever is 
 introduced into the natural mind from without comes 
 into the service of whatever inflows into that mind from 
 within. If fallacies and falsities which are incapable of 
 modification are introduced, they serve the influx of 
 evil, while fallacies and falsities capable of modification 
 serve the influx of good from the Lord. For " it is a 
 law of order that exteriors are subject to interiors, or, 
 what is the same, inferiors to superiors, and that they 
 serve like domestics; for exteriors and inferiors are 
 nothing but things of service, while interiors or superiors 
 are respectively things of rule." (Jl. 0.5127; see also 
 n. 5013, 5305, 5704.) 
 10 
 
146 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION, 
 
 It is asked, How shall the Teacher learn to know and 
 discriminate things good and evil, things true and false, 
 and fallacies capable of modification and fallacies inca- 
 pable of modification ? We know of but one answer to 
 the question : By going to the Lord in His Divine 
 revealings of the Truth ; by humbly learning of Him 
 from a sincere and honest desire to do his duty and 
 perform his use of charity, that those whom he instructs 
 may be prepared to receive the love and wisdom of the 
 Lord, come into the order of their human life, be con- 
 joined with the Divine, and the Lord's will be done on 
 Earth as in Heaven. 
 
 A Covenant is not formed with man otherwise than by the 
 reception of influx of ilie Truth from tlie Divine, and then by 
 correspondence; for superior things when they inflow into in- 
 ferior things are not otherwise received. . . . Correspondence is 
 not given unless inferiors be subjected to superiors by subordi- 
 nation, and when they are subjected, the superiors act in the 
 inferiors altogether like a cause in its efiects." — A. C. %T1^. 
 
 A Covenant is Conjunction. Conjunction with the 
 Lord is the end of man's regeneration, and therefore, 
 also, the end of education. The means of regeneration 
 are Truths from the Divine, and these are likewise the 
 means of education. In their lower and lowest forms, 
 truths are all teachings, all knowledge, and scientifics, 
 having correspondence with things rational and spirit- 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 147 
 
 ual from the Divine. When scientifics corresponding 
 to Divine Truths, presented in rational and spiritual 
 forms of Doctrine, are introduced into a mind, they 
 constitute vessels receptive of influx from the Divine, 
 which, being subordinated to the Divine, are actuated by 
 it as by a cause to bring forth corresponding effects ; 
 thus to give to the Divine power in and over the mind 
 and the life. This is the ordering of human life in ac- 
 cordance with its end in the order of creation. And in 
 this ordering, Instruction and Education take their 
 place as natural means in subordination to the spiritual 
 means of Divine Revelation, for the successive influx 
 and reception of the Divine Truths whereby the Cove- 
 nant or conjunction of the Lord with man is estab- 
 lished. 
 
 It is a law of spiritual and natural life that things 
 superior or interior tend constantly to things inferior 
 and exterior, and by these to their terminations in cor- 
 responding ultimates, in which they can be fixed. They 
 are causes seeking to produce effects, or they are like 
 souls striving to clothe themselves with bodies in which 
 they can be in the rest of fulfilling every love or end of 
 their existence. The whole Spiritual World is such a 
 cause, or like such a soul, tending with a constant and 
 most powerful tendency to embody itself in the sub- 
 stances and matters of the natural world. In the light 
 of this teaching, it is plainly to be seen that every good 
 
148 CONVERSATIONS ON ED UCA HON 
 
 from the Lord tends to live iu a truth, every truth in a 
 rational cognition, and every cognition in a scientific, 
 every scientific in a sensitive of the sensual mind, and 
 every sensitive in an object of the world of matter. 
 The actual fulfillment of this tendency, however, does 
 not depend on the effort itself, but on the inmost prin- 
 ciple and on the quality of the soul from which it pro- 
 ceeds. For, as we are taught : 
 
 Interior tru lis may indeed be inseminated with scientific, 
 but the truths within them do not have life before there is good 
 in them. Life is in good, and from good in truths, and thus 
 from good by truths in scientifics; then good is like a soul to 
 truths, and by truths to scientifics, which last named are like a 
 body.— A a 6077. 
 
 Good from the Divine Good of the Lord is Use, and 
 this is of the will with man. It is what man loves, de- 
 sires, and does when opportunity offers. And use is 
 nothing but charity toward the neighbor. Truths, there- 
 fore, are really living causes, productive of effects in 
 man only so far as they are made alive by charity to- 
 ward the neighbor. The same is true of scientifics and 
 of things sensual, as inferior forms of truth. When 
 the end of use is in them, they become so many forms 
 of charity, by which the love of the neighbor comes into 
 fullness and power, and in which it exists as a soul in 
 its body. 
 
ORDER OF LIFE 149 
 
 From these tilings it is evidc nt that the true order of 
 liumau loving, thinking, and doing is, that truths are 
 to be received from the Lord by Revelation, and to be 
 taken into the understanding from and by an affection 
 which is of the love of the will. This affection is in 
 man a good which desires and seeks its consort. It goes 
 without explanation that the form of the consort taken 
 into the house will be according to the quality of the 
 suing affection. The man acquires knowledges and 
 scientifics adapted to the performance of the use which 
 he has in end. If the use be genuine charity toward 
 the neighbor, the truth which he receives from Revela- 
 tion will in him take on the form of natural intelligence, 
 that is to say, will be formed in and according to the 
 light of the world, i. e., according to what is of common 
 sense and adequate to the doing of things in the natural 
 world. In such a case the light of Heaven, which is 
 Truth revealed, shines into the light of the world, which 
 is natural intelligence; and the warmth of Heaven, 
 which is love toward the neighbor, makes both alive, 
 conjoins them by a common affection, and produces from 
 this conjunction, a charity in act, or a Use. 
 
 In the Arcana we are taught as follows : 
 
 It is good from which truths are, and truths from good from 
 which scientifics are; thus the latter are derived and produced 
 from the former; but still good is the all in all in the products 
 and derivatives, because they are from good. The case is similar 
 
150 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 witli end, cause, and effect ; tlie end is the all of the cause, and 
 the cause is the all of the effect, whence it follows that the end 
 is the all of the effect ; insomuch that if the end or final cause 
 be taken away, there will be neither efficient cause nor effect. 
 In like manner do the celestial, spiritual, and natural succeed 
 each other; from the celestial is all the Spiritual, and from the 
 Spiritual is all the natural, that is to say, from the celestial by 
 the Spiritual; that is called celestial with man which is of the good 
 of love, spiritaal which is of the truth of faith thence, and natural which 
 is of the scientific; the scientific is natural, because the scientific 
 is truth appearing in the light of the world, but the truth of 
 faith, so far as it is of faith with man [is truth appearing] in 
 the light of Heaven. From these things it may be evident how 
 the one is produced and derived from the other, and that the 
 first is the all in the products and derivatives, insomuch that if 
 the first be taken aw;iy, the things thence succeeding will perish. 
 That the Divine is the first of all, every one may know who 
 enjoys any faculty of perception; wherefore this is the all in 
 all of the order of things, thus in all the things of g od and 
 truth, wliicli make heaven, and which make the life of heaven 
 with man. — A G. 9568. 
 
 This Divine teachiug makes it evident, on the one 
 hand, that unless there be an affection of good or of use 
 in the heart, there can be no genuine truths in the inter- 
 nal mind, and no genuine scientific in the external mind, 
 and, on the other hand, that the presence of such an af- 
 fection will impart to truths and scientifics a certain soft- 
 ness and pliancy, in consequence of which they can easily 
 be disposed in order for application to the end designed, 
 
ORDER OF LIFE. 151 
 
 and thus come into a heavenly form. Truth in the heav- 
 enly form, as it is in the mind of an angel, has this char- 
 acteristic, that it is always at the disposal of good affec- 
 tions, and ever serves them freely in their coming into 
 act. The angel thinks as he loves, and acts as he thinks, 
 from love. His understanding does not resist his will, 
 but, like a married partner, receives the life of the will 
 into itself, aud provides that it be continued as a life in 
 its degree and plane, and thence in lower degrees and 
 planes, until it appears embodied in the full form and 
 power of an existing word or deed. And this last is the 
 corresponding external of that affection, in which it ap- 
 pears and is represented. Hence it is that the outward 
 form and existence of an angel, with all their surround- 
 ings, are altogether representative of his internal life of 
 love and thought. (See A. C. 7068 aud 5423.) The 
 order of human life, therefore, effected by means of the 
 faculty of receiving the truth of good, begins in charity 
 from the Lord, by which alone faith in the understand- 
 ing can be vivified and made to minister and serve, and 
 by faith the scientifics of the natural mind. In the way 
 of this order, charity products use and terminates in use, 
 in w^hich is the ultimate existence of its heavenly form 
 — for every angel is a form of use, and every man of the 
 church is a form of use. 
 
 Tlie faculty of receiving the truth of good and the good of 
 truth is spoken of, because none others are in that faculty ex- 
 
152 CONVERSA TIOKS ON ED UCATIOK 
 
 cept those who live the life of charity ; this life gives that fac- 
 ulty. Tliey greatly err who believe that faith without charity 
 can give this quality, for faith without charity is hard and re- 
 sisting, and rejects all influx from the Lord ; but charity with faith 
 is yielding and soft, and receives tlie influx; thence it is that 
 charity gives that faculty, but not faith without cliarity ; and 
 because charity gives that faculty, it is also that which saves; 
 for they who are saved are not saved by charity from themselves, 
 but by charity from the Lord, consequently by the faculty of 
 receiving it [^. e., charity]. — A. C. 8321. 
 
 Therefore, inasmuch as the kingdom of the Lord is 
 a kingdom of uses which are ends of loves, the order of 
 human life which begins in love and charity terminates 
 in the kiugdom of the Lord, for which man was created. 
 It is written : 
 
 Tlie kingdom of the Lord, which is the Spiritual World, is a 
 kingdom of uses, and uses there are ends; thus it is a kingdom 
 of ends; but ends there succeed each other in various order, and 
 are liUevvi e so consociated. The ends which succeed are cjlled 
 mediate ends, but the ends which are consociated are called con- 
 sociateends ; all these ends are mutually and subordinately so con- 
 joined tiuittlieyrespectoneendjwhicliisthe universal of all ; this 
 end is the Lord, and in heaven with its recipients, it is love and 
 faith in Him; love theie is the end of all wills, and faith is the 
 end of all thoughts, wiiich are of the understanding. When all 
 and single things have respect to one end, they are held in an 
 ini*eparable connection and make a one ; for they are under the 
 aspect, government, and Providence of One, who bends all to 
 Himself according to the laws of subordination and consociation, 
 
ORDER OF LIFE. 153 
 
 and thus conjoins tlieni to Himself, and at the same time mutu- 
 ally to their cnnsociates, and tli<7s in turn conjoins them to one 
 another. Hence it is that tlie faces of all in lie.iven are ever 
 turned to the Lord who istlieStin tliere, and for that reason the 
 Centre of all aspects, and, what is wonderfid,lioNve er liie angels 
 may turn themselves, (n. 3638.) And because the Lord is in 
 the good of mutual love, and in the good of charity toward the 
 neighbor, for He loves all and by love conjoins all, therefore 
 they are also turned to tiie Lord by regarding their consociates 
 from that love.— ^. C. 9828. 
 
 See also n. 454 and n. 997, in the latter of which we 
 have the following teaching: 
 
 As regards use, the case is this : those who are in charity, 
 that is, in love toward the neighbor, for which love th* delight 
 of pleasures ha<s life, do not regard the fruition of pleasures ex- 
 cept for the sake of use; because charity is not anything but 
 the works of charity ; charity consists in exercise or in use ; he 
 who loves the neighbor as himself never perceives the de- 
 light of charity except in exercise or use; therefore, the life of 
 charity is the life of uses. Such is the life of the whole heaven 
 for the kingdom of the Lord, because it is the kingdom of mu- 
 tual love, is a kingdom of uses; therefore all enjoyment which 
 is from charity has its joy from use; the more exalted the use, 
 the greater the joy ; thence it is that, according to the essence 
 and quality of use, the angels have felicity from the Lord. 
 Such is the case with all enjoyment, the more exalted its use, 
 the greater is its joy ; as, for example, the delight of conjugial 
 love, because from it is the seminary of human society, and from 
 this tho kingdom of the Lord in the heavens, which use is the 
 
154 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 greatest of all, therefore there is in it so much of delight, as 
 said, that it is heavenly delight. Tlie case with other enjoy- 
 ments is similar, bat with a difierence according to the excel- 
 lence of uses; which uses are so numerous that they can hardly 
 be arranged into genera and species; the one of them respects 
 more nearly and directly, and the other more remotely and in- 
 directly, the kingdom of the Lord, or the Lord. From these 
 things it may also appear that all enjoymen s are conceded to 
 man, but for the sake of use, which [enjoyments] therefore, from 
 tlie use in which they are, partake of heavenly felicity and live 
 from it, with a difference. 
 
 It is thus, then, that the Lord vivifies faith in man, 
 and by faith the scientifics in the natural mind, by the 
 delights and pleasures which he receives from them, and 
 by the same means He leads man to save himself by the 
 truths of faith and science in doing uses. In the be- 
 ginning, and with many persons through their entire 
 life, this delight is only natural and of the quality of 
 lust, for it is felt in the act of acquiring and in the fact 
 of possessing scientifics and knowledges, without respect 
 to their application to uses. They have no thought that 
 they are only means which are to be emplo) ed for the 
 attainment of other and better things, such as rational 
 thought and judgment concerning what is right and 
 wrong, concerning duty toward the neighbor and the 
 Lord, etc. If this state be continued and confirmed, 
 man will be turned away from the Lord, and will also 
 divert his acquisitions from the service of the Lord, and 
 
ORDER OF LIFE. 155 
 
 therefore fr )m the very beginning and end of the order 
 of human life. And when scientifics and knowJedsres 
 are thus debased to what is merely natural and eaithly, 
 they cease to subserve any truly human use, and are 
 closed to all light from heaven, and finally to all life 
 from heaven, become cold, hard, resisting, and then die. 
 
 The opposite result follows upon the acquisition of 
 scientifics and knowledges for the sake of having the 
 life of man by means of them formed into a kingdom of 
 heaven. This end causes them to grow, to expaiKl, and 
 to become soft and flexible by frequent service and ap- 
 plication, being thereby opened to the influx of light 
 and life from the Lord. They are sought and acquired 
 not from any mere pleasure in possessing them, but from 
 the delight of possessing increased means of use to the 
 neighbor. From this end, and for this end, they are 
 loved ; and thus they are really loved according to the 
 excellence of the uses which they subserve, or according 
 as the Lord appears and is seen in them. (See A. C. 
 1472, also A. R. 200.) 
 
 The first use for which scientifics are to be acquired 
 is that man by means of them may learn to think. To 
 this end every man is gifted with a love of knowing and 
 with a delight flowing from the activity of that love. 
 When he has learned to think, he receives other gifts, 
 with their delights, in the exercise of the love of think- 
 ing, and making use of scientifics, followed by the love 
 
156 CONVERSA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 of reasoning from them and preparing them for use ; 
 which is a love of discovering their various applications ; 
 which is finally succeeded by the love and delight of 
 making actual applications of them and producing uses. 
 By means of this actual doing of scientifics, the naiural 
 man, who acts and does, is conjoined with the internal 
 man, who loves and thinks from knowledge, and in this 
 conjunction use and the love of use rules, and the scien- 
 tifics by means of which the state has been attained can 
 be laid aside to make way for others of a more interior 
 and excellent quality. (See A. C. 1487.) 
 
 Scientifics and knowledges are of true and real value 
 to man only so far as they are made subservient to a life 
 of love to the Lord and charity toward the neighbor ; 
 for these loves alone as ends constitute man a rational 
 being. We are taught that 
 
 The rational can never be conceived and born or formed 
 witliout scientifics and cognitions; but scientifics and cognitions 
 have use as an end, and if use, then also have they life as an 
 end, for all life is of uses because of ends. Unless tliey be learnt 
 for the sake of the life of uses, they we of no moment, because of.n^ 
 use; from them alone, that is from scientifics and cognitions 
 without the life of use, the rational becomes, as described, like 
 a wild ass, morose, pugnacious, leading a parched and dry life, 
 from a certain favor for truth, defiled by self-love; but when 
 they have use as an end, they draw life from uses, but a life of 
 such a quality as are the uses. They who acquire cognitions in 
 order that they may be perfected in the faith of love, because 
 
ordeh of life. 157 
 
 the true and very faith is love to the Lord and to the neighhor, 
 are in the use of all uses and receive spiritual and celestial life 
 from the Lord; and when they are in that life, tliey are in tlie 
 faculty of perceiving all things which are of the Lord's king- 
 dom; in this life are all the angels, and because they are in this 
 life, they are in very intelligence and wisdom. — A. C. 1964. 
 
 What man learns from the Word and its Spiritual 
 Doctrine, in order to be of use in his life, is to be insinu- 
 ated into what he learns from the world. Spiritual 
 science, from which he takes and forms his faith, is to 
 be introduced into the natural science, according to 
 which he regulates his actions; and this is done when 
 man's spiritual science is illustrated and confirmed by 
 the things of nature and of sense and the scientific ideas 
 thence obtained. 
 
 If there be w^ith man an affection of use, which is 
 alw^ays from a spiritual origin, this wall enter into the 
 mind with whatever spiritual sciences may be learnt, 
 and determine them into the plane of practical thought, 
 in which interior things are presented in objective forms. 
 Hence will spiritual perceptions and thoughts appear to 
 man as rational conclusions and orderly principles and 
 rules of action. By this conjunction of what is internal 
 and external, effected by a love of use, the rational mind 
 comes into form, and under the same impelling force 
 the new rational, which is to man a reason for action, 
 collects new scientifics as means and instrumentalities of 
 
158 CONVERSATIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 action, and with them inflows into the active and mov- 
 ing forces of the body and comf s forth embodied in word 
 and act. A full state of life ensues and man grows in 
 strength and stature. 
 
 The process by which this end is reached is compared 
 to that by which the digestive organs of ruminant ani- 
 mals prepare the herbs or grasses introduced into them 
 for nourishment and assimilation. 
 
 In Arcana Ccelestia we have this Divine teaching : 
 
 Man, from infancy even to childhood, and sometimes up to his 
 early adolescence, imbues goods and truths by instruction from 
 parents and teachers ; for at that time he seizes upon and be- 
 lieves those things in simplicity. The state of innocence pro- 
 motes them and fits them into the memory, but places them in 
 its first threshold ; for infantile and puerile innocence is not tiie 
 internal innocence which affects the rational, but it is external 
 innocence which affects only the exterior natural. . . . But 
 when man advances in age and begins to think, not as before — 
 from parents and teachers— but from himself, then he resumes, 
 and, as it were, ruminates [or chews again] the things wliicli he 
 had before learned and believed, and either confirms them or 
 doubts and denies them. If he confirms them, it is an indication 
 that he is in good ; and if he denies them, it is an indication that 
 he is in evil; but if he has doubts concerning them, it is an in- 
 dication that in a succeeding age he will accede either to the 
 affirmative or the negative. The things which a man seizes 
 upon and believes as an infant in his first age, and which after- 
 ward he either confirms or doubts or denies, are especially ihe 
 following: That God is; that He is One; that He has created all 
 
ORDER OF LIFE. 159 
 
 things ; that He rewards those who do well and punishes those who do 
 ill; that there is a life after death, and that the evil come into hell and 
 the good into heaven ; thus, that there is a \ell and a heaven; that the 
 life after death is eternal ; also, that man ought to pray daily — and 
 this humbly ; that the day of the Sabbath is to be kept holy ; that 
 parents are to be honored; that adultery is not to be committed, neither 
 murder nor theft, with many similar things. These things man 
 takes in and imbues from infancy ; but when he begins to think 
 from himself and to lead liimself, if he confirms them in him- 
 self and adds to them many otlier things that are more interior 
 still and lives according to them, then is it well with him ; but 
 if lie begins to infringe upon them and finally denies them — 
 although he lives according to them in externals for the sake of 
 the civil laws and for the sake of society — he is in evil. — A. C. 
 5135. 
 
 AM Doctrine is thus prepared for use in life; and 
 hence it may be evident how important it is that the, 
 natural mind and memory should be filled with true 
 scientifics aud knowledges, by means of which a true 
 rational may be formed. 
 
 This point is illustrated by many things in the Word 
 and its representative histories: as by the history of 
 Abraham and Hagar; the birth of Ishmael (the natural 
 rational); and afterward the birth of Isaac from Sarah 
 (^^e., the formation of the Divine Rational of the Lord's 
 Human, and respectwely the Spiritual Rational with 
 man); the going down into Egypt of the Sons of Jacob; 
 their preparation there for the wandering in the wilder* 
 
160 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION, 
 
 ness , their liberation and exodus, and their final introduc- 
 tion into the land of Canaan ; the Lord's being carried 
 into Egypt when an infant; His being again brought up 
 out of Egyptj and His further prep iration f -r the work 
 to b3 accompIiiliGd by the Divine in tha Human, etc., etc. 
 (See A. E. 654) Let it be well noted, therefore, that 
 the Kational of man, from which he thinks in the natural 
 man and in the natural life, can hi formed and grow in 
 strength and power only by a continual gathering and 
 taking in of the means of growth, namely, sciences and 
 coa;nitions. These are its ultimate food. 
 
 Perception, as such, does not flow into act with man, 
 not even into the uaderstandiug, in a;iy sense of its 
 being there his thought. In other words, man does not 
 think his perceptions, but he thinks from them; they 
 are a light in which he sees things more or less clearly, 
 and from this sight or understanding thinks them. The 
 celestial angels are in perception — but they think from 
 this perception, and by means of sciences make for them- 
 selves, as it were, spontaneously or instantaneously, a 
 celestial rational from which they act. Word and deed, 
 with them, appear as one with affection and thought. 
 With them, as with the spiritual angels, there must be 
 an external plane on which the internal can act, the 
 difference between them being in the mode of action. 
 Man cannot rely on his perceptions alone or the 
 thoughts from them for guidance in life; he needs to 
 
ORDER OF LIFE. 161 
 
 add to thera knowledges of particulars relating to them, 
 and to these the single things of science, in order that 
 the love of use may have a way of advancing to its per- 
 fect issue and effect, and be supplied with means of 
 action in the way, and in the ultimate in which it termi- 
 nates. (See A. a 5293, 6073, 454, 7038.) 
 
 All thiusrs external or natural are created and formed 
 for the service of things internal or spiritual, so that the 
 latter may by them come into existence. When they 
 cease to perform this service, or when the internal is re- 
 moved, external things perish. This is illustrated l)y facts 
 commonly known concerning the body of man in rela- 
 tion to his spirit, and the same may be seen to be true 
 of scientifics in relation to truths, and of truths in rela- 
 tion to goods. Scientifics are like bodies to truths,*and 
 truths are as bodies to goods. And both, truths and 
 goods, act according to the f )rmation of their instru- 
 mental bodies. Bodies are not essential things regarded 
 in themselves, but they are nevertheless essential to the 
 existence and the operation of their indwelling spirits 
 and souls, and therefore indispensable means to ends. 
 Hence the importance to be attached to the right for- 
 mation of scientifics in the external mind and to a like 
 right formation of truths in the internal mind. Thus, 
 whilst we are cautioned not to confound ends wi h 
 means, and things instrumental with things respectively 
 essential, we may also observe caution, lest we be led 
 11 
 
162 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 into error concerning things called essential and make 
 more of them than belongs to them. " In the created 
 universe there is not any essential in itself. In the 
 Lord alone is the essential in itself. All things created 
 by Him are only instrumentals ;" they are means pro- 
 vided for the attainment of His ends. Such means, and 
 no more, are men; such means, and no more, are the 
 Angels. And yet created things, respectively to each 
 other, may be as essential aud instrumental, because the 
 one may act by means of the other, and thus successively 
 to the last effect. All goods are means to the Divine 
 ends, but ends to the truths by which they act, as these 
 again are ends to the scientifics by which they are car- 
 ried on to their ultimation. {A. C. 5948.) 
 
 NovVjin the Providence of the Lord, the effect of man's 
 lookiijg upon ends as all important, and upon means as a 
 secondary consequence, will ever be that the latter are 
 supplied in superabundance, according to the words of 
 the Lord: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God aud 
 His justice, and all these shall be added uuto you." 
 (Matth. vi, 83 ; see also A. E. 1193.) For they who attri- 
 bute all to the Lord and nothing to themselves have 
 "the faculty of growing wise, that is, of perceiving 
 what is true and good, of choosing what is suitable, 
 and of applying it to the uses of life." {A. C. 10,227 
 10,336.) That such is the order of the Divine Pro- 
 vidence may be evident from this fact of Heavenly 
 
ORDER OF LIFE. 163 
 
 Life, that " when any spirit who is iu good, and there- 
 by in the faculty, comes into an angelic society, he at 
 the same time comes into all the intelligence and sci- 
 ence of that society in which he had not previously 
 been, and lie then knows no otherwise than that he 
 had known and understood them before from himself, 
 but when he reflects he knows that they are given 
 him gratis by the Lord through that angelic society." 
 {A. a 5649, 5661, 5949.) When the things of in- 
 struction and education are intelligently arranged and 
 applied in accordance with their relations, and with 
 due respect to the order in which they proceed from 
 the Lord, they will hold the mind of the Teacher in 
 this order and also impress the same ordar on the 
 mind of the child. The ladder of ascent to Heaven 
 and of descent from Heaven is planted firmly on the 
 ground of the young mind, and provision is made for 
 a slow but sure advancement from degree to degree 
 of thinking and willing to the successive conjunctions 
 of willing and thinking, for which it was created. 
 
 From this view of the case it becomes clear that the 
 principle stated, is quite as applicable to the ord&r and 
 arrangement of the various sciences and knowledges to 
 be imparted, as to the methods of instruction. All 
 sciences and knowledges are instrumentals, and not es- 
 sentials. They are not ends, but means to ends ; and 
 yet they differ greatly in relative value, according to the 
 
164 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 use and the degree of the use which they are to subserve. 
 This relative value of sciences and knowledges needs, 
 therefore, to be determined before they can be placed in 
 the order and subordination which they ought to occupy 
 in the work of instruction. To effect this determination, 
 it is requisite that uses and their degrees be well con- 
 sidered and understood, and no less the human mind 
 itself and its degrees. Which, as the subjects of instruc- 
 tion, need to be put into a true relation to means of uses, 
 and thereby to uses themselves. Uses, however, because 
 they proceed as ends from the Lokd, will necessarily 
 constitute the head of all the knowledges and sciences 
 that serve as means for opening the human to the light 
 inflowing from Heaven. And for this reason is it of 
 order that all sciences and knowledges be classified and 
 arranged according to the eminence of the uses which 
 they are to serve, and that the quality of these uses de- 
 termines the place of each form of knowledge in the 
 general scheme of knowledges, and also the mode of in- 
 troducing it into the mind of the child. , 
 
 This conclusion brings us face to face with an obliga- 
 tion, that can by no means be avoided or put aside — the 
 obligation namely, to attempt a rearrangement of human 
 ■sciences and knowledges v:hich shall bring them into 
 conformity with the teachings of the Divine Truth, as 
 this is now revealed by the Lord to His New Church. 
 
REARRANGEMENT OF SCIENTIFICS. 165 
 
 REARRANGEMENT OF SCIENTIFICS. 
 
 Instruction by Teachers aud in schools is given in 
 the form of scieutifics, or of things learnt aud known 
 from what belongs to the world, oi of truths presented 
 in external, worldly forms. We are taught that 
 
 Man has a Natural Mind and a Rational Mind. The Natural 
 Mind is in his External Man, the Rational Mind in the Inter- 
 nal. Scientifics are trutlis of the Natural Mind, which are said 
 to be then "in their own house" when they are conjoined witii 
 good ; for good and truth constitute together one house, as hus- 
 band and wife.— ^. C. 4973. 
 
 In a house there are husbaud and wife, with children 
 and servants. The children are of various ages and the 
 servants of various ranks. There are also uses and 
 functions in a household, both general and particular, 
 and in addition, the household, as a whole aud in re- 
 spect to its parts, has certain relations to society, to the 
 State, and to the Church. In such a house, as we are 
 further instructed, good is really the first-born, while the 
 appearance is that truth is the first-born, and that from 
 this is the succession in the mind, as a family, and not from 
 good,i. e., that the order of the mental household is deter- 
 mined from Truth. The error of such a conclusion from 
 this appearance is placed in clear light by the teaching: 
 That good is really tlie first-born, but truth apparently, may 
 further be illustrated by the uses and members in the liuraan 
 body. It appears as if the members and organs were the prior 
 
166 CONVERSATIONS ON ED UCATION. 
 
 and that their uses follow after them ; for they are first presented 
 before the eye, and they are also known before uses. But still 
 uses are before the members and organs, for these are from uses 
 and are thus formed according to uses ; yea, use itself frma them 
 and adapts them to itself. If this were not so, all and single 
 things in man would never conspire into one with such una- 
 nimity. The case is similar with good and truth. It appears as 
 if truth were prior, but good is, and good forms truths and adapts 
 them to itself; wherefore truths, regarded in themselves, are 
 nothing else than goods formed or forms of good. Truths, also, 
 respectively to good, are like the viscera and the fibres in the 
 body, respectively to use. Good, likewise, regarded in itself is 
 nothing but use. — A. C. 4926. 
 
 And thus, again, it is evident that use when it appears 
 takes on the human form, and that the order of uses and 
 of the scientifics of uses is the order of the Natural Mind 
 of man. Further, from the order of life, according to 
 which uses precede forms, being themselves the ends of 
 the existence of the organs and members of mind and 
 body, it may be seen that the inflowing Divine Life does 
 not apply itself to the forms but to the uses of life, and 
 by these to the forms in a series. 
 
 Again, since uses, regarded in themselves, are spiritual, 
 and the forms of uses are natural, we conclude that the 
 arrangement of scientifics as means of use must proceed 
 primarily from a conception of their spiritual applica- 
 tion, and, secondarily, from an understanding of their 
 natural application. Only in this way can they be set 
 
BEABBANGEMENT OF SCIENTIFICS. 167 
 
 in order to receive truly the life and light proceeding 
 from the Lord, only in this way can the house be made 
 ready and furnished for the reception of the soul and for 
 the conjoint life of the will and understanding in all the 
 uses of heavenly good. On this subject we have the 
 following instruction : 
 
 The form of the Divine Love, which is Life, is the form of 
 Uses in their whole complex, because the form of love is a form 
 of use, for the subjects of love are uses; love wills to do goods, 
 and goods are nothing else than uses, and because the Divine 
 Love infinitely transcends, therefore is its form the form of use 
 in its whole complex. That it is actually the LORD IIims.elf who 
 is with the Angels in the Heavens and with men on the Earths, 
 and in those with whom He is conjoined by love; likewise that 
 He is in them, although He is infinite and unc eate, while 
 angel and man are created and finite, cannot be comprehended 
 by the natural man so long as lie cannot be withdrawn by illus- 
 tration from the Lord from a natural idea concerning space 
 and thus be led into light in respect to spiritual essence, which, 
 regarded in itself, is the Divine Itself proceeding, and accom- 
 modated to every angel, as well to the angel of the supreme 
 heaven, as to the angel of the lowest heaven, and also to every 
 man, as well the wise as the simple. For the Divine which 
 proceeds from the Lord is Divine from firsts even to ultimates. 
 Ultimates are what are called flesh and bone, and that these 
 were also made Divine by the Lord, He taught His disciples, 
 in Luke xxiv, 39, *' A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see 
 me have." .... But how the Divine proceeding, which is 
 the very and only Life, can be in things created and finite, shall 
 
168 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 now be said. Life does not apply itself to man, but only to uses in 
 him. Uses regarded in themselves are spiritual, and the forms 
 of uses which are members, organs, and viscera are natural, but 
 nevertheless they are series of uses, so that there is not in any 
 member, organ, and viscus a particle, or the least of a particle, 
 which is not a use in form. The Divine Life applies itself to 
 uses themselves in each series and thereby gives life to eacli 
 term — thence man has the life, which is called his soul. This truth 
 appears indeed transcendant with man, but not with the angels; 
 nevertheless, it does not so transcend the human understanding, 
 but that it can be seen, as it were, through a window by those 
 who are willing; it does not transcend my understanding, which 
 is rationally illustrated. — D. L. in A. E. iv. 
 
 Works with man are not full before God unless the Lord is 
 conjoined with the truths from good, which are from Him with 
 man.— ^. B. 160. ^ 
 
 Life, when it is in its full, is said to "stani on its feet," and it 
 is in its full when the natural lives from the spiritual, for the 
 ultimate of the life of man is in his natural; this ultimate is 
 like a basis to its interior and superior things, for these term- 
 inate in the ult'mate and there subsist; wherefore, unless life 
 be in the ultimate it is not full, thus not perfect; and besides all 
 interiors or superiors co-exist in the ultimate, as in their own 
 simultaneous [form] ; thence, also, sucli as is the ultihiate, such 
 are the interiors or superiors, for these accommod^ te themselves 
 to the ultimate which receive them. — A. E. 666. 
 
 In the Treatise on the Divine Love ix, appended to 
 the Apocalypse Explained, we read as follows : 
 
 That the Divine Love is life itself, and that hence love with 
 man is his life, many things testify, but the most distinguished of 
 
REARRANGEMENT OF SCIENTIFICS. 169 
 
 those testimonies is that the spirit of man is nothing but affec- 
 tion, and that hence man after death becomes an affection ; if he 
 be an angel of heaven, an affection of good use, and if a spirit 
 of hell, an affection of evil use. Hence it is that the whole 
 heaven is distinguished into societies according to tlie genera 
 and species of affections, and in like manner hell according to 
 opposites; therefore, whetiier we speak of affections or of socie- 
 ties in the Spiritual World, it is the same tiling. By affections 
 afe meant the continuations and derivations of love. Love may 
 be likened to a fountain, and affections to the streams flowing 
 from it • or it may be compared to the heart, and the affections 
 to the vessels thence derived and continued; and it is known 
 that the vessels wiiich convey the blood from the heart in every 
 point resemble their heait, so as to be, as it were, its extensions; 
 hence the circuhitio s of the blood from ilie heart by the arteries, 
 and from the arteries into tiie veins, and again into the heart. 
 Such also are affections, for they are derived and continued from 
 the love, and produce uses in forms, and in them progress from 
 the first of uses to their ultima tes, and from these again they re- 
 turn to the love from which they are. 
 
 From these things it is evident that affection in its essence is love, 
 and that use is love in its own form. Hence it results that the ob- 
 jects or ends of affections are uses, and that thence their subjects 
 are uses, and tliat the forms themselves in which tiiey exist are 
 effects, wliich are tlieir effigies in wliich they advance from tlie 
 first end to the last, and from the last end to the first, and by 
 which they perform their works, offices, and exercises. Who 
 cannot see from these things that affection alone is not anything, 
 and that it becomes sometliing by being in a use ; and that neitlier 
 is the affection of use anything but an idea, unless it be in a 
 
170 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION 
 
 form ; and that the affection of use in a form is nothing else than 
 a potency ; but that affection then first becomes something when it is 
 in actf This [act] is the use itself which is meant, which in its 
 essence is affection. Now, since affections are the essences of 
 uses, and uses are their subjects, it follows that there are as many 
 affections as there are uses. — D. L. in A. E. ix. 
 
 From this teaching it is evident that we can form no 
 distinct and permanent idea of Divine Love and Wisdom, 
 apart from Divine Use, which is Divine Act, inasmuch 
 as Love cannot rest nor Wisdom exist except in doing 
 and acting. And inasmuch as Love, Wisdom, and Use 
 are the essentials of the Divine Man, the Creator, Former, 
 and Maker of all things, it is further evident that love, 
 wisdom, and use make man into the image and accord- 
 ing to the likeness of the Divine Man, and that these 
 three together propagate man. Fructification, therefore, 
 propagation, and prolification are from the influx of the 
 Love, Wisdom, and Use of the Lord immediately into 
 the souls of men, mediately into the souls of animals, and 
 still more mediately into the inmosts of vegetables ; but 
 they are effected in ultimates from the first, that is, from 
 the Love of the Lord, which is one with the Use of the 
 Lord. Wherefore, all things in the created universe are 
 procreated and formed from Use as a first end, in use as a 
 middle end or means, and for use as a last end or effect 
 (See a X. 183; also n. 77.) 
 
 And, further, since all things of the created universe 
 
REARRANGEMENT OF SCIENTIFICS. 171 
 
 exist for the sake of man, who is a recipient of spiritual 
 life from the Lord, therefore is man a form of all uses, 
 and all the uses of the created universe correspond to the 
 uses of which man is a form. (See D. L. W. 298.) 
 
 Proceeding on the basis of these fundamental truths, 
 we remark : 
 
 1st. That Life from the Lord comes into ultimate 
 form only when it terminates in and is clothed with 
 substances and matters corresponding to itself. When 
 so clothed, Life is a use in ultimate fullness and com- 
 pleteness of form and actuality, from which it can again 
 return into Itself. Men, animals, and vegetables are 
 such forms of uses clothed in substances and matters, 
 which, in their respective degrees, can receive the life 
 proceeding from the Lord, look to their Creator and 
 Preserver, and conjoin Him with His great works, that 
 is to say, they are forms which He can cause to do 
 these things. The sun, the atmospheres, and the earths 
 are not forms of use in the same sense as those just men- 
 tioned. Tlie ends of their existence are that they may 
 be means to the ends or uses for which men, animals, 
 and vegetables were created. They are forms of mediate 
 use by which the other forms of use are produced and 
 continually effect the object of their creation. For 
 uses, and, therefore also, the forms of uses, ascend by 
 degrees from the most ultimate to man, and by man to 
 God the Creator, from Whom they aro. Hence are 
 
172 CONVERSA TIONS ON ED UGATION. 
 
 uses iu degrees, according to their more or less proxi-. 
 mate relation to man, by whom they ascend to God the 
 Creator. (See D. L. W. 65 to 68, 307, 308 ; H. H. 96 ; 
 T. a R. 694.) 
 
 2d. That, from use as the very life of all things pro- 
 duced in form, there will be within them a something 
 corresponding to itself. Life is activity from the Di- 
 vine, which is activity itself, and this cannot rest until 
 it has fulfilled itself. Wherefore, along the whole line 
 of its proceeding, life imparts from its activity to the 
 Sun and atmospheres and substances of the whole Spirit- 
 ual World and to the Natural Sun and atmospheres and 
 substances and matters of the earth, a perpetual effort to 
 do what life is doing — to produce uses in forms. From 
 this conatus or effort so derived spiritual substances and 
 natural substances and matters, in their several degrees, 
 have within them a quality and ability to receive influx 
 from the Divine and to produce uses, and by means of 
 this effort, thus proper to the substances and matters of 
 the Earth, it is that uses, which in the highest sense are 
 ends of life from Love, take to themselves ultimate 
 forms, in which they are like a soul in its body, and to 
 all parts of which body they again impart the likeness 
 of the whole, in this that they also are uses in forms. 
 
 3d. The first effect resulting from this activity im- 
 parted to natural substances and matters as an effort or 
 conatus is, as we are msXiuctQ^, the /production of vege- 
 
REARRANGEMENT OF SCIENTIFICS. 173 
 
 tables from seeds; a second result is the germination of 
 plants for the nutrition of animals; a third is the produc- 
 tion of fruits, seeds, and plants for the nutrition of man. 
 These successive forms of use, proceeding from succes- 
 sively more interior efforts in the substances and matters 
 of the earth, are all from life, which, inflowing into the 
 property of substance called conatus or effort, produces 
 in them changes and modifications, from which result 
 forces which are called living forces, because they pro- 
 duce effects which are uses themselves in. last forms. 
 {A. C. 8603.) It is clear that the forces operative in 
 producing such results are not in themselves living 
 forces any more than the effort from which they proceed 
 is in itself a living eff jrt, inasmuch as they are proxi- 
 mately from the atmospheres of the natural sun, which 
 are actuated by influx from the Sun of the Spiritual 
 World. The living effort is in the use itself, in which is 
 an end of the Divine Life, and the living force is in the 
 atmospheres of the Spiritual Sun, which passes over by 
 means of the natural sun and its atmospheres in the sub- 
 stances and matters of the earth that are actuated into 
 ultimate forms and contain all prior principles in their 
 order. (See D. i. TT. 310, 311.) 
 
 If we rightly consider these teachings we shall dis- 
 cover how they gradually offer to us the principles and 
 facts necessary for a re-arrangement of natural Scien- 
 tifics. We observe that in all the forms, produced as 
 
174 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 above stated, there is an image of the Creation of the 
 Universe. This may be seen by an examination of them 
 in the three general divisions of Nature, representing the 
 trinal order of all forms of use, and called the Mineral, 
 Vegetable, and Animal Kingdoms. In the Mineral 
 Kingdom there are, first, substances and matters in least 
 parts, second, substances and matters in their aggrega- 
 tions or masses, and, third, vegetable and animal dust, 
 added to continual exhalations and evaporations from 
 vegetables and animals. When actuated by the heat 
 and light of the Sun, by means of the atmospheres of 
 the earth, these substances and matters become produc- 
 tive, or, there are created from and by them, by the 
 efforts and forces in them, uses in forms, or ends in effects. 
 (See D. L. W. 313.) 
 
 The very first production from these earths, or sub- 
 stances and matters, were seeds, or the beginnings of the 
 forms of use of the next higher natural Kingdom. This 
 production lay in the very nature of the effort pro- 
 ceeding from the Divine Influent Life, which necessarily 
 effects an ascent from the lower to the higher. All the 
 forces of life tend upward to their Source. For life is 
 Love, and Love draws to itself all forms that can be ac- 
 tuated by its ends and fulfill its designs. 
 
 And thus are we further instructed concerning the 
 image of Creation that appears in the forms of uses in 
 the Vegetable Kingdom, that as their firsts are seeds, so 
 
REARRANGEMENT OF SCIENTIFICS. lib 
 
 their ultimates are stems covered with bark, and that by 
 the bark, which is the last of the stem, they tend again 
 to seeds, which are their firsts. In the stems covered 
 with bark there is an image of the globe covered with 
 earths, from which uses are created and formed. Vege- 
 tations are effected by means of the barks or coverings 
 of the roots, or by an upward tendency through them 
 continued around the stems and branches toward the 
 iuitiaments of fruits, and afterward by the fruits to the 
 seeds. There is thus a progressive formation from firsts 
 to ultimates, aud from ultimates again to firsts, and in 
 all this progression is the eud of producing fruits and 
 seeds, whleh are uses. The heat, light, and atmospheres 
 of the earth conduce nothing to this image of creation, 
 but only the heat, light, aud atmospheres of the Sun of 
 the Spiritual World; these bear that image in therriy and 
 clothe it with the forms of uses of the Vegetable Kingdom. 
 The heat and light and atmospheres of the Natural 
 World, as we are taught, only open the seeds^ keep their 
 productions in a state of expansion, and induce upon 
 them matters which fix them; but this they do not effect 
 by means of forces from their sun, but by means of 
 forces from the Spiritual Sun, by which they are per- 
 petually impelled. The image of creation is spiritual, 
 but in order that it may appear and perform use in the 
 Natural World, and stand fixed and endure, it must be 
 materialized, that is to say, filled up with matters from 
 that world. (See D. L. W. 314 and 315.) 
 
176 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 A similar image of Creation is seen in the forms of uses 
 of the Animal Kingdom, as that the body is formed from 
 seed in the ovum and womb, which is its ultimate, and 
 that this when it grows up produces new seeds. .... 
 The seeds are the beginnings, the womb is like the 
 earth, the state before birth is like the state of the seed 
 in the earth when it puts forth a root ; the state after 
 birth until prolification is like the growth of the tree to 
 the state of its fructification. Thus there is in the forms 
 of animals also, a progression from firsts to ultimates, and 
 from ultimates to firsts. 
 
 In man there is a similar progression of love by wisdom 
 to uses, and of the will by the understanding to acts, 
 and of charity by faith, to works. The will and under- 
 standing and charity and faith are the firsts, the acts 
 and works are the ultimates, from which by means of 
 the delights of uses there is effected a return to their 
 firsts. .... The delights of acts and words are what 
 are called delights of use. A like progression exists in 
 the most purely organical forms of man's affections and 
 thoughts ; in his brains are those stellar forms, which 
 are called cineritious substances, from which go forth 
 .fibres by the medullary substance through the neck into 
 the body, proceeding to the last things there, and from 
 there returning to their firsts, by means of the blood- 
 vessels. Similar to this is the progression of all affections 
 and thoughts, ^vhich are changes and variations of the 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 177 
 
 state of these forms and substances ; for the fibres going 
 forth from these forms or substances are comparatively 
 like the atmospheres from the Spiritual Sun, which are 
 the continents of heat and light; and acts from the 
 body are like the things produced by the atmospheres 
 from the earths, the delights of the uses of which return 
 to the source from which they originate. (See D. L. W. 
 316, also T. O.i?. 746.) 
 
 SCIENTIFICS, SENSUAL, RATIONAL, SPIRITUAL— THEIR 
 FORMATION AND ORDER. 
 
 As we have seen, an image of creation appears in all 
 the forms of uses in the world. But creation bears the 
 image of the Creator, who is the Divine Man. There- 
 fore there is also an image of man in all the forms of 
 uses in the world. Inasmuch as the infinity and eter- 
 nity of the Lord are with man in the love and wisdom 
 from which he has affection and thought, and comes 
 into the image of the Divine, it is evident tliat this 
 image is with man not only as a form of use, natural 
 and spiritual, but also by impression from without, that 
 is, from the natural world around him. Thus by influx 
 from the Lord, and through the Spiritual World, act- 
 ing on the organic forms of mind and their spiritual and 
 natural substances, man is enabled to receive impres- 
 sions from without and to conceive ideas. In other 
 words, he thus comes into the exercise of the faculty of 
 thinking; and in the process of the formation of this 
 12 
 
178 CONVEESATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 faculty, as well as in the exercise of the same, and its 
 manifold uses, we may see not only an image of all crea- 
 tion, but also a representation of the order in which all 
 uses are formed in creation. Thought and the products 
 of thought, such as sciences and knowledges, exhibit in 
 general a beginning from first things, a proceeding by 
 intermediates, and a termination in ultimates, into which 
 the first things come with their fullness and power. As 
 the first productions from the newly created earths, 
 whilst they were still recent and in their simplicity, 
 were seeds {D. L. and W. 312), so will the first im- 
 pression made on the human sensory by these earths 
 and their products be a seed image impressed on the 
 substances of the natural memory, by influx of the 
 Divine into which, as a receptive plane, will be effected 
 the production of an idea of thought, i, e., of an image in 
 a plane above that of the first impression, and by means 
 of this, other images or ideas of thought in successively 
 higher or more interior planes, until that seed image has 
 grown up and returned to God from whom it has come 
 forth, not as a simple seed, but as a whole spiritual 
 tree from root to fruit, having new seeds capable of 
 indefinite reproductions. Hence it is said that sensual 
 things, or things that enter into the mind by means of 
 the senses, and those from images, which are thoughts, 
 are seeds from which grow up scientifics, and that these are 
 seeds from which proceed rational ideas and thoughts, to 
 beconie on their part other seeds of a higher quality capa- 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS, 179 
 
 ble of receiving an influx of the light and heat of heaven 
 for the production of spiritual ideas and thoughts, from 
 which, under the same influences, proceed celestial ideas 
 and thoughts, as fruits containing new and more won- 
 derful seeds. In this there is an image of the infinity 
 and eternity of the Creator in man, to which corresponds 
 the image of this infinity and eternity as seen in all the 
 ultimate things of Creation. From this we can also see 
 how the uses of all things created by the Lord are 
 transferred into man for whom they exist: first in time, 
 into his body, and afterward into his mind *' in the 
 order and degree and respect in which they refer them- 
 selves to man, and by man to the Lord, from whom 
 they are." {D. L. and W. 327.) For the natural world, 
 when in order,serves the spiritual world, and the spiritual 
 world serves the Lord in the fulfillment of His ends of 
 love, and in effecting **His conjunction of Himself with 
 His great work." (16., see also D. L. and W. 318, 328, 
 329.) 
 
 Thought, therefore, is formed within the thinking fac- 
 ulty of man by means of the transference of the uses of cre- 
 ated things, together with an image of Creation and the 
 Creator, through the senses, first into the body and after- 
 ward into the mind. On thoughts so formed, are im- 
 pressed, in addition to uses and forms of created things, 
 also their ends, means, and effects in order. These 
 impressions, as they are the beginnings of thought, 
 necessarily flow into and give quality to all the products 
 
"180"^ CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATWN. 
 
 of human thought, which are scientifics and cognitions, 
 and all the succeeding forms of intelligence and wisdom. 
 And thus it appears that, all unconscious as man may be 
 of the fact, there are collated in thes.^nsual things of his 
 mind the beginning, of all ideas concerning the Lord as 
 the Divine man, concerning man as His image in greater, 
 less, and least forms on Earth and in Heaven ; concern- 
 ing Heaven, in which man is conjoined with the Lord, 
 as the end of Creation ; and concerning Creation itself, 
 as the Divine means provided for the accomplishment 
 of this one end. (/). L. and W. 328, 329.) 
 
 From these things it is evident tlmt whatever material, 
 received from the world without, enter into the structure 
 of human thought and knowledge, all the scientifics from 
 which is made man's knowing will have respect to three 
 things, namely: 1, man's body; 2, man's reason; 3, 
 man's spirit. Man is to be conjoined with the Lord by 
 becoming spiritual, for " the Lord is Spii*it, and they 
 that worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth." 
 {John iv, 24.) But no one is spiritual who is not first 
 rational, and no one is truly rational who has not a 
 sound or whole body. These three, we are instructed, 
 " are like a house ; the body is like the foundation, the 
 rational is like the house built upon it, the spiritual is 
 like those things which are in the house, and conjunction 
 with the Lord is like dwelling in it. Hence it appears 
 in what order, degree, and respect the uses which are the 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 181 
 
 mediate ends of creation refer themselves to man, namely : 
 for sustaining his body , for perfecting his rational, and for 
 receiving a spiritual from the Lord." (Z>. L. and W, 
 3330 ; cf. C. L. 18 ; D.P. 220; T. C. E. 746, 394.) 
 
 These teachings furnish an idea of the order in which 
 scientifics exist from the uses which they subserve, as 
 there are uses which are firct in the order of time, aud 
 which relate to the substance of the body, uses which 
 succeed and which are for the perfecting of the rational, 
 and uses which follow, for receiving a spiritual from the 
 Lord. Thus there are scientifics which have reference to 
 the first uses, which are called sensual scientifics ; scien- 
 tifics relating to the second order of uses, which are 
 called rational scientifics; aud scientifics which refer to 
 the third order of uses, and which are called spiritual 
 scientifics. So we carry forward our inquiries and ask 
 what sensual scientifics are. We find an answer in the 
 Divine teaching, confirmed by observation and expe- 
 rience, as to things in the created world that are of use 
 to man for nutrition, clothing, habitation, recreation, de- 
 light, and protection of his body, and for the conservation 
 of his body in the state of health, vigor, and soundness 
 required for the right performance of the end of his crea- 
 tion. On this subject we read : " Uses created for the 
 nutrition of the body are all things of the vegetable king- 
 dom, which are for eating and drinking, as fruits, ber- 
 ries, seeds, pulse, and herbs ; also all things of the anl-_ 
 
182 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION 
 
 mal kingdom, which are eaten, as oxen, cows, calves, 
 deer, sheep, kids, lambs, and from these milk ; also birds 
 and fishes of many kinds. Uses created for the clothing 
 of the body, are also many things from those two king- 
 doms ; likewise uses for hahitation, also for recreation, 
 delight, protection, and conservation of state, which are not 
 enumerated because they are known, and therefore to 
 recount them would be only to fill our pages. There 
 are, indeed, many thiugs which do not yield any use to 
 man ; but superfluity does not take away use, but causes 
 Use to endure. There are also abuses of uses, but abuse 
 does not take away use ; even as the falsification of truth 
 does not take away truth, except only with those who do 
 this. (Z). L. and W. 331.) 
 
 The images, therefore, which man gathers and stores 
 up in his memory, by meaus of the senses of the body 
 from the three kingdoms of nature, as they form ideas 
 of thought, and aid in the development of the faculty of 
 thiukiug, gradually take form as scieutifics, and are called 
 sensual scientifics, being with man his first acquired 
 means of knowing, " and of following on to know " things 
 of use and service. Such scieutifics are given to every 
 man, in a greater or less degree, during his life in the 
 bo<ly. The uses from which they proceed as sensorial im- 
 pressions are around him and with him ; they cause in 
 him sensations which, being internally perceptions, cause 
 him to think, or, in other words, bring into exercise the 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 183 
 
 faculty of thinking implanted in Creation ; and as he 
 sensates delight from this exercise, the delight stimulates 
 the exercise, and by frequent repetition forms the habit 
 of thinking, accompanied by a growing affection from 
 accumulation of delights. 
 
 It is obvious that these scientifics in their primary 
 forms are chiefly external and material, being sensual 
 impressions of earthly objects, forms, and shapes, of 
 worldly sights and sounds. Even the highest of these 
 scientifics, such as the things of the Divine Word and 
 Law, are at first but words, or sounds and signs of inte- 
 rior things ; and the ideas formed by means of them are 
 imbibed much more from their sphere than from any 
 conception of their meaning, or inner life and form. All 
 these scientifics are inseminated in the memory, and im- 
 bedded in its purer natural substances, for future growth 
 and use. (See A. 0. 991, 1489; A. E. 345.) 
 
 The sensations which enter thus into the memory, as 
 they accumulate arrange themselves into some order, 
 and come into some relation to each other under the 
 stimulus of a delight of acquiring and possessing, and 
 from the influx of the Divine Love and its leadini; into 
 this delight. Sensual images, by arrangement into some 
 form of order, become ideas of thought ; and by the 
 combination of a number and series of such ideas there 
 arises a scientific, from which man begins to know. With 
 the knowledge of an object or thing there is always 
 
184 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 associated some coDception of its use and some notion of 
 a form. Let a number of such knowings, conceptions, 
 and notions be combined together, and there will be 
 produced a state of the faculty of thinking, or a state 
 of tliougbt, in wbirh truih of the lowest order is per- 
 ceived, and thus nuide present in the mind by virtue of 
 the influx of light from above into that combination as 
 an ultimate plane of reception. 
 
 Inflowing light becomes an actual mental illuminant 
 with man by reception into external corresponding 
 forms, which are objects and the images of objects. 
 
 In early childhood man thinks from the senses, that 
 is, from objects presented in their images in his sensory, 
 these images being his first ideas of them. As he grows 
 in age, he gradually com2S to think from the seieutifics 
 formed in his mind from the sensual images; and later, 
 as the rational comes in to form with him, he thinks from 
 the truths which, as it were, arise out of his scientincs, 
 from the influx of more intense light into the new planes 
 formed in him. In A. C. 5580 we are taught that there 
 arescientifics which first enter into the senses, and thus 
 open the way to the interiors ; for it is known that 
 external sensuals are first opened with man, and after- 
 ward interior sensuals, and lastly intellectuals . . . ; 
 intellectuals arise from sensuals by a certain mode of 
 extraction, for intellectuals are conclusions ! For, as we 
 are further instructed {A. C. 5774) : " Sensuals are one 
 
F0P.3IA TION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 185 
 
 thiug, scientifics another, and truths another ; they 
 succeed each other mutually ; for from seiisuals exist 
 scieutifics, and from scieutilics exist truths; for those 
 things which enter by tlie senses are deposited in the 
 memory, and thence man concludes a sclentifie, ov from 
 them he perceives a scientific which lie learns; irom 
 scientifics he then concludes truths, or from them per- 
 ceives truth which he learns; thus also every man pro- 
 gresses from childhood as he grows up. When he is a 
 boy he thinks from sansuals and understands tliino-s 
 from them; advancing in age, he thinks and understands 
 things from scientifics, and afterward from truths ; this 
 is the w:iy to judgment, into which man grows with age. 
 Theuc3 it may be evident that sensuals, scientifics, and 
 truths are distinct, yea, that they also remain distinct; 
 so much so, that at times man is in sensuals, which takes 
 place when he does not think anything but what touches 
 thesenses; at times he is in scientifics, which takes place 
 when h3 elevates himself from sensuals and thinks in- 
 teriorly, and at times he is in truths which have been 
 concluded from scientifics ; this takes place when he 
 thinks still more interiorly." The way to judgment is, 
 therefore, a way of distinct steps, or states of thinking 
 and of being affected with delight. This way is not 
 fully accomplished by all men, nor by any two or three 
 men, in precisely the same time, manner, and degree. 
 Some men never rise above the first state of thought 
 
186 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 from sensuals ; others are not elevated above scientifics, 
 tliiukiiig from mere facts and theories derived from facts, 
 and not, as others do, from truths and from laws which 
 are truths. The former classes never become truly- 
 rational, because they do not think interiorly. Their 
 sensuals and scientifics are not opened to the light of 
 heaven, and thus do not open the way to interior things, 
 to things essential, belonging to ih.Q spirit and the life. 
 Only those are rational who can reverse the order of the 
 formation of intelligence ; who can go back ou " the 
 way to judgment " and inform scientifics with truths 
 from the Divine, and sensuals with scientifics and ration- 
 als ; who can contemplate interior in exterior things, or, 
 in other words, have exterior things illustrated by 
 interior things. 
 
 From what has been stated another conclusion may 
 also be drawn, namely this, that scientifics will vary ac- 
 cording to the objects without and within man from 
 which they are derived ; in other words, according to 
 the uses and forms of uses of which they constitute 
 images in the various planes of the mind. Thus there 
 are, 1, Scientifics of the earths, their substances and 
 matters, and their productions ; 2, Scientifics of objective 
 forms on the earth, of animals of all kinds, and of men ; 
 3, Scientifics of things relating to the earthly existence 
 of men and animals ; 4, Scientifics relating to the aggre- 
 gation of men, their governments, laws, and communal 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 187 
 
 life and doing; 5, Scientifics relating to their moral 
 life; 6, Scientifics relating to their spiritual or religious 
 life. These scientifics, as is apparent, are successively 
 more interior, as they rise from the sensual to the 
 rational and spiritual, and form in the mind correspond- 
 ingly successive planes for the reception of the light in- 
 flowing from the Spiritual World, by which reception 
 man is gifted with intelligence and wisdom. {A. C. 
 5934.) 
 
 It may thus appear how the sensual things of child- 
 hood become the scientifics of adolescence, and of adult 
 age, wherever the conditions of mental growth exist. A 
 first and fundamental condition of this progress is that 
 the child be introduced into true sensuals, by which 
 alone rational scientifics can be formed and become the 
 means of leading to spiritual scientifics. The mind of 
 man grows truly only by correspondence of the steps of 
 growth, because each state of the mind, like each state 
 of the life, is an egg, from which is hatched a form cor- 
 responding to the quality of the seed contained within. 
 Hence may be seen the exceeding importance for the 
 right formation of rational, moral, and spiritual thought 
 in man, that the first sensual scientifics be derived from 
 objects in nature which are in true order, in the uses of 
 which the Lord, who is Use itself and Order itself, is 
 made manifest ; and that the delights of the senses by 
 the activity of which these scientifics are imbued should 
 
188 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 be planes opened for the reception of the Divine Love 
 and of all angelic influences. "Scientifics are prin- 
 cipally of two kinds, or of two degrees, namely, sensual 
 andscientific, . . . 6?/ Aimim^ here both are signified. 
 Sensuals are those in which children are, scientifics are 
 those in which the same (children) are when they grow 
 up ; for no one can he in true scientifics unless he have pre- 
 viously been in true sensuals, for the ideas of things, 
 scientific are obtained from the latter. From these 
 (scientifics) truths still more interior can then be learnt 
 and understood, which are called doctrinals, which are 
 signified hy Siinan of the field, ^' etc. (J.. (7. 3309.) 
 
 By sensual scientifics of the quality noted, there are 
 provided a beginning and a continual basis of true ra- 
 tional scientifics, as also the means of illustration and 
 confirmation in doctrinal truths, without which man 
 cannot be regenerated. All the truths of faith, even 
 the highest, have their basis on natural and sensual ideas. 
 In the human mind, such is the order of the mind, 
 because such is the order of the life of man. As intelli- 
 gence and wisdom grow out of these natural and sensual 
 ideas, so do they also terminate in them. Hence is their 
 importance, as will further appear from the following 
 teaching: "The first truths are sensual, the next are 
 scientific, the interior are doctrinal ; these truths arc 
 founded on scientific truths, since man cannot have and 
 cannot retain any idea, notion, or conception of them 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFIC^. 189 
 
 except from scientifics. But scientific truths are founded 
 on sensual truths, for without sensuals scientifics cannot be 
 understood byvia)i; wherefore, before man has reached 
 adult age, aud by truths sensual and scientific is in doc- 
 trinals, he cannot be regenerated, for he cannot be con- 
 firmed in the truths of doctrinals, except by ideas from 
 scientifics and sensuals; for nothing is with man in his 
 thought, not even the greatest mystery of faith, which 
 has not with it a natural and sensual idea, although 
 man for the most part knows not what it is ; but iu 
 the other life, if he so desires, it is presented to him 
 before his understanding ; yea, if he wishes, before his 
 sight; for in the other life such things can be pre- 
 sented to the sight. This appears incredible, but yet 
 it is so." (A. G. 3310, cf A. E. 559, A. C. 1434.) 
 
 Again (A. C. 1435): "Every scientific from which 
 a man thinks is called an * acquisition.' Without 
 acquired scientifics man can by no means have any 
 idea of thought; idaas of thought are founded 
 upon the things impressed on the memory from things 
 sensual; wherefore, scientifics are vessels of spirit- 
 ual things, aud affections from the delights of the body 
 , are vessels of celestial things." And again {A. C. 
 1486): *' And he {Abram) had fiock and herd, and he- 
 asses and men-servants, and maid-servants and she-asses, 
 and camels; that the^^e signify all things in general 
 which are of scientifics is evident from the sisfnification 
 
190 CON VERS A TIONS ON EL UCA TION. 
 
 of all these in the Word, but what each in particular 
 signifies it would be too prolix ta show, as what in this 
 place the flock and herd signify, what the he-asses 
 and men-servants, the maid-servants and she-asses, 
 what the camels; each has its peculiar signification: 
 in general, all things which are of the science of cogni- 
 tions and of scientifics. Scientifics regarded in them- 
 selves are he-asses and men-servants — their pleasures are 
 maid-servants and she-asses; camels are general things 
 of service; the flock and herd are possessions; thus 
 throughout the Word. All things whatever with the 
 external man are nothing but things of service, that is, 
 that they may serve the internal man. Such are all 
 scientifics which are only of the external man, for they 
 are procured from things terrestrial and mundane by 
 the sensual faculties in order that they may serve the 
 interior or rational man; this the spiritual, and this 
 celestial man, and this the Lord. Thus they are mutu- 
 ally subordinated to each other, as exteriors to interiors 
 in order; and thus all and single things according to 
 order, the Lord. Scientifics, therefore, are ultimate and 
 outermost things in which interior things are terminated 
 in order, which because they are ultimate and outermost 
 must be things of service more than the rest. Every 
 one may know to what scientifics can be of service if he 
 reflects or asks himself. Of what use are they? When he 
 thus reflects up )n their use, he can also undjrstand what 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 191 
 
 their use is. Every scientific must be for some use, and 
 this is its service." 
 
 The uses which scientifics subserve are all of a nature 
 to bring the external man and the external life into 
 conjunction with the internal man and the internal life. 
 By scientifics man learns to think, then scientifics are 
 thought that they may be of use by thinking, and finally 
 they are so arranged that their uses may be ultimated or 
 done externally, and thus that the outward life in which 
 they are done may become a use, and when this is 
 brought about, then are the external and internal man 
 conjoined. (Sae A. C. 1487, 1488, and 1489.) 
 
 The sensual scientifics first acquired in childhood and 
 then disposed in order by the Lord that they may be of 
 use, because th^y are derived from earthly objects, per- 
 ceived by the senses and aflTecting them immediately, are 
 the most general of all, and necessarily contain all the 
 other scientifics that rest upon them, and thus represent 
 the spiritual things from which they proceed as eflPects. 
 (A. a 4360, c/. 5212, 10,272). 
 
 As these scientifics enter the mind through the senses, 
 they are necessarily full of the fallacies of the senses or 
 of appearances, and being most general in form, they are 
 for this cause as liable to be abused as they are capable 
 of use. Straw was employed in the making of bricks; 
 it was also used for provender for beasts. "Ye shall 
 not add to give short straw to the people. That this 
 
192 CONVERSA TIONS ON JED UCATION. 
 
 signifies the lowest scientifics and the most general of all 
 appears from the signification of short straw or litter ; 
 that this is scientific truth, see 3114, and, indeed, tlic 
 lowest and most general scientifics of all, for the lowest 
 food in the spiritual sense is litter or cut straw, which is 
 for beasts. Those are called the lowest scientifics which 
 are full of the fallacies of the senses, which the evil 
 abuse to the perversion of. goods and truths, and thus to 
 the favoring of evils and falses; for those scientifics on 
 account of fallacies can be turned in favor of the prin- 
 ciples of the false and of the cupidities of evil. Such 
 scientifics are also the most general of all, which, unless 
 they are filled with truths less general and particular, 
 can serve ftilses and evils, but which, as they are filled 
 with truth, serve thetn less and less." (J.. C 7112.) 
 
 From the teachings of the Church we have" learnt that 
 the nutrition, clothing, habitation, recreation, delight, 
 and protection of the body, together with the conserva- 
 tion of it, are material uses, or uses in the lowest plane. 
 Thescientifics relating to these uses, all ideas and thoughts 
 concerning them, will therefore be of the lowest degree, 
 and being thus most general will iuclude all other 
 scientifics. As, for example, nutrition of the body will 
 include all that relates to the existence of the body, and 
 also of the mind in the body. But nutrition as a use 
 does not exist with man except together with the 
 thouo;ht and science of nutrition, and this therefore 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 193 
 
 will include all the thought and science of the natural 
 life of the body and of the natural mind in the body. 
 The same is true of the other most general uses and 
 their scientifics, as of the use of clothing, habitation, 
 etc. Again, what is true of the quality and effect of 
 nutrition on the existence of the body must be true also 
 of the quality and effect of the science of nutrition in 
 the mind and its thinking. These most general uses, to- 
 gether w^ith their scientifics, must be filled with true and 
 good particular uses and scientifics, if by their applica- 
 tion the External Man is to be brought into a true rela- 
 tion to the Internal Man, and if tlie Internal Man is to 
 be conjoined with the Lord. The Lord has made all 
 provision for the existence of sound minds in sound 
 bodies. It is for man now to see to it that these pro- 
 visions be not neglected to the contravention of the 
 Divine ends. In Divine Love and Wisdom, 330, it is 
 written: "Because the end of Creation is an Angelic 
 Heaven from the human race, thus a human race, there- 
 fore all other created things are mediate ends, which, 
 because they refer themselves to man, have respect to 
 these three things of man, his Body, his Rational part, 
 his Spiritual part, for the sake of conjunction with the 
 Lord. For man cannot be conjoined with the Lord 
 unless he be spiritual ; nor can he be spiritual unless he 
 be rational ; nor can he be rational unless tlie body bo 
 
 in a sound state. These three things are like a housj ; 
 13 
 
194 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION, 
 
 the body is like the foundation, the rational part is like 
 the house built upon it, and the spiritual part is like 
 those who are in the house, and conjunction with the 
 Lord is like habitation. Hence it may appear in what 
 order, degree, and respect the uses, which are the medi- 
 ate ends of Creation, refer themselves to man, namely, 
 for sustaining his body, for perfecting his rational, and 
 for receiving a spiritual from the Loed." 
 
 And lastly, inasmuch as uses created for the nutri- 
 tion, clothing, habitation, etc., of the body, are of the 
 vegetable and animal kingdoms, and many things of 
 these kingdoms do not yield any use to man, and many 
 are also abused, it follows, as a matter of course, that 
 true sensual scientifics, which are to be the general 
 vessels receptive of more interior scientifics, are con- 
 cerned, first with the uses and the degree of the uses to 
 man of the various objects of those kingdoms ; secondly, 
 with their abuses and the degree of their abuses, and 
 thirdly, with their uselessness to man. It would thus ap- 
 pear that the uses and the degrees of uses of created 
 things, their abuses and the degrees of their abuses, and 
 the entire absence of use to man, will afford a rule to 
 govern us in making the classification of scientifics. 
 This rule will necessarily apply as well to the most 
 general as to the less general and most particular uses 
 and their scientifics, and Avill give to them a human 
 form and a living human interest that cannot fail to 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 195 
 
 arouse and keep alive the pleasure aud delight of learn- 
 ing, without the activity of wliich no remains of truth 
 can well be stored up for the future u.<e of the spirit- 
 ual life. 
 
 Ill Arcana Cwlestla 4345 we are instructed that the 
 " affections of sciences and cognitions are most exter- 
 nal, for the sciences and cognitions themselves are the 
 things from which and in which are truths. The affec- 
 tion of external truth follows thence and is more in- 
 terior, and the affection of interior truth is still more 
 interior; the more exterior they are, the more gen- 
 eral are they, and the more interior the less general 
 they are, and these are called respectively particular 
 and singular. The case with things general is the fol- 
 lowing : they are called general from this, that they 
 consist of particulars, and therefore that they contain 
 particulars ; generals without particulars are not gen- 
 erals, but they are so called for particulars. They are 
 like the whole and its parts ; a whole cannot be called a 
 whole unless there be parts, for a whole consists of 
 parts. There is not anything in nature which does 
 not exist and subsist from others; what exists and sub- 
 sists from others is called a general, and the things 
 fr )m which it exists and subsists are called particu- 
 lars. Externals are those things which consist of in- 
 ternals, wherefore externals are respectively general. 
 Such is the case with man and his faculties, that the 
 
196 CONVEBSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 more exterior they are the more general they are, for 
 they consist of interiors, and these of inmosts in order. 
 The body itself, and the things which are of the body, 
 as those which are called external senses and actions, 
 are respectively most general ; the natural mind, and 
 the things which are of that mind, are less general, be- 
 cause more interior, and are called respectively particu- 
 lars; but the rational mind, and the things which are 
 of the rational mind, are still more interior, and are 
 respectively singular. These things appear to the life 
 when man. puts off the body, and becomes a spirit; for 
 it is then evident to him that his corporeal things were 
 nothing but the most general of those which were of his 
 spirit, and that things corporeal existed and subsisted 
 from those which were of his spirit, thus that those 
 which are of the spirit were respectively particular, 
 and when the same spirit becomes an angel, that is, 
 wh'n he is elevated into heaven, he then sees and feels 
 in a particular and clear manner the things which be- 
 fore he saw and felt in a general, that is, in an obscure 
 manner, for he then (sees and fejls) innumerable things, 
 which before he saw and felt as one. This is also evi 
 dent from man himself, when he lives in the world; the 
 things which he sees and feels in infancy are the most 
 general, but those w ich (he sees and feels) in child- 
 hood and youth are the particulars of those generals, 
 and those which (he sees and feels) in adult age are the 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 197 
 
 siDgulars of particulars ; for as man advances in age he 
 insinuates particulars into the generals of infancy, and 
 then into these particulars he insinuates singulars ; for 
 he progresses successively toward interiors, and infills 
 generals with particulars, and particulars with singulars," 
 etc., etc. 
 
 It is evident from the teachings of the Church 
 adduced iu our preceding Conversations, that the ordi- 
 nation and classification of sensual scientifics have their 
 rational determination in their relation to the uses which 
 have respect to the nutrition, clothing, habitation, recre- 
 ation, delight, and protection of the body of man, and 
 to the conservation of its state ; and also this, that the 
 entire body of these scientifics stands to all rational and 
 spiritual scientifics in a relation similar to that of the 
 life of the natural body to the life of his mind. The 
 spirit of man has its terminations in his external body, 
 and exists there in its own ultimates and efifects. As his 
 whole spiritual world terminates and is represented in 
 his natural world, so do all his rational and spiritual 
 scientifics have their termination and representation in 
 his sensual scientifics. Hence does it follow that the 
 Divine law regulating the natural life of man in the body 
 is also the law regulating the scientifics proper to that 
 life. The natural life is for the sake of the rational and 
 spiritual life, and for the sake of conjunction with the 
 Lord by means of it ; and all sensual scientifics are for 
 
198 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 the end that man may become rational and wise, in the 
 image and according to the likenessof the Lord. Hence 
 it is that all scientifics take on the human form ; which 
 is not solely from the fact of their production by means 
 of the human intellect, but also from this, that they per- 
 form to man the use of serving as receptacles of good 
 from the Lord. In Arcana Coelestia (n. 5373), we are 
 taught that, " Scientifics, which are of the natural mind, 
 are ultiraates of order ; prior things must be in ultimates 
 that they may exist and appear in that sphere; and 
 besides, all prior things tend to ultimates as to their own 
 boundaries or ends, and therein they exist together, like 
 causes in their effects, or like things superior in things 
 inferior as in their own vessels. Scientifics, which are 
 of the natural mind, are such ultimates ; thence it is 
 that the spiritual world terminates in the natural of 
 man, in which the things that are of the spiritual world 
 are presented representatively. Spiritual things, unless 
 they are presented representatively in the natural, thus 
 by such things as are in the world, can by no means be 
 understood. From these things it may be evident, that 
 when the natural is regenerated, all the interior goods 
 and truths, which are from the spiritual world, are 
 brought together into scientifics in order that they may 
 appear.'^ (Cf A. C. 3310; Sp. D. 5709.) Again (in 
 A. 0.5489:) "That the scientific is the receptacle of 
 good few know, because few reflect on such things; 
 
FORMATION AND ORDER OF SCIENTIFICS. 199 
 
 nevertheless, it may be known from these things : the 
 scieutifics which enter the memory, are always introduced 
 by some affection; those which are not introduced by 
 some affection, do not remain there, but pass away. 
 The reason of this is that life is in affection, but not in 
 scientifics except by affection ; thence it is evident that 
 scientifics have always conjoined with them such things 
 as are of affection, or, what is the same, which are of 
 some love, consequently of some good, for everything that 
 is of love is called a good, whether it be good, or be only 
 believed to be good. Scientifics, therefore, form with 
 those goods, as it were, a marriage ; thence it is, that 
 when that good is excited, immediately the scientific 
 with which it is conjoined is also excited ; as likewise, on 
 the other hand, when the scientific is recalled, the good 
 with which it is conjoined comes forth; this every one 
 may experience with himself, if he will. Hence now it 
 is that with the non-regenerate, who have rejected the 
 good of charity, the scientifics, which are truths of the 
 Church, have adjoined to them such things as are of the 
 love of self and the world, thus evils, which on account 
 of the delight that is in them they call goods, and also 
 make goods by sinister interpretations. These scientifics 
 come forth elegantly to appearance, when those loves 
 reign universally, and according to the degree in which 
 they reign. But with the regenerate, the scientifics 
 which are truths of the Church have adjoined to them 
 
200 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 such things as are of love of the neighbor and love of 
 the Lord, thus genuine goods ; these are reposited by 
 the Lord in the truths of the Church with all who are 
 regenerated; wherefore, when the Lord insinuates into 
 them zeal for good, that good is present, and inflames 
 him. From these things it may be evident how the case 
 is with scientifics, and with truths, that they are recep- 
 tacles of good." 
 
 TJie Use of Sensual Scientifics. 
 
 Sensual Scientifics have a good use and also an evil 
 use. They perform a good use when they serve man as 
 means of becoming rational; they perform an evil use 
 when they serve man as means of becoming irrational 
 and insane. These uses are performed according as 
 scientifics are applied to good or evil ends of life; and 
 as man is rational or the opposite, according as he seeks 
 good or evil ends, it is evident that the quality of scien- 
 tifics depends on the same conditions. 
 
 Thus, a sensual scientific becomes a rational scientific 
 when man from it and others of a like kind concludes 
 a <r«i^,such as has respect to natural life, and from this 
 truth determines his activity in relation to the kingdoms 
 of nature. As, for example, when he from such truth 
 determines what is useful for the nutrition, the clothing, 
 the habitation, etc., of his body. Such a truth is denomi- 
 nated a natural rational scientific, and the whole body 
 
THE USE OF SENSUAL SCIENTIFICS. 201 
 
 of such scientifics, when arranged and disposed in order 
 in the raind and applied to uses, constitutes in man his 
 natural common sense, which is then a general or com- 
 mon '^receptacle of good'' — i. e., of the good or use of 
 man's natural existence. 
 
 Again: Conclusions from such truths or natural 
 rational scientifics, having respect to civil and moral 
 life, constitute with man interior rational scientifics, 
 which are receptacles of good, civil and moral. 
 
 That man is truly rational in the natural, civil, moral, 
 and spiritual planes of life whose scientifics have enabled 
 him to conclude an evil to bean evil, a false to be a false, 
 and, on the other hand, a good to be a good and a truth 
 to be a truth. This constitutes rationality, that there 
 is in him a plane formed by scientifics receptive of the 
 influx of light from heaven, that is to say, of truth 
 from revelation, by which he is enlightened and enabled 
 to see reasons for what is right and to confirm them as 
 true reasons from the things of the world and the natu- 
 ral life. These things, which are sensual scientifics, 
 in such a case take their proper place in the mind, that 
 is, they serve the rational, and the aflTection or good 
 which is in them is disposed into order. It becomes 
 yielding, subservient, humble, not elevating its partner 
 above reason, but acknowledging the reason and the 
 light inflowing into the reason to be the Teacher and 
 Master of the sensual. This is a sane condition of the 
 
202 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 mind, in which the fatuous light of self-conceit is gradu- 
 ally dimmed until it dies out and the truly illuminating 
 light of truth from heaven enters. This light corrects 
 the gross ideas of sense and then perfects them and ex- 
 tends them, so that they become continually more suit- 
 able and far-reaching terminations for the influent 
 light in which is the true rational or the reason of man. 
 
 Inasmuch as a man is rational only in so far as he 
 is able to see that an evil is an evil, a false a false, or, on 
 the other hand, that a good is a good, and a truth is a 
 truth, and because he can have no knowledge of evil 
 and falsity, or good and truth, except through the 
 medium of his senses, that is to say, except by means of 
 sensual scientifics, it is very evident that the rational can 
 neither be born nor perfected in man without such 
 scientifics. The formation of man's intellectual part 
 therefore begins with such scientifics which at first are 
 general and by degrees particular and ever more par- 
 ticular. To state the proposition in other words, the 
 formation of the intellect and its perfection depends 
 altogether upon the quality and quantity of the informa- 
 tion imparted {A. C. 3048, c/. 4156), and, as before seen, 
 on the application which is made of such information 
 to good or evil ends or uses. 
 
 Advancing another step, I remark that on that 
 information the Lord bases His divine work of man's 
 reformation, which is effected in correspondence with the 
 
THE USE OF SENSUAL SCIENTIFWS. 203 
 
 formatiou of his intellectual part. For reformation 
 begins when man's general ideas concerning the Lord, 
 the world, natural and spiritual life, etc., which having 
 been gained by instruction, are disposed into correspon- 
 dence with heavenly or angelic ideas. When so dis- 
 posed corresponding particular and singular ideas of 
 truth are successively insinuated into them by means of 
 rational scientifics, which are doctrinal, also by means 
 of spiritual scientifics, which are knowledges of truth. 
 When man becomes rational and thinks from reasons, 
 the sensual scientifics, or things of mere science, recede 
 in the mind. So also when man becomes spiritual and 
 thinks from truth, rational scientifics recede, being no 
 longer needed. The order in which this change takes 
 place is the following: Man first thinks the scientifics, 
 or things of sensual science, and afterward he thinks 
 from them or from the conclusions drawn from them 
 and from the laws which he has formulated for himself 
 by means of such conclusions. After this he thinks 
 doctrinals, and then from doctrinals or from the truths 
 which they reveal. Finally he comes to think truths 
 and to perceive truths from good, or from the afl^ec- 
 tion of truth for its own sake. 
 
 It is to be noted that in the man who U reforming by 
 degrees, the rational is not a reasoning that such and 
 such a thing is true, but it is like a dictate of truth, or 
 that such a thing is true because it concords with certain 
 
204 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 general truths that are known and accepted, as also with 
 certain particulars that go to make up those general 
 truths. (^. 0. 3057, c/. 3068, etc.) This process of 
 reformation is effected by affection, and thus in freedom, 
 for without freedom truth cannot be produced or brought 
 into existence in the natural man. Nor can any truth 
 he called forth from the natural into the rational and 
 there be conjoined with good, except when man is in a 
 free state. As we are taught in Arcana Coelestla 
 (n. 3145), "It is the affection of truth from good which 
 makes freedom. Unless truths be learnt from affection, 
 thus in freedom, they are not implanted; still less are 
 they exalted toward the interiors and there made faith. 
 All reformation is effected in freedom, and all freedom 
 is of affection, and the Lord keeps man in freedom in 
 order that he may of himself and of proprium be 
 affected by truth and good, and thus be regenerated." 
 , The sensual scientifics, therefore, which are to become 
 the receptacles of the affection of truth, as their good, 
 are opened to the light of heaven by being applied to 
 the performance of good uses. When so applied, the 
 affection active in them ceases to be an affection of truth, 
 and becomes an affection of good or use ; in other words, 
 it is no longer an affection of the means by which a use 
 is performed, but an affection of that use itself 
 
 It is thus that scientifics, which at first are but things 
 known and thought by man, become things connected 
 
THE USE OF SENSUAL SCIENTIFICS. 205 
 
 together iu a series, as of ends, causes, and effects, 
 whereby they are elevated into reasons and causes of 
 action. They are not taken out of the natural mind, 
 but remain there, forming therein another plane of 
 thinking, corresponding with a discretely interior plane 
 of causes, and receiving influx through this interior 
 plane. 
 
 In this manner do all the sciences of the three king- 
 doms of nature, mineral, vegetable, and animal, and all 
 the lower sciences relating to man, all of which have 
 primary respect to the uses of sustaining the body, 
 become means subservient to the formation of the ra- 
 tional plane of the human mind, which is, as it were, 
 born from them, and educated by them. Their general 
 good use, therefore, including of course, all their partic- 
 ular good uses, have respect to this one end, that ynaii 
 may he made rational, by seeing evil to be evil, false to be 
 false, good to be good, and truth to be truth, and also that 
 this state in him maybe confirmed iu a permanent form 
 of truly rational life, or good life. 
 
 The rational scientifics, which, as before shown, are 
 formed from sansual scientifics, first by the affection of 
 truth, and then by the affection of good, concern them- 
 selves with the life of man in the family, in society, in 
 the State; they have respect to his occupations and in- 
 dustries, to the governments, laws, and administrations 
 of communities, and also to man's moral conditions. 
 
206 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 These scientifics, or, as tliey are usually denominated, 
 sciences and studies, are necessarily of a more abstract 
 character than the sensual sciences and studies from 
 which they are derived, although they continue to rest 
 upon them. Their use and application are to the mind, 
 its faculties and operations, and not to the body, its 
 properties and conditions. And because man is a ra- 
 tional being, and what is rational is superior to what is 
 corporeal, therefore these uses and their sciences are 
 necessarily of a superior degree and. good in quality, 
 provided they are applied to the elevation and perfec- 
 tion of the life of man. (See D. L. W. 332.) 
 
 The superiority of rational scientifics appears still fur- 
 ther from this, that they are provided as means to enable 
 man to acquire knowledge of the things of the Lord 
 and eternal life. Their uses having a direct bearing on 
 the reception of spiritual life by man, and on his being 
 fitted to live in heaven and in conjuction with the Lord, 
 these scientifics, or sciences and studies, have relation to 
 the Word and Doctrines of the Church, to their exposi- 
 tion and understanding. By means of them the spirit 
 of man is nourished, clothed, housed, recreated and de- 
 lighted, protected from evils and falses, and its state 
 preserved to eternity. Their uses are for the receiving 
 of a spiritual from the Lord; of them it is said in Divine 
 Love and Wisdom (n. 333), that they "are all those things 
 which are of Keligion, and thence of worship, thus 
 
THE USE OF SENSUAL SCIENTIFICS. 207 
 
 which teach the acknowledgment aud cognition of God 
 and the cognition and acknowledgment of good and 
 truth, and, therefore, of life eternal; which in like man- 
 ner as the various branches of learning are imbibed 
 from parents, masters, preaching and books, and espe- 
 cially by the efforts of life in accordance with them; in 
 the Christian World by Doctrines, and by preaching 
 from the Word, and by the Word from the Lord. 
 These uses in their extension may be described by 
 things similar to those by wliich uses to the body are 
 described, as by nutrition, clothing, habitation, recrea- 
 tion, and delight, protection of state, if only the appli- 
 cation be made to the soul ; nutrition to the goods of love; 
 clothing to the truths of wisdom; habitation to heaven; rec- 
 reation and delight to felicity of life and heavenly joy; pro- 
 tection to infesting evils; preservation of state to eternal life. 
 All these are given by the Lord according to the ac- 
 knowledgment that all the things which are of the body 
 are also from the Lord, and that man is only like a ser- 
 vant and steward of the house appointed over the goods of 
 his Lord." 
 
 From what has been said it is sufficiently evident 
 that sensual scientifics, wlien rightly used, are means of 
 opening the understanding of man to the light of hea- 
 ven. The spiritual truths seen in that light constitute 
 true riches, which are expended or employed in per- 
 forming good uses to the neighbor, and when so em- 
 
208 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 ployed they procure for man heavenly wisdom {E. in U. 
 62) in an ever-increasiug measure. In Heaven and Hell 
 (n. 356) we read as follows : 
 
 They who have obtained f ^r themselves intelligence and wis- 
 dom by means of cognitions and sciences, who are such as ap- 
 ply all things to the uses of life, and at tlie same time acknowl- 
 edge tiie Divine, love the Word, and li^e a spiritual-moral life, 
 — to these sciences serve as means of growing wise, and at the 
 same time of corroborating the things of faith. Their interiors, 
 which are of the mind, have been perceived and also seen as 
 transparent from light, of a bright color, flamy or cerulean, such 
 as that of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, which are pellucid, and 
 this according to confirmations from sciences in favor of the Di- 
 vins and of Divine truths. True intelligence and wisdom have 
 this appearance when presented to the sight in the spiritual 
 world. They derive this appearance from the light of heaven, 
 which is Divine Truth proceeding from the Lord, from whom 
 is all intelligence and wisdom, (n. 126 to 133.) The planes of 
 that light, in which exist variegations as of colors, are the inte- 
 riors of the mind, and confirmations of Divine truths by such 
 things as are in nature, thus in sciences, produce those varie- 
 gations; for the interior mind of man looks into the things in 
 the natural memory and into those tiiereiu which confirm, and 
 by the fire of heavenly love it, as it were, sublimates them, 
 withdraws and purifies them, into spiritual ideas. Man, as long 
 as he lives in the body, does not know that this takes place, 
 although he then thinks both spiritually and naturally, but the 
 tilings which he then thinks spiritually he does not ap perceive, 
 but only those which he thinks naturally. When, however, he 
 comes iuio the Spiiitual World he does not apperceive what he 
 
THE USE OF SENSUAL SCIENTIFICS. 209 
 
 thought naturally in the world, but only what lie thought spirit- 
 ually, so changed is the state. From tliese things it is evident 
 that man becomes spiritual by cognitions and sciences, and that 
 these are the means of growing wise, but only to those who in faith 
 and life acknowledge the Divine. These are al^o accepted in h ea- 
 ven above others and are there among those who are in the 
 midst (n. 43), because they are in light above the re-t. Tiiese 
 are the intelligent and wise in heaven, who are resplendent 
 with the brightness of the expanse and who shine as the stars- 
 but the simple there are those who have acknowledged the Di- 
 vine, have loved the Word, and have lived a spiritual-moral 
 life ; but their interiors, which are of the mind, are not so cul- 
 tivated by cognitions and sciences. The human mind is like 
 ground, which has a quality from cultivation. 
 
 If, therefore, it be true that maa becomes insane by 
 the abuse of sciences, as iu the case of one who desires to 
 become wise in spiritual au^ celestial things by means 
 of them, without learning of the Lord, it is no less true 
 that this is no reason why sciences should be rejected in- 
 asmuch as their real use is that they may serve man in 
 the attainment of genuine intelligence and wisdom. 
 "Just as enjoyments, which are of the mind and the 
 body, are not to be rejected because they destroy man 
 and blind him, but he is free to enjoy them for use, as 
 before. In this way only can they be applied to uses, 
 for enjoyments are the life of the body, to which they 
 are also given for uses." {8. D. 2523.) 
 
 Because man becomes spiritual by truths from the 
 14 
 
210 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Lord, and also by the confirmation of these truths by 
 sciences, it is said that there are two foundatioDS of 
 truth, viz. : the Word and Nature, the former for those 
 who are in Heaven, and the latter for those who are in 
 the World. So far as these two fouodatioDS concord 
 they exist with a man ; in other words, so far as they 
 concord, the mind is opened by the one to the other. In 
 such a case heaven rests on all of nature with man. It 
 is in all the laws of his natural man and world, and it is 
 fixed in all the things of his life. {8. D. 5709.) 
 
 All Divine Truth is in the Word. Hence is the 
 
 Word a foundation for truth to those who live well, and 
 
 acknowledge the Word to be holy and divine. The 
 
 truths of nature can be brought into concord with 
 
 Divine Truth, not from science, but by means of science, 
 
 when science itself is informed from the Word, and is 
 
 founded on the Word. Hence arises the necessity of 
 
 first teaching the Word, and thus of laying in the mind 
 
 the universal foundation of Divine Truth concerning 
 
 the Lord, the One God, the Creator and Preserver, 
 
 concerning Life, concerning a Spiritual World, a Heaven 
 
 and a Hell, and a Natural World, and concerning an 
 
 Internal and an External Man. When natural scien- 
 
 tifics are introduced into the presence of these Divine 
 
 Scientifics, then do the latter enter into the former and 
 
 conjoin them with the Word, all unconscious though man 
 
 be of "what is taking place in his mind. In this way 
 
THE USE OF SENSUAL SCIENTIFICS. 211 
 
 truth can be seen and also confirmed ; iu other words, 
 it can be founded on a First and on a Last, and the 
 man in whom Truth is so founded is a spiritual natural 
 man. {S. D, 5710.) 
 
 From this conjunction of what is Divine with Nature, 
 and not from himself or from nature alone, does man 
 become truly intelligent and wise. Sciences are to be 
 learnt, and by means of them a natural rational is to be 
 formed, but this is to be done with a belief in the Word 
 of the Lord, and the natural knowledges acquired are 
 to serve man as confirmations of the spiritual things of 
 the Word. This is the course of order which leads to 
 the formation of true rationality and genuine intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 In Arcana Ccelestia (n. 129) we have the following 
 plain teaching on this subject : 
 
 It may be known to every one that the principles assumed by 
 a man, even the falsest, rule hiui, and that all his knowledge 
 and reasoning favor these principles; for innumerable assenting 
 ideas flow together, so that he is confirmed in falses. Therefore, 
 he who holds the principle that he will believe nothing before 
 he sees and understands it, can never believe, for he does not see 
 spiritual and celestial things with his eyes, nor does pliantasy 
 conceive them. But the true order is that he grow wise from 
 the Lord, that is, /7'ow JET/s Word; in this case all things suc- 
 ceed, and he is also illustrated in things rational and scientific. 
 For lie [man] is by no means forbidden to learn sciences, because 
 they are useful to life and delightful ; and to him who is in faith 
 
212 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 it is by no means forbidden to think ^nJ speak as do the learned 
 of tiie world, but from, this principle that he believes in the Word 
 of the Lord, and confirms spiritual and celestial truths by 
 natural truths, as far as lies in his power, in terms familiar to the 
 learned world. Wherefore his principles must be from the Lokd 
 and not from himself. The former is life, the latter is death. 
 
 And this orderly forniatiou of his mind prepares man 
 to enter fully into the enjoyment of the facuhy of per- 
 ceiving representatives -when he enters into the other 
 life, as described in the following teaching : 
 
 Among the eminent faculties wliich man possesses in himself, 
 although he is ignorant of it, and which he takes with him into 
 the other life wlien he passes over thither after the death of the 
 body, is that he perceives what the representatives signify 
 which appear in the otiier life; as also that he is able by the 
 senseof his mind to express fully in a m )ment of time what he 
 could not express in hours in the body, and this by means of 
 ideas from the things which are of the light of heaven, assisted 
 and made, as it were, winged, by suitable ai)pearances represen- 
 tative of tiie thing which is the subject of discourse, which are 
 such as cannot be described. And because man, after death, 
 comes into these faculties and does not need to be instructed 
 concerning them in the other life, it may appear that man is in 
 them, that is to say, tiiat they are in him, whilst he lives in the 
 body, although he is ignorant of it. That this is so, is becau^e 
 there is with man a continual influx from the Lord by heaven ; 
 this is an influx of things spiritual and celestial which fall into 
 his natural things, and which are there presented representa- 
 tively. 
 
THE USE OF SENSUAL SCIENTIFICS. 213 
 
 In lieaven witli the angels nothing is thought of but wliat re- 
 lates to the tilings celestial and spiritual which are of the Lord's 
 kingdom; but in the world with man, scarcely any but things 
 corporeal and natural, which are of the kingdom in which he 
 lives, and of tiie n* cessities of life there. And because the spirit- 
 ual and celestial things of heaven which inflow are presented 
 representatively with man in his natural things, therefore do 
 they remain inserted, and the man is in them when he puts off 
 what is corporeal and relinquishes what is worldly. — A. C. 3226 
 (see also n. 3223). 
 
 By proceeding iu the order described, scientifics be- 
 come truths with man ; by taking the opposite course 
 they become falses. Their application and use effect 
 these results. As servants, they take on the quality of 
 the master to whom they are made subservient. Even 
 theDiviueScientificsin the letter of the Word may bethiis 
 turned into falsities and cause death when applied to 
 evil uses under the rule of the love of self or the love 
 of the world. And on the other hand, the scieutifics 
 acquired by the natural mind for natural ends may be 
 turned away from such ends, and applied to the con- 
 firmation of truths from the Lord, and thereby become 
 means of man's receiving true spiritual rationality and 
 intelligence. This was represented by the command to the 
 sons of Israel to borrow from the Egyptians their " vessels 
 of silver and vessels of gold, and garments, and to place 
 them on their sons and their daughters," Exodus iii, 
 21-22, concerning which we are taught as follows: 
 
214 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 It is to be known that scientifics in themselves are not truths, 
 nor are they falses, but they become truths with those who are 
 in truths, and falses with those who are in falses; their applica- 
 tion and use eiFect this. Scientifics with man are like riches 
 and wealth with him; riches and wealth with those who are in 
 evils are pernicious, because they apply them to evil uses, but 
 riches and wealth with those who are in good, are useful, be- 
 cause they apply them to good uses; wherefore, if the riches 
 and wealth which are with the evil be transferred to the good, 
 they become goods; thus also the scientifics. As, for example, 
 with the Egyptians the-e remaioed many things from the repre- 
 sentatives of the Ancient Church, as may appear from their 
 hieroglyphics; but because they applied them to magic, and 
 thus made an evil use of them, therefore they were not to them 
 true scientifics, but false scientifics. But the same things had 
 been true scientifics in the Ancient Church, because they applied 
 them rightly to Divine Worship. Such, f r example, were the 
 altars and sacrifices; these with the Hebrew nation, and after- 
 ward with the Jewish and Israelitish nations, were true rituals, 
 because they applied them to the worship of Jehovah; but 
 with tlie nations in the laud of Canaan they were false rituals, 
 because they applied them to the worship of their idols; where- 
 fore also it was commanded that they should everywhere destroy 
 the altars of the nations. The case is similar witii very many 
 other things. Many scientifics, therefore, may he obtained from 
 those who are in evils and falses, which can be applied to good 
 uses, and thus be made good. Such things are also meant by the 
 spoiling of the nations in the land of Canaan, by tlie wealth, the 
 flocks, the herds, the houses, the vineyards, of which the sons 
 of Israel despoiled them. This is still more evident from the 
 
THE USE OF SENSUAL SCIENTIFICS. 215 
 
 circumstance that the gold and silver taken from the nations 
 was applied to a holyuse, as appears from 2 Samuel viii, 10, 11, 
 12, and from Isaiah xxiii, 18. Those things likewise wliicli the 
 women, of the sons of fsrael, horrowed from the Egyptians, and 
 thus took for spoil, were then applied to the use of constructing 
 the ark, and to many holy things which were of their worship. 
 —A. a 6917. (See also 6913 to 6916, 1551, 2571, 2588; A. E. 
 141,242,430.) 
 
 They who are principled in spiritual truths are com- 
 manded, i.e.j it is in order for them, to occupy the entire 
 field of natural science and knowledge. With them the 
 higher truth will illustrate the lower, and in this light 
 they can apply the lower to the performance of spiritual 
 uses, aud thus to the strengthening of Divine Truths in 
 their minds. But they cannot remain in Egypt to per- 
 form such uses; they must go forth out of the laud of 
 Egypt to worship the Lord. If they remain, they will do 
 what is abomination in the sight of the Egyptians, who 
 will stone them ; in other words, deprive them of truths. 
 
 Truth, as has been said, has two foundations in the 
 mind, namely, the Word and Nature, or Revelation 
 from the Lord and confirming Science. To the end 
 that these may be lasting foundations, the mind needs 
 to be in a clear and strong affirmation concerning the 
 Doctrines of the Word that are truths continuous from 
 the Lord, and, therefore, of Divine authorship aud 
 authority. With this affirmation in possession of the 
 
216 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 field, the truths of Doctrine will be illustrated and con- 
 firmed, not ouly by the letter of the Word and its scien- 
 tifics, but also by all natural scientifics relating to man 
 and the three kingdoms of nature. Such a conjunction 
 of the truths of Doctrine from the Word with natural 
 scientifics serves to elevate the human mind into higher 
 intelligence and to lead it in what is denominated "the 
 way from faith." 
 
 This is the way pursued by the spiritual man. The 
 other way, entered by man's following scientifics, and 
 called the way from scientifics, fixes the mind in the 
 things of nature and closes it to the light inflowing from 
 the Lord by Heaven. 
 
 On this subject we are thus instructed : 
 
 It is to be known liow the Truths of the Church are to be con- 
 joined with their Scientifics. The beginning is not from scien- 
 tifics, nor is entrance to be made by them into the truths of faith, 
 because scientifics with man are from sensuals, thus from the 
 world, whence there are innumerable fallacies. But the begin- 
 ning is from the truths of faitli — viz. : in the following way: 
 The doctrinals of the Church are first to be learned and then to 
 be examined from the Word, whether they be true; for they 
 are not true because men of authority in the Church have so 
 
 said and their adherents aflfirm the same It is manifest 
 
 that the Word is to be examined, in order that it may be there 
 seen whether they be true. When this is done from an affection 
 of truth, then man is iUustrated by the Lord so as to perceive, 
 without knowing whence, what is true, and he is confirmed 
 
FORMATION OF INTELLIGENCE. 217 
 
 therein according to the good in which lie is Afterward, 
 
 when lie is confirmed, and is thus in an affirmative from the 
 Word tliat they are the triitlis of faitli, then it is permitted him 
 tn confirm these things by all the scientifics he possesses, of whatsoever 
 name and nature, for then yhecnuse an affirmative reigns univer- 
 sal y, 1 e accepts the scientifics which are in concordance and re- 
 jects the scientifics which are not in concordance, becuu-e of the 
 fallacies that tliey contain. Faith is corroborated by scientific s; 
 wherefoie no one is to be forbidden to search the Scriptures 
 from an affection of knowing whether the doctrinais of the 
 Church within which he was born are true; for otherwise he 
 can never be illustrated, nor is he to be forbidden afterward to 
 strengthen himself by scientifics; but this is not alloiced him be- 
 fore, Tliis is the way, and there is none otiier, in which the 
 truths of faith ate to be conjoine<l with scientifics; not only with 
 the scientifics of the Church, bat aho with scientifics of every kind. 
 .... Scientifics are in no wise to he rejected from the truths of 
 faith, but tl ey are to be conjoined, yet by tlie prior way, that 
 is, by the way from fuitli and not by the posterior way, that is, 
 by the wny from scientifics. A. C. 6047. 
 
 SCIENTIFICS OF USE IN THE FORMATION OF 
 INTELLIGENCE. 
 
 It now remains to enumerate from the teachings of 
 the Church the scientifics which may be of use to man 
 in the formation and perfection of his intelligence, and 
 to note the places of such scientifics in the scale of this 
 use, and to discriminate those that are useless and inju- 
 rious. 
 
218 CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 In Arcana Ccelestia (n. 5934) there is given the fol- 
 lowing general summary of the various kinds of Scien- 
 tifics : 
 
 1. Scientifics of things terrestrial, corporeal, and mun- 
 
 dane ; these are the lowest. 
 
 2. Scientifics of the civil state, its government, statutes, 
 
 and laws ; these are higher or more interior. 
 
 3. Scientifics of moral life ; these are still more inte- 
 
 rior. 
 
 4. Scientifics of spiritual life ; these are more interior 
 
 than all the others. Such are the truths of the 
 Church. 
 Under the first head fall the following experimental 
 sciences : 
 
 Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Mechanics, Geometry, 
 Anatomy, Language. (^H. H. 353 ; see C. L. 163.) 
 
 Horticulture and the like. (/S. D. 792.) 
 
 Optics, Pharmaceutics, Mathematics, Architecture, Bot- 
 any, Metallurgy, Algebra (8. D. 4578), Arithmetic 
 {S. D. 769). 
 
 Medicine (>S'. D. 4657). 
 
 To these are to be added Geology, Geography, 
 
 Zoology, Mineralogy, Physiology, and the various other 
 
 sciences that treat of things in the natural world. 
 
 Under the second head are to be classed the follow- 
 ing: 
 
FORMATION OF INTELLIGENCE. 219 
 
 History (H. H. 353), Goverument {8. D. 4578), Civil 
 Law {S. D. 4657), Jurisprudence, Politics (C. L. 
 163), Political Economy, Political Geography, Eth- 
 nology, Sociology, and various other sciences treat- 
 ing of man in his social relations. 
 
 Under the third head are to be classed : 
 Psychology, Philosophy {H. H. 353 and S. D. 4578), 
 Ethics (C. L, 163), Moral Law, and the like. 
 Under ihQ fourth head ; 
 The letter of the Word and the Scientifics of Doctrine, 
 Ecclesiastical Order and Government, and all the 
 doctrines of the Church which have reference to 
 the law of love, to the Lord, and charity toward 
 the neighbor. 
 
 Of the usefulness of various sciences and of the manner 
 in which they occupy and qualify the human mind, we 
 have the following teaching in the Spiritual Diary: 
 
 As to Philosophy [metaphysics] its every part lias hitherto 
 done nothing else than darken minds and thus close the way to 
 the intuition of interior things, also of universals, for it consists 
 only of terms and disputes concerning terms; besides, rational 
 philosophy so confines some that the mind cleaves to nothing 
 but particulars, and thus to dust; moreover, it not only obstructs 
 the ways to the interiors, but also blinds and altogether takes 
 away faith, so that in the other life a philosopher who has in- 
 dulged much in such studies is stupid and unlearned above 
 
22b CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 others.— /S. D. 767 (c/. S. D. 4655, 1602, 1604, 1605, 1606, 
 1607). 
 
 As to Mechanics, when one indulges too much in mechanical 
 praxis he then so forms his mind that he believes not only all 
 nature, but also all celestial and spiritual things, to be nothing 
 more than inechanical ; if he cannot reduce them to mechanical 
 principles he believes them to be nothing ; thus he becomes cor- 
 poreal and terrestrial. — S. D. 768. 
 
 As to Geometry and similar sciences, these also, as it were, 
 concentrate the mind and impede it from advancing into univer- 
 sal s; besides, they suppose nothing to exist but what is geomet- 
 rical or mechanical, when, nevertheless, the extension of Geom- 
 etry does not go beyond terrestrial and corporeal forms. — S. D. 
 769. 
 
 As to Historical studies, these are such as not to do injury, 
 provided they be not only things of the memory. — S. D. 770 
 (c/. n. 771). 
 
 Natural experience, such as Horticulture and the like, does not 
 interfere with spiritual cognitions, because such persons, in like 
 manner as those who are not learned, can be perfected, as I have 
 observed in the case of a certain person. — S. D. 772 (c/. n. 773). 
 
 Sciences in themselves are not things to be rejected, for spirit- 
 ual things can be confirmed by them; wherefore the angels 
 understand indefinitely more in all sciences than can ever be be- 
 lieved, and, indeed, the most hidden things; but they who are 
 learned in any science scarcely cease, each one, from reasoning 
 from his own science, either openly or by himself, concerning 
 spiritual things; thus he blinds himself; for many, in order that 
 they may appear learned, ratiocinate from their sciences, as phil- 
 osophers from theirs, logicians from theirs, metaphysicians from 
 theirs, anatomists from theirs, politicians from theirs ; and so 
 
FORMATION OF INTELLtOENCE. 221 
 
 they heap up phantasies, like the Jews, from their trifles, etc. 
 Wherefore, with the learned, ideas are closed, thus spiritual and 
 celestial things, also heaven ; but with the unlearned they are 
 open.— a5. D. 3460. 
 
 Useful sciences are Physics, Optics, Chemistry, Pharmaceu- 
 tics, Anatomy, Mathematics, Astronomy, Architecture, Botany, 
 Metallurgy, History, the Government of kingdoms, and the like, 
 from all of which, as means, every one can become rational. 
 
 But there are some which entirely destroy the faculty of 
 thinking, and ruin the rational ; like Scholastics, when, namely, 
 they describe a thing that is clear and intelligible to almost 
 every one, by many scholastic terms, till no one understands it ; 
 Philosophy, when it is determined from a series of conclusions, from 
 the definitions of terms, and by conclusions thence, which series 
 when arranged together present things that can be understood 
 by no one, nor what the connection is ; they remove all reason, 
 when, nevertheless, they involve nothing that cannot be explained 
 so simply that every one may understand them. Loyic, which 
 concentrates and determines truths to doubts, and this still 
 more when one thing has been evolved by means of many, which 
 then is involved; the conclusion itself is often such as to be in- 
 telligible without any syllogism. These things aie also like 
 geometrical and algebraic processes, when simple truths are demon- 
 strated by them, and when they are so intricately expressed by 
 angular, circular, and curved figures, and explained according to 
 them, that they are not intelligible to any one. Such sciences and 
 the applications of such sciences cause man to lose common sense and 
 to become insane. — Lesser Diary, 4578 {cf. n. 4579). 
 
 Scientifics may be classified as above, under four 
 heads, as relating to things terrestrial, things civil, 
 
222 CONVEESA TIONS ON ED UCA TION. 
 
 things m-ral, and things spiritual, or they may be ar- 
 ranged in the order of their uses, as having relation, 1, 
 to the uses of nourishing, of clothing, of housing man, of 
 man's recreation and delight, of his protection, and of 
 the preservation of his state ; 2, to the uses of perfecting 
 the rational, as having relation to natural, economic, 
 civil, and moral things ; 3, to the uses of receiving what 
 is spiritual from the Loed, relating to religion and 
 thence to worship, or to the Word and Doctrines of the 
 Church. A third order of arrangement df scientifics 
 will arise from their application to the teacher's work. 
 This order will necessarily vary in details according to 
 the systems and methods pursued by various teachers. 
 The arrangement we shall propose will be such a one as 
 appears to offer to the teacher a useful way in which to 
 proceed in forming the mind of the child, so that it may 
 advance from the first sensual to the highest rational 
 state. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
SPIRIT. 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 The Lord, the First and the Last, the Only. 
 
 The Divine Human. Divine Love and Wisdon 
 
 The New Heaven. The New Church. 
 
 Revelations. The Lord's Coming. 
 
 Universal Theology. 
 
 Influx. Degrees. Forms. 
 
 Correspondences, Representati ves.Significntives. ~ \ 
 
 Heaven, Hell, and the World of Spirits opened. 
 
 Nature and Order of Spiritual Life. 
 
 Tlie Word opened. / 
 
 The Word — in the Hebrew. The Historical 
 
 Sense. 
 The Word — Historical, Prophetical, Historico- 
 
 Prophetical. Ancient Word. 
 Memorabilia. GeneralDoctrinesof NewChurch. 
 Heaven, Hell, and the World of Spirits, general. £ 
 Correspondences, etc., accommodated. " 
 
 The Lord the Saviour. First and Second Coming. 
 First Christian Church. Churches formed by 
 
 Doctrine from Revelation. 
 
 The New Church. Genuine Tnitiis. 
 
 Love to the Lord and the Neighbor. The all 
 
 of the Word, as to Life. Commandments. 
 Word in Hebrew — Heaven. 
 Spiritual World. Spiritual Sun. j 
 
 Memorabilia. Historicals of the Word. ! 
 
 The Lord the Redeemer. Incarnation. 
 Creation. The Lord the Creator. 
 The Divine Man. 
 The Book. The Writings. 
 
 Use. 
 
 % ) Use. 
 
 THE LORD. 
 
 MAX. 
 
 RATIOS ALITT aSD LIBERTY, 
 
 FOR THE LITE OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 Marriage. Man and Woman. One Man. 
 
 The Family (Church). Human Society. 
 
 The State, the Common Good and Truth. ( 
 
 The Form, Order, .-ind ('on.stituii(in of the Human ^ 
 
 Mind. Varieties— Individual, Tribal, National. 
 Principles of Language. \ 
 
 History of the Race, of Race.s, of N.itions-sucli as the 
 
 History of the Church. 
 The Spiritual, Rational, Natural Man. 
 
 Existence of Man in the World. Language. 
 
 History of Man, of LangimE;es. Literature. 
 
 Structure of Language and Use. Writing, Drawiiif; 
 Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music. ^ jj_ 
 
 Man at Home, Industries, Trade, Commerce, Inter- 
 course, Governments, Laws, Order, Rulers. 
 
 Ages of the World and Hiunan Race. 
 
 Habitations of Men on the Earth. 
 
 > Use. 
 
 STORY, OR HISTORY, OF MAN. 
 
 Human Occupations, Employments, Uses. 
 
 Modes of Utterance and E.xpression^Languagi 
 Words, Drawing, Writing, Music. 
 
 Dwelling's and Dwelling-Places. 
 
 Our own People — Language, Human Form and Shape, | 
 Appearance, Living. 
 
 Individual Man and Woman, Families, tribes, Peo- 
 ples, Nations, Races. Distribution. 
 
 Mankind. The Man-Animal. 
 
 Use. 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 FOR MAS. DEAD. PASSIVE. 
 
 The Sun. ^ 
 
 Natural Ileal and Light. ^ ^e 
 
 Natural Life. fi. 
 
 I Growth. Existence. g c 
 
 Formation. Production. .o •- 
 
 I Human Physiology. ^ 
 
 Animal Physiology. 
 
 \'ogetable Physiology. 
 
 Mineral .Vnalysis, Chemistry, 
 etc. 
 
 S r? 
 
 / Matter, or Material Substance. . 
 I Natural Substance and Form. .3 
 \ Heat and Light. Sun, Moon, etc. O 
 
 I Atmosphere. Climate. g 
 
 ' Earths in the Universe. o 
 
 \ Surface of the Earth. Structure. 
 
 i Mineral Structure. . ^ 
 
 / Vegetable Texture. "I 
 
 ' .Vnimal .\natomy. 
 
 * Human .\natomy. 
 
 ' ^}'^?- , \ Forms, Shapes. 
 Animal. J 
 
 Fishes, Birds, Quadrupeds. 
 Insects, Reptiles. 
 Distribution. Habitat. 
 
 Trees (Fruit, Wood). 
 I Cirain, Shrub, Grass. 
 Vegetation. 
 
 I Sun, Moon, Stars. 
 Heat Light. 
 .Vtiuosphorc, Water, 
 Laud. Karths, Soils. 
 Minerals, Metals. 
 The Earth. Niitural aiu 
 
 terial. 
 Substance. 
 
 .;;> 
 
 (Read upwards.) 
 
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