to an imperfect or finite intelligence, as to the bodily eye for example: and we seize the essential or rational Truth in every case, by exactly reversing this mirrored or reflected semblance of it.

Now nature being a mirror of the soul or spiritual creation, and nothing but a mirror, we must of course insist upon her renouncing all higher pretensions, and observing strictly every exigency of her own character. That is to say she must reflect the soul or spiritual world, not as it is in itself or really, not as it exists to its own consciousness, but only as it is phenomenally, or as it exists to a more limited intelligence than itself, say the bodily eye. In other words, we must expect to see the natural consciousness exactly reversing the spiritual one. Thus what the spiritual affection pronounces good, the natural affection must pronounce evil: what to the spiritual understanding is truth must be to the natural falsity: what is light to the spiritual eye must be darkness to the natural eye: what to the former is right must be left to the latter: what is head to the one must be heels to the other: and so forth. By natural light therefore, the light which the mirror herself supplies, it is no wonder that all things within her framework appear upright and orderly and beautiful; just as in the looking glass that which is really or consciously my left hand is made to appear my right: whilst in reality or to the spiritual consciousness, they

are the exact reverse of upright and orderly and beautiful, as we see by the inverted forms they assume when they are reflected towards the soul, whose nearest outpost is the retina, and other apparatus constituting the needful basis of the varied life of sense.

It is accordingly not at all remarkable that we see things upright, whose image upon the retina is inverted, because natural light, by which we see the things in question, is in itself but an inversion or correspondence, and by no means an extension, of spiritual light. Those who make a marvel of this experience, undoubtedly hold that we see the image of the natural object on the retina, instead of the natural object itself. But this is simply absurd or contradictory. It would indeed be truly marvellous, if while actually seeing this inverted image we yet saw the object upright. But this is impossible. In that case it would not be the eye which sees, but the brain. For we see not what lies within the eye, but what lies without it and the image in question falls not upon the eye, but exclusively upon the brain through its extension into the retina.

:

But some one will ask, Do we not see at least by means of this inverted image? Do we not see by virtue of a reflection of the natural world on the retina? This question puts the cart before the horse, but I can manage to satisfy it. It is a universal truth that the natural world is altogether

vivified from the spiritual one, and it is also true that this vivification takes place through certain media, which we call the senses. Thus we see, we hear, we smell, we taste, we touch, which are all experiences of natural life, by virtue of a spiritual influx into the retina, the tympanum, the olfactory and gustatory nerves, and the skin. But this influx does not traverse these various media, or pass through them: on the contrary, it is always arrested there by the exact contrariety or inversion which it encounters at the hands of Nature; and it is this very arrestation which becomes the basis of our natural subjectivity, or makes our natural experience possible. Thus the inverted natural image on the retina is nothing more nor less than a reverberation or contre-coup made upon the spiritual sense by an act of natural vision: it marks the arrest and reflection, or bending back, of the spiritual world upon itself, when it would otherwise pass out of its sphere, and dominate the natural one. It is therefore true to say that we see by means of this reflex natural image on thẻ retina, thus far, namely:-that if that reflex image did not take place, it would be because there was no difference between soul and body, between spirit and nature, and consequently because we were not intended to enjoy any natural life. Beyond this, it is absurdly untrue.

I said just now that it was this arrestation of the soul, or of spiritual influx, at the portals of

sense, which alone allowed us a natural subjectivity. This is obvious enough. For if the soul passed through these nervous media, so subjecting the natural body to itself: if in other words the spiritual consciousness dominated the bodily or natural consciousness, passing into it not courteously and by correspondence, but brutally or in person: why then of course we should have no natural sight or natural consciousness of any sort. We should in that case be the mere slaves and packhorses of the soul, and would soon lose even the bodily form appropriate to humanity: for that erect form postulates an indwelling divinity or freedom even down to its toe-nails. In a word natural experience is never, but in most diseased and beastly conditions, the continuation or reproduction of spiritual experience: it is most strictly, or at its healthiest, a correspondence and inversion of it, just as the inside of a glove is a correspondence and inversion of its outside. We see naturally only by ceasing to see spiritually; and we cease to see spiritually by the very necessity of our natural organization, which makes the eye, the ear, and every other sense a common medium for the soul instead of an individual one. Spiritual sight demands an organ which is empowered only from within the subject, which derives its potency entirely from the affection and thought, or spiritual character, of such subject. Hence Swedenborg continually saw persons whose interiors were

D

of that human largeness that they sensibly communicated with the remotest planets, turning the distance between the earth and Orion into a childish superstition, into a mere scientific pedantry. But natural sight demands an organ most strictly irrespective of the individual character of the subject, because depending exclusively upon his relations to the race, or what he has in common with all other men. Thus the angel Gabriel if he were in the flesh, could make no morning call in Andromeda, whatever might be his inward fitness, and would be obliged to drop his dearest friend in Arcturus, simply because his natural organization is not the continuance or extension of his spiritual one, but its decisive contrast and contradiction, invariably pronouncing that first which the latter pronounces last, and declaring that the highest good and truth and beauty, which the latter declares to be the lowest evil and falsity and deformity.

But I must come a little closer to my subject, and by way of relieving your fixed attention, I will postpone what more I have to say to another letter. Don't grow discouraged; the goal is clearly before us, with heaven's own radiance encircling it, and it will not be long before we grow perfectly familiar with the approaches to it.

Yours truly,