ANGELIC WISDOM CONCERNING THE DIVINE LOVE AND THE DIVINE WISDOM BY EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
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Works of Swedenborg available from Seltzer Books:
Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providece
Angelic Wisdom Concerning Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom
The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugal Love
Earths in Our Solar System
Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell
Spiritual Life and the Word of God
Standard Edition
Swedenborg Foundation
Incorporated
New York
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Established 1850
First Published in Latin, Amsterdam, 1763
First English translation published in U.S.A., 1794
55th Printing, 1988
ISBN 0-87785-056-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76-46144
Manufactured in the United States of America
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
1. PART FIRST. LOVE IS THE LIFE OF MAN.
83. PART SECOND. DIVINE LOVE AND DIVINE WISDOM APPEAR IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD AS A SUN.
173. PART THIRD. IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD THERE ARE ATMOSPHERES, WATERS AND LANDS, JUST AS IN THE NATURAL WORLD; ONLY THE FORMER ARE SPIRITUAL, WHILE THE LATTER ARE NATURAL.
282. PART FOURTH. THE LORD FROM ETERNITY, WHO IS JEHOVAH, CREATED THE UNIVERSE AND ALL THINGS THEREOF FROM HIMSELF, AND NOT FROM NOTHING.
358. PART FIFTH. TWO RECEPTACLES AND ABODES FOR HIMSELF, CALLED WILL AND UNDERSTANDING, HAVE BEEN CREATED AND FORMED BY THE LORD IN MAN; THE WILL FOR HIS DIVINE LOVE, AND THE UNDERSTANDING FOR HIS DIVINE WISDOM.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
The previous translation of this work has been carefully revised. In this revision the translator has had the valuable assistance of suggestions by the Rev. L.H. Tafel and others. The new renderings of existere and fugere are suggestions adopted by the Editorial Committee and accepted by the translator, but for which he does not wish to be held solely responsible.
1. PART FIRST. LOVE IS THE LIFE OF MAN.
Man knows that there is such a thing as love, but he does not know what love is. He knows that there is such a thing as love from common speech, as when it is said, he loves me, a king loves his subjects, and subjects love their king, a husband loves his wife, a mother her children, and conversely; also, this or that one loves his country, his fellow citizens, his neighbor; and likewise of things abstracted from person, as when it is said, one loves this or that thing. But although the word love is so universally used, hardly anybody knows what love is. And because one is unable, when he reflects upon it, to form to himself any idea of thought about it, he says either that it is not anything, or that it is merely something flowing in from sight, hearing, touch, or interaction with others, and thus affecting him. He is wholly unaware that love is his very life; not only the general life of his whole body, and the general life of all his thought