1854. 'You will be buried at a good old age' means the enjoyment of all goods by those who are the Lord's. This is clear from the fact that people who die and are buried do not die but pass over from an obscure life into one that is bright. For death of the body is but a continuation and also a perfecting of life, when those who are the Lord's enter for the first time into the enjoyment of all goods. That enjoyment is meant by 'a good old age'. The expressions 'they died', 'were buried', and 'were gathered to their fathers' occur quite often, but they do not carry the same meaning in the internal sense as in the sense of the letter. In the internal sense it is the things which belong to life after death, and which are eternal, that are meant, whereas in the sense of the letter it is those which belong to life in the world and which are temporal.

[2] Consequently, when such expressions occur, those who see into the internal sense, as angels do, have no thoughts of such things as have to do with death and burial but with such as have to do with the continuation of life; for they look upon death as nothing else than a casting off of the things which belong to merely earthly matter and to time, and as the continuing of life proper. Indeed they do not know what death is, for death does not enter into any of their thinking. It is the same with people's ages. By the phrase used here, 'at a good old age', angels have no perception at all of old age; indeed they do not know what old age is, for they themselves are constantly moving towards the life of youth and early manhood. It is life such as this, consequently the celestial and spiritual things belonging to it, that are meant when the expression 'a good old age' and others like it occur in the Word.

65. The useful functions of everything created tend upward, step by step, from the lowest to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source. As already stated [52], these "lowest things" are all the elements of the mineral kingdom--various forms of matter, some stony substances, some saline, some oily, some mineral, some metallic, with the constant addition of a humus composed of plant and animal matter reduced to minute particles. Here lie hidden the goal and the beginning of all the functions that arise from life. The goal of all useful functions is the effort to produce [more] functions; the beginning of all functions is an active force that comes out of that effort. These are characteristics of the mineral kingdom.

The intermediate things are all the elements of the plant kingdom--grasses and herbs of all kinds, plants and shrubs of all kinds, and trees of all kinds. Their functions are in support of everything in the animal kingdom, whether flawed or flawless. They provide food, pleasure, and life. They nourish [animal] bodies with their substance, they delight them with their taste and fragrance and beauty, and they enliven their desires. This effort is inherent in them from their life.

The primary things are all the members of the animal kingdom. The lowest of these are called worms and insects, the intermediate ones birds and animals, and the highest humans; for there are lowest, intermediate, and highest things in each kingdom. The lowest are for the service of the intermediate and the intermediate for the service of the highest. So the useful functions of all created things tend upwards in a sequence from the lowest to the human, which is primary in the divine design.