331. Useful functions for the support of our bodies have to do with its nourishment, clothing, shelter, recreation and pleasure, protection, and the preservation of its state. The useful things created for physical nourishment are all the members of the plant kingdom that we eat and drink, such as fruits, grapes, seeds, vegetables, and grains. Then there are all the members of the animal kingdom that we eat, such as steers, cows, calves, deer, sheep, kids, goats, lambs, and the milk they give, as well as many kinds of bird and fish.

The useful things created for clothing our bodies also come in abundance from these two kingdoms, as do those for our shelter and for our recreation and pleasure, for our protection, and for the preservation of our state. I will not enumerate these because they are familiar, so listing them would only take up space.

There are of course many things that we do not find useful, but these extras do not prevent usefulness. In fact, they enable useful functions to continue. Then there are abuses of functions; but again, the abuse of a function does not eliminate the useful function, just as the falsification of something true does not destroy the truth except for the people who are doing the falsifying.

1630. Spirits are highly indignant that men have no conception of the life of spirits and angels, or that men imagine that they dwell in a state of obscurity, which must be very miserable, and that they are so to speak in an empty void, when in fact they live in the strongest light, can enjoy all good things with every one of their senses, so much so that they are able to perceive them most intimately. There were also certain souls recently arrived from the world who, on account of the assumptions they had adopted there, had brought with them the idea that such things did not exist in the next life. They were therefore taken into angels' homes, where they talked to them and saw those things. When they resumed they said they perceived that it was true and that such things were indeed a reality, and that they never had nor could have believed it during their lifetime. They also said that these things belonged inevitably among the wonderful things people do not believe because they do not have any conception of them. As however this is an experience of the senses, although of the interior senses, they are told this, that they still ought not to doubt the reality of things merely because they do not have any conception of them. Indeed, they are told, if they believed nothing except that of which they have some conception, they would believe nothing concerning things of an interior nature, still less those of eternal life. Here lies the reason for the insanity of our own times.