143. Nowadays it may seem strange that 'beasts' and 'animals' in ancient times meant affections and similar things residing with man. But because people had heavenly ideas then, and because such things are also represented in the world of spirits by animals - by such animals in fact as resemble those affections - this alone is what they therefore understood when they spoke in this fashion. And this alone is what is meant in the Word whenever beasts are mentioned in general or in particular. The whole prophetical section of the Word is full of things such as these, and therefore anyone who does not know the particular meaning of any beast cannot possibly understand what the Word contains in the internal sense. But as slated already, there are two kinds of beasts - evil ones, because they are harmful, and good ones, because they are harmless. Good beasts, such as sheep, lambs, and doves, mean good affections. Here, because the subject is the celestial man, or the celestial-spiritual man, the same applies. The fact that 'beasts' in general means affections has been confirmed from several places in the Word quoted already in 45, 46. So there is no need of further confirmation.

6622. In talking to spirits about what flows into ideas constituting thought I have said that men cannot by any means believe how countless the details are that an idea holds within it, for men have no conception of thought except as something simple and singular. Thus their judgement of the matter is based on quite external evidence. The spirits to whom I was talking at that time subscribed to the belief that ideas did not have anything inwardly present in them, a belief of which they had become convinced during their lifetime. But to enable them to understand that they perceived countless things as a single whole, I was led to tell them that the movements of millions of motor fibres combine to produce a single action. At the same time all things in the body work together and adjust themselves both collectively and individually to produce that action. Yet for all this that small action is seen as one that is simple and singular, as though it possessed no such complexity. It is similar with the countless things which combine to produce a single spoken word, such as the bending of the lips, and of all the muscles and fibres there; also the movements of the tongue, throat, larynx, trachea, lungs, and diaphragm, together with all their muscles collectively and individually. Since a person discerns the single utterance they make merely as a simple sound without anything more to it, one may see how crude is perception that relies on the senses. What then of perception that relies on sensory evidence regarding ideas constituting thought which exist in a purer world and are accordingly quite remote from the sensory level?