795. Since this is how it is there, I have conversations every day with the races and peoples of this world. I have interaction not only with people in Europe but also people in Asia and Africa. I talk to people of a variety of religions. Therefore by way of an epilogue to this work I will add a brief description of the state of some of them.

Keep in mind that in the spiritual world, the state of every race and people in general and of each individual in particular depends on their acknowledgment and worship of God. All those who acknowledge God at heart, and from now on, who acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God the Redeemer and Savior, are in heaven. People who do not acknowledge him are beneath heaven and are given instruction there. Those who accept the instruction are lifted up into heaven. Those who do not accept it are cast down into hell. In this second group are people like the Socinians, who turn to God the Father alone, and people like the Arians, who have denied that the Lord's human manifestation was divine. The Lord himself said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6); and when Philip asked to see the Father, the Lord said to him, "Those who see and recognize me, see and recognize the Father" (John 14:7 and following).

1. PART ONE

Love is a person's life. People know that love exists, but they do not know what love is. They know from common speech that it exists. For instance, people say that he loves me, that a king loves his subjects and the subjects love their king, that a husband loves his wife, and a mother her children, and vice versa; also that this or that person loves his country, his fellow citizens, his neighbor. So, too, in regard to matters apart from person, as when it is said that someone loves this or that thing.

But even though love is so frequently mentioned, still scarcely anyone knows what love is. Whenever someone reflects on it, he cannot then form for himself any mental idea of it. Therefore he says either that it is not anything, or that it is merely some stimulus flowing in through his vision, hearing, touch, and social interaction, which thus affects him. He is totally unaware that love is his very life, not only the general life in his whole body and the general life in all his thoughts, but also the life in every single particle of them.

This the wise person may perceive from considering the following proposition: If you take away any impulse having to do with love, can you form any thought? Or can you perform any action? Is it not the case that as the affection belonging to love cools, in the same measure thought, speech and action cool? And the warmer the affection grows, the warmer they grow?

Still, the wise person perceives this not from any concept that love is a person's life, but from his empirical observation that it is so.