384. After that the third speaker arose and spoke as follows:

"Love alone is not the origin of beauty, neither is wisdom alone, but the origin is a union of love and wisdom - a union of love with the wisdom in a youth, and a union of wisdom with its love in a maiden. For a maiden does not love wisdom in herself but in a young man, and on that account sees him as beautiful; and when the young man see this in a young woman, he then sees her as beautiful. Therefore love through wisdom creates beauty, and wisdom from love receives it.

"The fact of this is clearly apparent in heaven. I saw maidens and wives there, and observed their beauty; and I beheld one kind of beauty in the maidens and another altogether in the wives, seeing in the maidens only its sparkle, but in the wives its effulgence. I saw the difference as being like that between a diamond sparkling with light and a ruby refulgent at the same time with fire.

"What is beauty but something that gives delight to the sight? What is the origin of this delight but the interplay of love and wisdom? This interplay causes the sight to glow, and the glow radiates from eye to eye and presents beauty.

"What makes the beauty of a face but its ruddy glow and pearly radiance, and a lovely blending of the two? Is the ruddy glow not owing to love, and the pearly radiance to wisdom? For love glows with a ruddy glow from its fire, and wisdom shines with a pearly radiance from its light. I saw both qualities plainly in the faces of a married couple in heaven - a ruddy glow blended with a pearly radiance in the wife, and a pearly radiance blended with a ruddy glow in the husband. And I noticed that their looking at each other caused each to become brighter."

When the third speaker said this, the crowd applauded and cried out, "He is the winner!" And suddenly a flaming light - which is the light of conjugial love also - filled the house with a radiant splendor, and at the same time their hearts with gladness.

3. I. There are two worlds: the spiritual world, inhabited by spirits and angels, and the natural world, inhabited by men.

That there is a spiritual world inhabited by spirits and angels distinct from the natural world inhabited by men, has hitherto been deeply hidden, even in the Christian world, because no angel has descended and taught it by word of mouth, nor has any man ascended and seen it. Lest, therefore, from ignorance of that world, and the uncertain faith respecting heaven and hell thence resulting, man should be so far infatuated as to become an atheistic materialist, it has pleased the Lord to open the sight of my spirit, and to raise it into heaven and let it down into hell, and to exhibit to my view the nature of both.

[2] It has thus been made evident to me that there are two worlds, distinct from each other; one, in which all things are spiritual, whence it is called the spiritual world; and the other, in which all things are natural, whence it is called the natural world: and also that spirits and angels live in their own world, and men in theirs; and further, that every man passes by death from his world into the other, and lives in it to eternity. In order that Influx, which is the subject of this little work, may be unfolded from its beginning, it is necessary that some information respecting both these worlds should be provided; for the spiritual world flows into the natural world, and actuates it in all its parts, with both men and beasts, and also constitutes the vegetative principle in trees and herbs.