193. 1. All our thoughts arise from impulses of our life's love, and there are no thoughts whatever that arise from any other source. Earlier in this work, and also in the work titled Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom (especially in parts 1 and 5), I have explained the essential nature of our life's love, of our desires and consequent thoughts, and of the resulting sensations and actions that occur in our bodies. Since these are the source of the causes from which our prudence flows as an effect, I need to include something about them at this point. What has been written earlier cannot be connected all that closely with things that are written later without being recalled and brought into view.
[2] Earlier in this work and in the aforementioned Divine Love and Wisdom, I explained that there is divine love and wisdom in the Lord, that these two are life itself, and that it is from these two that we get our volition and discernment, volition from divine love and discernment from divine wisdom. I have explained that in the body, these two have their analogues in our heart and lungs, and that this enables us to conclude that just as our heartbeat, united to the breathing of our lungs, governs the whole person physically, so our volition united to our discernment governs the whole person mentally. I have explained that these two fundamentals of life, the one physical and the other spiritual, are in each one of us, and that the physical basis of our life is the beating of the heart and the spiritual basis of our life is the volition of the mind. I have explained that each of these attaches to itself a partner with which it lives and carries on the business of life, the heart uniting the lungs to itself and volition uniting discernment to itself.
[3] Since the soul of our volition is love, then, and the soul of our discernment is wisdom, each coming from the Lord, it follows that love is the life of each one of us and that the quality of that life depends on the quality of our love's union with wisdom. In other words, volition is the life of each one of us, and the quality of that life depends on the quality of our volition's union with discernment. However, there is more on this subject above and especially in Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom in parts 1 and 5.
