52. As long as someone is a spiritual man, the dominion over him runs from external man to internal man, as is said here, 'They will have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air', and over the beasts, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth'. When however he becomes celestial and does what is good out of love, then the dominion over him runs from internal man to external man. This is how the Lord describes Himself, and so simultaneously the celestial man, who is a likeness of Him, in David,

You have given him dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, flocks and all cattle, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, ¹ and the fish of the sea, and that crossing the paths of the seas. Psalms 8:6-8.

Here therefore the beasts are mentioned first, the birds next, and the fish of the sea after that, for the reason that the celestial man starts with love which resides in the will. With the spiritual man it is different. With him fish and birds, which have to do with the understanding, the domain of faith, come first, while beasts come afterwards.

Footnotes:

201. 4. By his divine providence the Lord gathers the impulses of the whole human race into a single form, which is a human form. We will see in the next section that this is a pervasive feature of the Lord's providence. People who credit everything to the material world also credit everything to human prudence. This is because people who credit everything to the material world are at heart denying God, and people who credit everything to human prudence are at heart denying divine providence: the two are inseparable.

Still, for the sake of their good name and out of a fear of losing it, both kinds of person will claim verbally that divine providence is universal and that we are responsible for the details, the aggregate of these details being what we mean by our prudence.

[2] But think seriously: what is "universal providence" when the details are taken away? Is it anything but a mere word? By "universal" we mean something that comes from details taken together, as a generality arises from specific instances. If you take the details away, then, what is the "universal" but something with a vacuum inside, like a surface with nothing inside it, or like a compound with no components?

If we say that divine providence is a universal government and that things are not governed but just kept connected and that the activities of government are managed by others, could this be called a universal government? No king has this kind of government, because if some king were to give his subjects control over everything in his kingdom he would no longer be a king, he would simply be called a king. He would have only the honor of the name, and no honor of real substance. We could not credit such a king with any government at all, let alone a universal government.

[3] Providence on God's part is called prudence on our level. If we cannot speak of universal prudence in the case of a king who has not kept anything for himself but the name, so that the kingdom can be called a kingdom and thereby held together, by the same token we cannot speak of a universal providence if we are taking care of everything with our own prudence.

Much the same holds for the terms "universal providence" and "universal government" when we talk about the material world, if we assert that God created the universe and then provided the material world with the ability to manage everything on its own. What is "universal providence" in this case but a metaphysical term that apart from being a term has no reality whatever?

Many of the people who give the material world credit for everything that is brought forth and give our own prudence credit for everything that happens, but who still say that God created the material world, think of divine providence only as an empty phrase. As things really are, though, divine providence includes the smallest details of the material world and the smallest details of our prudence, which is why it is universal.