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:

116. I have been granted to see peoples born on islands who were rational as regards civic matters, but who knew nothing at all of God. In the spiritual world they look like apes and lead a life almost like that of apes. But because they were born human beings, and so into the ability to receive spiritual life, they are instructed by angels and given new life through concepts of God as a man.

What a person is like on his own is clearly apparent from people in hell, who have among them some clerics and learned who are unwilling even to hear of God and therefore cannot even mention God. I have seen them and spoken with them. And I have also spoken with some who responded with the fire of anger and wrath when they heard someone speaking about God.

[2] Consider, then, what a person would be like if he was told nothing of God, when some people are as described who have heard about God, written about God, and preached about God. Many of the Jesuits are of that character.

They are of such a character because they are prompted by a will that is evil, and, as we said before, this steers the intellect and expels any truth that it has in it from the Word.

If people could have known on their own of the existence of God and life after death, why have they not known that a person remains a person after death? Why have they supposed that his soul or spirit is like a puff of wind or the ether, which has no eyes with which to see, or ears with which to hear, or mouth with which to speak, until it is united to and combines with its corpse and skeleton?

Imagine then a doctrine for use in worship hatched from rational sight alone. Would it not be people themselves who were worshiped, as has been the case from days of old and is the case today by those who know from the Word that God alone is to be worshiped? No other worship can come of a person’s native self, not even worship of the sun or moon.