From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #378

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378, 3. Volition corresponds to the heart. As I mentioned above [375], this cannot be shown in a clearer and more precise way than by examining the effects of volition. It can be shown in some detail by the fact that all the feelings that arise from love induce changes in the motions of the heart. We can tell this from the arterial pulse that acts synchronously with the heart. It has countless changes and motions in response to feelings that arise from love. The only ones we can detect with the finger are that it may beat slower or faster, boldly or gently, soft or hard, regularly or irregularly, and so on. So it varies from happiness to sorrow, from peace of mind to rage, from courage to fearfulness, from fevers to chills, and so on.

Since the motions of the heart (called systole and diastole) do vary in this way depending on the feelings that arise from someone's love, many of the ancients and some moderns have ascribed feelings to the heart and named it as the home of the feelings. So in common language we have come to speak of a magnanimous heart or a timid one, a happy or a sorrowful heart, a soft or a hard heart, a great or a mean heart, a whole or a broken heart, a heart of flesh or one of stone, of being heavy, soft, or gentle at heart, of putting our heart into a task, of giving our whole heart, giving a new heart, resting at heart, taking to heart, of not laying something to heart, of hardening the heart, of being a friend at heart. We have the words concord and discord and envy and many others that have to do with love and its feelings.

The Word says similar things because it was composed in correspondences. It makes no difference whether you say love or volition, since volition is the vessel of love, as already noted [358-361].

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #3213

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3213. REPRESENTATIONS AND CORRESPONDENCES - continued

In the world of spirits countless representatives manifest themselves almost constantly. They are visible forms of spiritual and celestial things, not unlike the forms that occur in the world. The origin of them I have been given to know through daily association with spirits and angels. Representatives in the world of spirits flow in from heaven, and from the ideas and the discussions of the angels there. Indeed when angels' ideas and their discussions resulting from those ideas come down to spirits, they present themselves in a variety of ways as representatives. Upright spirits are able to know from those representatives what angels are discussing with one another, for inwardly representatives have within them that which comes from angels, and since this stirs the affections of those spirits, it is perceived even as to the essential nature of it. Angels' ideas and discussions cannot present themselves to spirits in any other way, for an idea existing with an angel contains immeasurably more than an idea existing with a spirit, and unless it were given visible form and presented itself in a representative way, and so visually by means of images, a spirit would understand hardly anything whatever of those things. For such things are for the most part inconceivable. But when they are represented by means of visible forms they are rendered such that spirits are able to comprehend some fairly general aspects. This is a marvel, for not even the smallest detail of the things that are represented fails to express something spiritual or celestial present in an idea existing with the angelic community from which the representative flows down.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #5195

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5195. 'That Pharaoh was dreaming' means provision 1 made for the natural. This is clear from the representation of 'Pharaoh' as the natural, dealt with in 5079, 5080, 5095, 5160, and from the meaning of 'dreaming' as a foretelling of things to come, and so in the highest sense as Foresight, dealt with in 3698, 4682, 5091, 5092, 5104. Now since Foresight or the foreseen is meant, Providence or provision is meant too, because Foresight and Providence cannot exist one without the other. For Providence has in view the state that is to last for ever; but unless it foresees what this state is, it cannot make any provision towards it. A provision for present needs without at the same time any foresight of future ones, and so no simultaneous provision for future needs within present ones, would imply a lack of any end in view, or of any order, or of consequently any wisdom and intelligence, and so it would not be something having a Divine origin. But when reference is made to what is good the term Providence is used, whereas Foresight is used in reference to what is not good, 5155. One cannot use the term Foresight when speaking of what is good because good resides within the Divine, comes forth from the Divine Himself, and exists in accord with the Divine. Rather, this term is used when one refers to what is not good or to what is evil since this comes forth from outside the Divine, from others opposed to the Divine. Thus because Providence is used when reference is made to what is good, the term is also used to refer to the joining of the natural to the celestial of the spiritual. This is the reason why 'dreaming' at this point means provision that had been made.

Footnotes:

1. Reading provisum (what is provided) for praevisum (what is foreseen) cp 5193, 5211

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.