30. The spiritual man is an erect man who with his head looks to the heaven above him, and about him, and treads the earth with the soles of his feet; but the natural man separated from the spiritual is either like a man stooping, who wags his head, and constantly looks on the ground, and at the steps of his own feet; or, he is like a man inverted, who walks on the palms of his hands, and raises his feet towards heaven, and performs worship by shakings and clappings of these. The spiritual man is like a rich man who has a palace in which are upper stories, bed-chambers and dining-rooms, the walls of which are continuous windows of crystalline glass, through which he sees the gardens, fields, flocks and herds which also belong to him, and with the sight and use of which he delights himself day by day. But the natural man separated from the spiritual is also like a rich man who has a palace containing chambers, the walls of which are continuous panels of rotting wood, which sheds around an illusory light, wherein shapes of pride, originating in the love of self and of the world, appear like molten images of gold in the midst, and of silver at the sides, before which he bends the knee like an idolater. Again, the spiritual man, in himself, is actually like a dove as to gentleness, like an eagle as to the sight of the mind, like a flying bird of paradise as to progress in spiritual things, and like a peacock as to their adornment from spiritual things; but, on the other hand, the natural man separated from the spiritual is like a hawk chasing a dove, like a dragon devouring the eyes of an eagle, like a fiery serpent flying at the side of a bird of paradise, and like a horned owl beside a peacock. These comparisons are adduced that they may be as lenses through which the reader may more closely observe what the spiritual man is in itself, and the natural man in itself. But the case is altogether different, when the spiritual man by its spiritual light and spiritual heat is inwardly in the natural; then, both make one, just like effort in motion, and will (which is living effort) in action, and like appetite in taste, and like the sight of the mind in the sight of the eye, and still more evidently like the perception of a thing in the knowledge of it, and the thought of it in speech.
