496. What we accept in freedom stays with us because our will takes it in and makes it our own; it becomes part of our love, and our love recognizes it as its own and uses it to form itself.
This will be illustrated by comparisons. Because they are based on earthly phenomena, heat will take the place of love.
We know that as a consequence of the presence of heat, and in proportion to its intensity, the pores that exist in every plant open up, and as they open, the plant is inwardly restored to a form that reflects its own nature. It willingly takes in elements that nourish it, it retains the elements that best suit it, and it grows.
A similar thing happens with an animal. Whatever an animal chooses to eat (driven by its love for being nourished - its "appetite") is incorporated into its body and remains a part of it. The animal is continually adding elements to its body that are well suited to it, because all its component parts are perpetually being rebuilt. Some [scholars], but not many, recognize that this is the case.
[2] In animals also, heat opens up all parts of their body and allows their earthly love to run free. This is why in spring and summer animals come into (or return to) their reproductive instinct and an instinctive desire to raise their offspring. All this takes place in the context of the greatest freedom, because it is part of the dominant love that was instilled in them from creation, for the sake of preserving the universe in the state in which it was created.
[3] I use the freedom that heat brings about to illustrate the freedom that love brings about because love produces heat, as we can see from its effects. For example, as people's love is rising up into an intense state or as it goes into a rage, they are sparked, they heat up, and they become inflamed. The heat in our blood - our vital heat - and generally speaking, the heat in animals, comes from no other source. As a result of this correspondence, heat modifies the systems of the body so that they are readily receptive to the things for which love yearns.
[4] All the systems within a human being are in an equilibrium and therefore a freedom like this. In a state of freedom, the heart pumps blood both upward and downward, the mesentery moves chyle, the liver produces blood, the kidneys separate it, the glands filter it, and so on. If the equilibrium was compromised, that body part would become diseased and would fall into paralysis or loss of control. Equilibrium and freedom are one. In the entire created universe no substance exists that does not seek its own equilibrium in order to be free.
