together concerning the Swedish prophet, whose works I have since had
the curiosity to read, may be told in a few paragraphs.

In each of us there are two distinct beings. According to Swedenborg,
the angel is an individual in whom the inner being conquers the
external being. If a man desires to earn his call to be an angel, as
soon as his mind reveals to him his twofold existence, he must strive
to foster the delicate angelic essence that exists within him. If, for
lack of a lucid appreciation of his destiny, he allows bodily action
to predominate, instead of confirming his intellectual being, all his
powers will be absorbed in the use of his external senses, and the
angel will slowly perish by the materialization of both natures. In
the contrary case, if he nourishes his inner being with the aliment
needful to it, the soul triumphs over matter and strives to get free.

When they separate by the act of what we call death, the angel, strong
enough then to cast off its wrappings, survives and begins its real
life. The infinite variety which differentiates individual men can
only be explained by this twofold existence, which, again, is proved
and made intelligible by that variety.

In point of fact, the wide distance between a man whose torpid
intelligence condemns him to evident stupidity, and one who, by the
exercise of his inner life, has acquired the gift of some power,
allows us to suppose that there is as great a difference between men
of genius and other beings as there is between the blind and those who
see. This hypothesis, since it extends creation beyond all limits,
gives us, as it were, the clue to heaven. The beings who, here on
earth, are apparently mingled without distinction, are there
distributed, according to their inner perfection, in distinct spheres