Part 2, Chapter X

GENERAL DIVISIONS BODY AND THE GRAND MAN

    The human body may be distinguished into various divisions, even as heaven has its general, specific, and particular partitions. Thus heaven consists of two kingdoms, three heavens, and innumerable societies. ⁽⁵⁴⁸⁾

1.     There are two kingdoms of heaven, the celestial and the spiritual, to which there answer in the body the kingdom of the heart and the kingdom of the lungs. To the kingdom of the heart belongs also the cerebellum, while the cerebrum belongs to the kingdom of the lungs. ⁽⁵⁴⁹⁾ Each kingdom is a tripartite. ⁽⁵⁵⁰⁾

2.     There are three heavens, the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural. To these there answer in man's body the head, the body and the feet; or a trinal order.⁽⁵⁵¹⁾ (Head, thorax and abdomen also answer to this order.⁽⁵⁵²⁾)

3.     There are many specific provinces, as many as there are organs, viscera, and members.⁽⁵⁵³⁾ Each province represents some common use or function.⁽⁵⁵⁴⁾ Within each province, a spirit may advance into ever more interior uses. ⁽⁵⁵⁵⁾ There may even be an advance into superior provinces. ⁽⁵⁵⁶⁾ Each of these provinces is represented by or in a heavenly society of angels. ⁽⁵⁵⁷⁾(p. 120)

4.     Each heaven is divided into larger and smaller societies, according to the ruling goods with the angels.⁽⁵⁵⁸⁾ So also each organ in man is composed of many types of tissue, many parts and cells.
    Viewed as a use, or a province, each society forms three heavens and three hells, which are on different levels in the spiritual world.⁽⁵⁵⁹⁾

5.     There are four general provinces in the body, or four functional regions, which have marvelous intercommunications.⁽⁵⁶⁰⁾
        Thus there are the abdominal province, the thoracic province, the cephalic province, and the genital province. In Swedenborg's physiological works, each province is associated with a special body fluid. The abdomen produces "chyle" or nutritive aliments; the chest, by the heart and the lungs, perfects and propels the "red blood"; the brains in the head distil an "animal spirit" and a derivative nervous juice; and the use of the genitals is connected with the "spirituous fluid" which is the inmost of the vital fluids and is elaborated in- the "simple cortex" within the cortical glands as the formative substance that builds the germ cells and conveys the soul in the male seed.

    Muscles, limbs, bones, and membranes must be regarded as the ultimates of each of these four general 'provinces.'p. 121

548 HH 20.

549 A. 4931, 3887-89; H. 20ff, 95ff.

550 A. 10079.

551 H. 29ff; Coro. 17.

552 Cf A. 3746.

553 A. 4931, 4625.

554 A. 8630: 2; W. 288; D. 665.

555 A 4803.

556 D. 668 669.

557 A. 3630, 10030 ref's.

558  H. 41.

559  J. 27, cf. D. 5057-59; E. 304:2.

560  D. 3036; A. 3745-46