SO FAR AS MAN IS IN THE LOVE OF USE,
SO FAR IS HE IN THE LORD,
SO FAR HE LOVES THE LORD AND LOVES THE NEIGHBOR,
AND SO FAR HE IS A MAN
Selection from
Doctrine of Uses
from posthumous work
entitled "divine love"
Emanuel Swedenborg
From the love
of uses we are taught what is meant by loving the Lord and loving the neighbor,
also what is meant by being in the Lord and being a man. To love the Lord means
to do uses from Him and for His sake. To love the neighbor means to do uses to
the church, to one's country, to human society, and to the fellow-citizen. To be
in the Lord means to be a use. And to be a man means to perform uses to
the neighbor from the Lord for the Lord's sake. To love the Lord means to do uses
from Him and for His sake, for the reason that all the good uses that man does
are from the Lord; good uses are goods, and it is well known that these are from
the Lord. Loving these is doing them, for what a man loves he does. No one can
love the Lord in any other way; for uses, which are goods, are from the Lord,
and consequently are Divine; yea they are the Lord Himself with man. These are
the things that the Lord can love. The Lord cannot be conjoined by love to any
man, and consequently cannot enable man to love Him, except through His own
Divine things; for man from himself cannot love the Lord; the Lord Himself must
draw him and conjoin him to Himself; and therefore loving the Lord as a Person,
and not loving uses, is loving the Lord from oneself, which is not loving. He
that performs uses or goods from the Lord performs them also for the Lord's
sake. These things may be illustrated by the celestial love in which the angels
of the third heaven are. These angels are in love to the Lord more than the
angels in the other heavens are; and they have no idea that loving the Lord is
anything else than doing goods which are uses, and they say that uses are the
Lord with them. By uses they understand the uses and good works of ministry,
administration, and employment, as well with priests and magistrates as with
merchants and workmen; the good works that are not connected with their
occupation they do not call uses; they call them alms, benefactions, and
gratuities. [2] Loving the neighbor means performing uses to the church,
one's country, society, and the fellow-citizen, because these are the neighbor
in the broad and in the limited sense; neither can these be loved otherwise than
by the uses that belong to each one's office. A priest loves the church, the
country, society, the citizen, and thus the neighbor, if he teaches and leads
his hearers from zeal for their salvation. Magistrates and officers love the
church, the country, society, the citizen, and thus the neighbor, if they
discharge their respective functions from zeal for the common good; judges, if
from zeal for justice; merchants, if from zeal for sincerity; workmen, if from
rectitude; servants, if from faithfulness; and so forth. When with all these
there is faithfulness, rectitude, sincerity, justice, and zeal, there is the
love, of use from the Lord; and from Him they have love to the neighbor in the
broad and in the limited sense; for who that in heart is faithful, upright,
sincere and just, does not love the church, the country, and his
fellow-citizen? From what has now been said it is plain that loving the
Lord is performing uses from Him, and loving the neighbor is performing uses to
him, and the object on account of whom uses are performed is the neighbor, use,
and the Lord; and that love thus returns to Him from whom it is. For every love
as source through love for its object returns to love as source, which return
constitutes its reciprocal. And love continually goes forth and returns through
deeds, which are uses, since to love is to do. For love, unless it becomes deed,
ceases to be love, since deed is the effect of love's end, and is that in which
it exists. [3] So far as man is in the love of use so far is he in the
Lord; because so far is he in the Church, and so far in heaven; and the church
and heaven from the Lord are as one man; the forms of which (called higher or
lower organic forms, also interior and exterior) are made up of all who love
uses by doing them; and the uses themselves are what compose that Man, because
it is a spiritual Man, that does not consist of persons, but of the uses with
them. Yet all those are there who receive from the Lord the love of uses; and
these are they who do them for the neighbor's sake, for use's sake, and for the
Lord's sake; and since this Man is the Divine that proceeds from the Lord, and
the Divine proceeding is the Lord in the church and in heaven, it follows that
they all are in the Lord.
These are a Man, because every use that in any
way promotes the general good or serves the public, is a man, beautiful and
perfect according to the quality of the use, and at the same time the quality of
its affection. The reason of this is, that in each single part of the human body
there is, from its use, an idea of the whole; for the part looks to the whole as
its source, and the whole sees the part in itself, as its agent. It is from this
idea of the whole in each part that each use therein is a man, in small as well
as in greater parts; there are organic forms in the part as well as in the
whole; in fact, the parts of parts, which are interior, are men more than the
composite parts, because all perfection increases toward the interiors. For all
organic forms in man are composed of interior forms, and these of forms still
more interior, even to inmosts, by means of which communication is given with
every affection and thought of man's mind. For man's mind, in all its
particulars, extends into all things of his body; its range is into all things
of the body; for it is the very form of life. Unless the mind had such a field,
there would be neither mind nor man. From this it is that the choice and
decision of man's will are determined instantly, and produce and determine
actions, just as if thought and will were themselves in the things of the body,
and not above them. That every least thing in man, from its use, is a man, does
not fall into the natural idea as it does into the spiritual; in the spiritual
idea man is not a person, but a use; for the spiritual idea is apart from an
idea of person, as it is apart from an idea of matter, space, and time;
therefore when one sees another in heaven, he sees him indeed as a man, but he
thinks of him as a use. An angel also appears in face according to the use in
which he is, and affection for the use makes the life of the face. From all this
it can be seen that every good use is in form a man.
(Divine Love xiii)
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