the love of a righteous quality by its possessor, whose ruling or essential nature it constitutes, has nothing in common with self-love, but, on the contrary, is directly opposed to it in all its attributes; for the love of quality, as already shewn, is a distributive love; but self-love is an accumulating, grasping principle. Again, self-love is never the love of quality; wherever it rules there is no quality but evil; but self-love never consciously loves its evil, for it never believes its own state to be evil. Self-love with the proud, for instance, is not the love of pride as a quality, although it loves the gratifications of pride. If there existed the love of pride as a quality, there would exist, which there does not, a desire to confirm it, and increase its strength; for wherever there exists the love of any quality, there always exists a desire to increase and strengthen it; as, for instance, where the quality of humility exists, its owner, the humble man, loves it, and thence desires above all things to cherish it, and by cherishing to increase it.

What has just been said of pride may be said of the other evil forms of self-love where it bears rule, as avarice, ambition, sensuality, that there does not exist with their possessors any conscious or discriminative love of their respective vices as qualities, and thence a desire to increase them. But just the reverse is always the case with the good, who love the good qualities which distinguish them, and earnestly desire to increase them; were it otherwise, there could be no progression in goodness. The love of others being identical with the love of goodness, and this being the ruling quality with the good man, it is with him the love of his own quality; but the love of self is the very opposite to the love of goodness, it is the love of a man's own individuality; this, with proud lovers of knowledge, may have somewhat in it of the love of their own mind or spirit; but more generally the love of individuality is concentrated on the body, as if this were man's very essential self, because its tendencies are always outwards and downwards. This love of the individuality of self is quite apart from all moral perception and love of quality; and from it comes, as a procession or production from itself, the love of things, or of the world, for the sake of self, or for the sake of one's individuality, and not at all for the sake of God, the neighbour, and use. Now, in God, there cannot possibly exist any love to his own individuality apart from his quality,-his righteousness. With Him there is no love but what is communicative, but the love of individuality is obviously not a communicative love, but a love to hold and to keep; and such a love as this cannot exist with God, for it pre-supposes the existence of an antagonist power desirous to take away, and none such can possibly exist. Neither can any such love exist actively with those who bear, in the

fullest degree, their Maker's image, "the spirits of the just made perfect." Indeed, every regenerate man is pure only in proportion as he loves quality much, and individuality little; for although a man's individuality cannot be separated from the quality of it in fact, it can be separated completely in idea; were it not so, a man could not be withdrawn from his self-love by regeneration.

As there is not any self-love in God, it is impossible that he should have created self-love in man. The Creator could only work from the pattern in his own nature and quality, and as there could not be any self-love in Him, there was no pattern from which he could create selflove in man. Whence, then, is self-love? That it now exists is perfectly certain. It is a creation by man in himself, and it originated with his fall from that holy state in which every thing in him was the image of something in God, having been created after the Divine pattern. When man abused and mis-directed his powers, he perverted his nature; he created in himself a quality which had no pattern in God; and that quality was self-love.

But it will, possibly, be demanded, "Is not self-love that principle whence comes self-preservation? And was it not implanted for that very purpose? And is it not in fact that principle which makes the great and marked distinction between an infinite and a finite nature?”

Notwithstanding these plausible questions, it must still be affirmed, that whether the possession of self-love by man be now essential to his self-preservation or not, it could not be a creation of God, or be a principle by Him implanted in man, because self-love is not a constituent of the Divine Nature, and God could not create any thing from a nonexistent pattern, a pattern not existing in his own nature. In God there can be no desire to hold and to keep for the sake of his own individuality, and this is self-love; had there been any such desire, creation could not have commenced; the sole motive by which the Creator was moved to create, must have been a desire to impart to his creatures, as far as possible, his own nature and blessedness; which is the direct opposite to self-love; and opposites cannot exist in an absolutely perfect nature.

Let us ascertain what that was which God created in man, which made man a finite individual, capable of coöperation with the Creator's operation, and thus capable of conjunction with Him; but which, nevertheless, was not self-love.

The essential finite principle is that in man which is at the greatest possible distance from The Infinite. That which is nearest in man to The Infinite, who is in the inmost, must be the most interior, and it is

the nearest to Him because it bears the greatest resemblance to Him. The whole spiritual mind is more like the Lord in its quality than the natural mind, even in its most highly purified condition; the spiritual mind is therefore higher, or interior, in man, and the natural mind is lower, or exterior; and from this it will follow, that in the very boundary of the inferior part of man, the very circumference of his being, is the seat of his finite individuality, wherein the great faculty of liberty, given forth (with other Divine gifts) by the Lord from the inmost of his being, is stopped in its course outwards or downwards, so that it cannot fly off, or pass through and be dissipated; and thus becoming fixed, it is individualized, and is reflected back, either in the use of it or the abuse of it, producing a corresponding quality and consciousness thereof in the rational mind. We call this finite principle the proprium of man, and sometimes the self-hood; and what we mean to affirm at present is, that, at the creation of man, and before his fall, there was no sclf-love in the proprium, because there is none in the Creator.

In producing the finite principle it was necessary to produce an empty principle, capable of being filled; a void principle, capable of acquiring. This is the great distinction of a finite nature,-a proprium capable of appropriating. This principle could not but be unlike Him who is infinite fulness, when viewed in Himself,—but it could be like that in God which came into actual existence together with man's creation, and therefore could be formed after the pattern of it; and that was the desire of the Creator to acquire the individual government of his creatures by their free surrender of their individuality to his government, because that acquisition was essential to their attainment of happiness, which was the end of their creation. God, then, we are now contemplating, at creation, as desirous to communicate his love and wisdom to his creatures, that by the appropriation of these qualities from Him (which form his own "righteousness"-his essential nature)-he might rule them and bless them. "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness:" He desires that his creatures may be righteous; He operates to make them righteous; and why? Because he who is infinitely righteous has a consciousness of infinite happiness; and he who is finitely righteous is, in the same degree, conscious of finite happiness. Thus the state of God essentially is, the love of his own quality, leading him to communicate thereof to man, that man may be blessed and happy in and from Himself. This is the object and quality of the Divine Operation.

And now let us see how admirably the finite principle or primitive proprium was adapted for the accomplishment of the Divine purpose. God operates for no other purpose than to acquire spiritual dominion for

the good of his subjects. The finite principle had no quality in it from creation; it had only the desire, and thence the ability, to acquire what it was adapted to acquire,-that is, what God offers. He offers his government, and thereby his protection and peace; this being revealed to the proprium while in its primitive purity, it was moved to seek to acquire the state of being governed by the Lord, that thereby protection and peace might also be acquired; and this being desired and sought, actual coöperation with the Divine Operation was the result. Then it was preeminently the case, that when the Lord by his operation said,"Seek ye my face," the coöperative principle replied with fervent filial affection, "Thy face, Lord, will I seek." The quality of this celestial state was loved, and thence desired, because it was a good quality; this it was given to the primitive man to know by inward revelation; and inasmuch as this state was desired because of its quality, and consequently such desire was an enlightened desire, therefore there was nothing of self-love in it, because, as already shewn, self-love has no love to quality; it has no light to discriminate quality; it is a blind love of individuality, and this did not as yet exist, being, indeed, incompatible with the love of quality; for a blind, and also an enlightened state cannot coëxist. The accession of the one was the recession of the other. But what brought self-love into existence? And how was it born? This we will now inquire, first begging the reader to note, that the divinely created proprium of man was created after the pattern of the Divine Proprium, which was the desire to acquire spiritual dominion— the sole object of the Divine Operation; and this finite proprium consisted in a corresponding desire to acquire the proffered holy state of being governed by the Creator, to which end it coöperated with the Divine Operation; and further, that so long as the finite proprium looked inwards and upwards, or towards the Divine Operator, and that quality the Divine Operation sought to impart, it was pure from all evil, and thus void of self-love. All its transactions were with the Creator, and none with the creature, except from and under the immediate influence of the Creator.

But man was exteriorly connected with creatures, as well as interiorly connected with the Creator; nevertheless, we repeat, he derived nothing from the creatures except under the guidance of an inward Divine Revelation, which taught him what to think of outward things, and thus how rightly and wisely to know them as objects of knowledge; and how to use them for support and legitimate enjoyment as objects of use; yet so as to receive nothing from them as principals, but only as mediums, that is, from the Creator by means of them. This inward guidance was

abundantly sufficient for self-preservation, without any need of self-love to prompt it, now unhappily, it must be admitted, become necessary to man, as a miserable substitute for that originally existing inward Divine guidance for his preservation, which resulted from his being the immediate subject of Divine revelation and government.

As yet, however, the objective was only the medium of the subjective. All the active desires of man were to acquire and possess that only which made him the subject of the Divine Operation for his good. He saw the surrounding objects of nature, but there was then no desire in the proprium to possess them as personal possessions, but only to use them under the Creator's direction. They were known to the extent that the Creator saw fit to give knowledge of them, but there was no desire for that external acquisition of knowledge which is now sought after with avidity, and treasured up in the memory as an independent possession, and often under the mistaken conviction that such a possession is the peculiar glory of man! Man was guarded specially against looking outward from self, or from his own individuality, and from seeking to possess for the sake of self, either things, or the knowledge of things, or any kind of knowledge, as a personal possession. The desire and effort to appropriate from any source than the Creator, was forbidden by the injunction not to eat of the tree of knowledge. Man was warned never to look outwards from his proprium BY ITSELF, but only from the Lord, and under his operation, for this was to live from, and in the Lord, signified by the permission to eat of the tree of life.

The sensual principle existed from creation, but wholly in a pas sive or instrumental state. It was the medium through which the interiors looked into nature, and gathered her uses under the Lord's direction. The sensual principle was not then an active, but only a re-active principle; action never commenced from it, as is now the case. Nothing it could procure was a ground of dependence. In this state, it was not represented by the serpent, for serpents had not then existence.* "The serpent," says Swedenborg, "signifies the sensual principle when it is trusted to, or depended on." Man had his freedom in his proprium, as its term or boundary, where it necessarily became active, either under the Lord's influence, or the contrary. The capability of the proprium of coöperating with the Lord by looking to the interiors, implied the existence of the opposite capability, of looking from the point of freedom in the proprium as from a new beginning, in a new and opposite direction, set up in opposition to the Lord as the Alpha and

*See Divine Love and Wisdom, 336-338.

+A. C. 194.