of spaces such things as have reference to states of love, and instead of times such things as have reference to states of wisdom.  From this it is that spiritual thought, and spiritual speech therefrom, differ so much from natural thought and natural speech therefrom, as to have nothing in common except as regards the interiors of things, which are all spiritual.  Of this difference more will be said elsewhere.  Now, because the thoughts of angels derive nothing from space and time, but everything from states of life, when it is said that the Divine fills spaces angels evidently cannot comprehend it, for they do not know what spaces are; but when, apart from any idea of space, it is said that the Divine fills all things, they clearly comprehend it.

71.  To make it clear that the merely natural man thinks of spiritual and Divine things from space, and the spiritual man apart from space, let the following serve for illustration.  The merely natural man thinks by means of ideas which he has acquired from objects of sight, in all of which there is figure partaking of length, breadth, and height, and of shape determined by these, either angular or circular.  These [conceptions] are manifestly present in the ideas of his thought concerning things visible on earth; they are also in the ideas of his thought concerning those not visible, such as civil and moral affairs.  This he is unconscious of; but they are nevertheless there, as continuations.  With a spiritual man it is different, especially with an angel of heaven, whose thought has nothing in common with figure and form that derives anything from spiritual length, breadth, and height, but only with figure and form derived from the state of a thing resulting from the state of its life.  Consequently, instead of length of space he thinks of the good of a thing from good of life; instead of breadth of space, of the truth of a thing from truth of life; and instead of height, of the degrees of these.  Thus he thinks from the correspondence there is between things spiritual and things natural.  From this correspondence it is that in the Word “length” signifies the good of a thing, “breadth” the truth of a thing, and “height” the degrees of these.  From this it is evident that an angel of heaven, when he thinks of the Divine Omnipresence, can by no means think otherwise than that the Divine, apart from space, fills all things.  And that which an angel thinks is truth, because the light which enlightens his understanding is Divine Wisdom.

72.  This is the basis of thought concerning God; for without it, what is to be said of the creation of the universe by God-Man, of His Providence, Omnipotence, Omnipresence and Omniscience, even if understood, cannot be kept in mind; since the merely natural man, even while he has these things in his understanding, sinks back into his life’s love, which is that of his will; and that love dissipates these truths, and immerses his thought in space, where his lumen, which