It is curious to witness with what fidelity Swedenborg described in many instances the condition of the soul after death; and also to perceive in other instances how utterly he misinterpreted the visions presented.
Such discrepancies are incidental to all clairvoyant states; and this is not surprising, for it is incidental to humanity.
Man sees clearly when the prejudices of education and the influence of his loves do not pervert his vision.
What political economist, strongly biased in favor of one mode of government, can contemplate dispassionately an opposing form?
The theological belief which Swedenborg imbibed in his early youth, tinctured his description of the heavens and hells of the spirit world, causing him to represent the soul as reaching a period in its love of evil when it cannot retrace its steps. The hells of the spirit are similar to the hells of earth, being like them the result of the ignorance and perverted loves of animal man.
What hell more fearful than the hell of licentiousness? Yet it is merely the animal side of the heaven of love.
Swedenborg discovered hells in spiritual existence, where the inmates lived lives of prostitution. His statement concerning such hells is true. Individuals who have lived such lives upon earth cannot suddenly be transformed. Their habits become _spiritual diseases_ with them.
Now, as to marriage, the mere form does not make the wife different from the courtezan, but her love exalts her above that condition. If she be united to a man who is repulsive to her nature, and yet submits to his embraces for the considerations of family, or home, or public opinion, she is on the same plane with the courtezan.
It is a proposition generally believed, that there is a soul-mate for every human being, and it is usually supposed that in the spirit world those mates are found, and that those united there live together inseparably. But as there exists in the spirit world the same states, the same variety of progressive development among men and women as in this world, so unions are formed there in which one soul develops beyond the capacity of the other, and in such cases changes must ensue.
I will now speak of marriages more in detail.