the whole is bound together. The entire form acts or is acted upon
in such manner as the covering acts or is acted upon. The same is true of
the rest of the organs. For what is general and what is particular or the
universal and the singular in a form act together by a marvelous
connection.

[5] You will see below that what occurs in natural forms and their
processes, which relate to motion and actions, occurs similarly in
spiritual forms and in the changes and variations of their state, which
relate to activities of the will and the understanding. Inasmuch as man
joins the Lord in certain external activities and no one is deprived of
the liberty of acting according to reason, the Lord can act in internals
only as, together with man, He does in externals. If man does not shun
and turn away from evils as sins, therefore, the external and at the same
time the internal of his thought and will are infected and destroyed,
comparatively as the pleura is by the disease in it called pleurisy, of
which the body dies.

[6] Second: _If man were in internals at the same time he would pervert
and destroy the whole order and tenor of divine providence._ Examples
from the human body will illustrate this also. If man knew all the
workings of the two brains into the fibres, of the fibres into the
muscles and of the muscles into actions, and by this knowledge were to
have the disposition of them as he disposes his deeds, would he not
pervert and destroy all?

[7] If man knew how the stomach digests, and how the surrounding organs
take their portion, work the blood and distribute it where needed for
life, and if he had the disposing of these as he has of external
activities, such as eating and drinking, would he not pervert and destroy
all? When he cannot handle the external, seemingly a single thing,
without destroying it by luxury and intemperance, what would he do if he
had the disposal of the internals, infinite in number? Lest man enter
into them by any volition and have control of them, things internal are
therefore taken entirely away from the will except for the muscles, which
are a covering; moreover, how these act is not known, only that they do.

[8] The same can be said of other organs. To give examples: if man had
the disposing of the interiors of the eye for seeing, those of the ear
for hearing, or the tongue for tasting, those of the skin for feeling,
those of the heart for systolic action, of the lungs for breathing, of