s wholly unaware that love is his
very life; not only the general life of his whole body, and the general
life of all his thoughts, but also the life of all their particulars.
This a man of discernment can perceive when it is said: If you remove
the affection which is from love, can you think anything, or do anything?
Do not thought, speech, and action, grow cold in the measure in which the
affection which is from love grows cold? And do they not grow warm in the
measure in which this affection grows warm? But this a man of discernment
perceives simply by observing that such is the case, and not from any
knowledge that love is the life of man.

2. What the life of man is, no one knows unless he knows that it is love.
If this is not known, one person may believe that man's life is nothing
but perceiving with the senses and acting, and another that it is merely
thinking; and yet thought is the first effect of life, and sensation and
action are the second effect of life. Thought is here said to be the first
effect of life, yet there is thought which is interior and more interior,
also exterior and more exterior. What is actually the first effect of life
is inmost thought, which is the perception of ends. But of all this
hereafter, when the degrees of life are considered.

3. Some idea of love, as being the life of man, may be had from the sun's
heat in the world. This heat is well known to be the common life, as it
were, of all the vegetations of the earth. For by virtue of heat, coming
forth in springtime, plants of every kind rise from the ground, deck
themselves with leaves, then with blossoms, and finally with fruits, and
thus, in a sense, live. But when, in the time of autumn and winter, heat
withdraws, the plants are stripped of these signs of their life, and they
wither. So it is with love in man; for heat and love mutually correspond.
Therefore love also is warm.

4. GOD ALONE, CONSEQUENTLY THE LORD, IS LOVE ITSELF, BECAUSE HE IS LIFE
ITSELF AND ANGELS AND MEN ARE RECIPIENTS OF LIFE.

This will be fully shown in treatises on Divine Providence and on Life;
it is sufficient here to say that the Lord, who is the God of the universe,
is uncreate and infinite, whereas man and angel are created and finite.
And because the Lord is uncreate and infinite, He is Being [Esse] itself,
which is called "Jehovah," and Life itself, or Life in itself. From the
uncreate, the infinite, Being itself and Life itself, no one can be
c