ing, smell, taste, and touch; and organs of
motion which are muscles, for they fly and walk; also viscera surrounding
the heart and lungs, which are set in action by brains. That even the
commonest insects enjoy such organisms is shown in their anatomy as
described by some writers, and especially by Swammerdam, in his Biblia
Naturae. Those who ascribe everything to nature, see all these things,
but they merely perceive that they exist, and say that nature produces
them. They say this because they have turned their minds away from
thinking about the Divine; and those who have done this are unable, when
they see the wonderful things in nature, to think rationally, still less
spiritually; but they think sensually and materially; and then they think
in nature from nature, and not above nature, just as those do who are in
hell. They differ from beasts only in having the power to think
rationally, that is, in being able to understand, and therefore to think
otherwise, if they choose.

352. Those who have averted themselves from thinking about the Divine
when observing the wonderful things in nature, and who thereby become
sensual, do not reflect that the sight of the eye is so gross as to see
many little insects as an obscure speck, when yet each one of these is
organized to feel and to move, and is accordingly furnished with fibers
and vessels, also with a minute heart, pulmonary tubes, viscera, and
brains; also that these organs are woven out of the purest substances
in nature, their tissues corresponding to that somewhat of life by which
their minutest parts are separately moved. When the sight of the eye is
so gross that many such creatures, with innumerable particulars in each,
appear to it as an obscure speck, and yet those who are sensual think and
judge by that sight, it is clear how dulled their minds are, and therefore
what thick darkness they are in concerning spiritual things.

353. Any one who chooses may confirm himself in favor of the Divine from
things seen in nature, and whoever thinks about God in reference to life
does so confirm himself; as when he observes the birds of the air, how
each species knows its food and where to find it, recognizes its kind by
sound and sight, and which among other kinds are its friends and which
its enemies; how also they mate, have knowledge of the sexual relation,
skillfully build nests, lay eggs therein, sit upon these, know the period
of incubation, and this having elapsed,