26. On different forms of goodness and truth. There is infinite variety, and no one thing can be identical to any other thing: 7236, 9002. There is an infinite variety in the heavens as well: 684, 690, 3744, 5598, 7236. The variations in the heavens are variations of goodness, and they are the basis of all differentiations there: 3519, 3744, 3804, 3986, 4005, 4067, 4149, 4263, 7236, 7833, 7836, 9002. These variations are defined by the truths (which are manifold) that shape the goodness of a given individual: 3470, 3519, 3804, 4149, 6917, 7236. That is how all the angelic communities in the heavens and all the individual angels in the communities are differentiated from each other: 690, 3241, 3519, 3804, 3986, 4067, 4149, 4263, 7236, 7833, 7836. They still act as one because of the love they receive from the Lord and because of their devotion to a single purpose: 457, 3986.
In general terms, goodness and truth are differentiated by level into earthly, spiritual, and heavenly varieties: 2069, 3240. Broadly, the three levels of goodness and of accompanying truth match the three heavens: 4154, 10270. There are three levels of goodness and truth in the inner self and three levels in the outer self as well: 4154. There is earthly goodness, civic goodness, and moral goodness: 3768. The earthly kind of goodness into which some of us are born is not good in the other life unless it becomes spiritual goodness: 2463, 2464, 2468, 3408, 3469, 3470, 3508, 3518, 7761. On earthly goodness that is spiritual and earthly goodness that is not spiritual: 4988, 4992, 5032. There is intellectual truth and there is factual truth: 1 1904, 1911, 2503.
Notas de rodapé:
1. The Latin words here translated "intellectual truth" are verum intellectuale, which literally mean "a truth of the intellect. " The Latin words here translated "factual truth" are verum scientificum, which literally mean "a truth of knowledge. " Broadly speaking, in his use of these terms Swedenborg reworks a traditional distinction made in the terminology of the medieval Christian philosophers known as the Scholastics. They distinguished between two types of cognition: the sensitive (that is, knowledge deriving from or pertaining to the senses) and the intellectual. "By the former we perceive individual, concrete material objects, facts, and phenomena. The proper object of the latter are purely immaterial objects, and material objects abstracted from the individual and universalized" (Shallo 1923, 107). Furthermore, according to Scholastic philosophy, "we are enjoying intellectus [intellect] when we ‘just see' a self-evident truth" (Lewis 1964, 157). Swedenborg's verum scientificum corresponds to the "sensitive" knowledge of the Scholastics; he uses it to label a truth taken into one's knowledge from the realm of the senses, a "fact. " By contrast, he uses the term verum intellectuale to describe both our knowledge when it has been united to the inflowing Divine ( Secrets of Heaven 1496) and the truth inflowing from the Divine that meets up with and illuminates our knowledge ( Secrets of Heaven 1901[2]). The manner in which Swedenborg's verum intellectuale corresponds to Scholastic "intellectual" knowledge is that it is knowledge of higher truth that is confirmed by an inner perception that a thing is so (compare Secrets of Heaven 1495-1496). Since this perception is an intuitive linking of acquired knowledge with the fundamental premises of divine order, verum intellectuale has sometimes been translated "intuitive truth" in this edition. For more on the instantaneous perception of truth by means of a connection with divine inflow, see Secrets of Heaven 104, 202, 521. [SS, RS, LHC]
