278 HEAVEN and HELL §474
b. Our volition is the essential reality of our life, since it is the vessel of love or what is good; and
our intellect is the consequent manifestation of life because it is the vessel of faith or what is true:
3619 , 5002 , 9282 ; so our voluntary life is our primary life and our intellectual life is secondary to
it: 585 , 590 , 3619 , 7342 , 8885 , 9282 , 10076 , 10109 , 10110. It is like light from a fi re or fl ame: 6032 ,
6314. It follows from this that we are human because of our volition and our consequent intellect:
8911 , 9069 , 9071 , 10076 , 10109 , 10110. Every individual is loved and valued by others in propor-
tion to the virtue of her or his intentions and the consequent thought. We are loved and valued if
we intend well and understand well, rejected and demeaned if we understand well but do not
intend well: 8911 , 10076. After death we retain the quality of our intentions and our consequent
understanding: 9069 , 9071 , 9386 , 10153. This means that after death we retain the quality of our
love and faith. Any elements that are matters of faith but not at the same time of love vanish then
because they are not within us and therefore are not part of us: 553 , 2364 , 10153.person they come forth from. To come forth is to be produced and pre-
sented in a form suited to observation and sight.b
We may gather from this what faith is apart from love—no faith at
all, only information with no spiritual life in it. The same holds true for
deeds apart from love. They are not deeds or works of life at all, only
deeds or works of death containing some semblance of life derived from
a love of evil and a faith in what is false. This semblance of life is what we
call spiritual death.475 We should realize as well that we present our whole person in our
works and deeds and that our volition and thought, or the love and
faith that are our inner constituents, are not complete until they are
[embodied] in the deeds and works that are our outer constituents.
These latter are in fact the outmost forms in which the former fi nd
defi nition; and without such defi nitions they are like undifferentiated
things that do not yet have any real presence, things that are therefore
not yet in us. To think and intend without acting when we can is like a
fl ame sealed in a jar and stifl ed, or it is like seed sown in the sand that
does not grow but dies along with its power to reproduce. Thinking
and intending and doing, though, is like a fl ame that sheds its light
and warmth all around, or like seed sown in the soil, that grows into a
tree or a fl ower and becomes something. Anyone can see that intending
and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not
doing good when we can is not really loving. It is only thinking that we
intend and love; so it is a matter of isolated thought that disintegrates
and vanishes. Love and intent are the very soul of the deed or work. It
forms its own body in the honest and fair things that we do. This is
the sole source of our spiritual body, the body of our spirit; that is, our
spiritual body is formed entirely from what we have done out of love or