2. [3.] II
THE LORD ALONE IS LOVE ITSELF, BECAUSE HE IS LIFE ITSELF, AND MEN AND ANGELS ARE RECIPIENTS ONLY
This has already been made clear before* by many things, to which only the following need be added. The Lord, because He is God of the universe, is uncreated and infinite whereas men and angels are created and finite. That which is uncreated and infinite is the very Divine in Itself. It is not possible for man to be formed of this, for he would then be the Divine in Itself; but he can be formed of things created and finite, in which the Divine can be and to which He can communicate His life, and this, by means of heat and light from Himself as a Sun, thus from His Divine Love; it is comparatively like germinations on the earth, which cannot be formed of the essence itself of the world's sun, but of the created things of which the soil consists, in which, by means of its heat and light, the sun can be, and to which it can communicate its life. From this it is evident that men and angels, in themselves, are not life, but only recipients of life.
[2] [4.] From the above it follows also that the conception of a human being by a father is not a conceiving of life, but only a conceiving of the first and purest form able to receive life. To this form, as a first thread or beginning, substances and matters adjoin themselves one after another in the womb, adapted into forms for receiving life in its order and in its degree, down to an ultimate form suited to the modes of the world's nature. *In APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED.