Excerpt from The New Philosophy, Vol. 12
Since motion exists and matter cannot originate it, its origin must be sought in a cause which is before or above matter. There is a common agreement to call this moving cause a force; but this force must be self originating; and there is no conceivable self-originating force but that of volition - the will acting. The will acting is what Swedenborg calls love and this he names the real substance, the real life, the real first Mover, before which nothing was and without which nothing could have come into existence.
I have said that pure Esse when qualified exists or stands forth with qualities; and that pure Being now stands forth or exists in the quality of love, love as the prime substance, force, motion of all things and therefore as the life. It would seem as if love were therefore an attribute or a quality of being rather than the being, the first substance itself. This has been a common conception with philosophers and theologians heretofore. Notwithstanding the Scriptural declaration that "God is love," the theologians have clung to an idea that God is a Being that loves but that nevertheless has a kind of fundamental being apart from and independent of the love. In the same way instead of holding that God is life they have conceived of God as substance having life as an attribute. Directly contrary is the conception of the new philosophy that the first substance - the Esse as existing - is love itself, is life itself. If these are qualities or attributes of pure being take them away and there is no being left. There was never infinite Being that was not living being; there was never infinite Being that was not loving Being. The love and the life are in reality identical with the Being although in our minds and in our speech we may treat of Being as abstracted from both. Swedenborg, thus in T. C. R., No. 36, distinguishes between the Esse of God and his Essence.
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