411. XX. THAT UNDER THE LORD'S AUSPICES, INFANTS ARE EDUCATED BY THEM AND GROW IN STATURE AND INTELLIGENCE AS IN THE WORLD. Infants in heaven are educated in the following manner: From their instructress, they learn to speak. Their first speech is merely the sound of affection, wherein, however, is some initiament of thought, and from which what is human in the sound is distinguished from the sound of an animal. Gradually, as ideas from affection enter the thought, this speech becomes more distinct. All their affections, which also grow, proceed from innocence. First are insinuated into them such things as appear before their eyes and are delightful, and into these, being of a spiritual origin, inflow at the same time things which are of heaven whereby the interiors of their mind are opened. Later, as the infants are perfected in intelligence, they so increase in stature that they are seen to become adult as to this also. The reason is because intelligence and wisdom are spiritual nourishment, and therefore, the things which nourish their minds nourish also their bodies. In heaven, however, infants do not grow up beyond the first age. There they stay, and they remain at that age to eternity. When they come to this age, they are given in marriage. This is provided by the Lord and is celebrated in the heaven where the young man dwells; but immediately after the marriage, the latter follows his wife to her heaven, or, if they are in the same society, to her house. That I might know for certain that infants, as they increase and become adult in intelligence increase also in stature, it has been given me to speak with some when they were infants, and afterwards with the same when grown up, and they were seen to be adults of the same stature as young men and women* in the world.
* The Latin adolescentes juvenes means adult men and women in the flower of their age.