Form and Substance

   Form and substance are a duality with many names. They may be called truth and good, wisdom and love, or light and heat. I was thinking of how one could describe form and substance.
   There are many easy analogies, one can think of blueprints to a house. the design precedes the building, it outlines and gives form to a use. the blueprints give specific form to a specific concept of shelter. The form may be simplistic like a child's box drawing, or as complex as . A form separate from any substance could only describe geometric shapes, but never make art.
   Substance is like the lumber waiting to be built. it is potential energy, or perhaps like the flame of fire. Substance can be as mild and calm as a breath, a flicker, or as powerful as a volcanic eruption. A substance separate from any form could only describe raw elements like fire/water/air/earth but never give them function.
   Form is never completely isolated from substance anywhere but in the mind. All of physical reality is the final product of the cohabitation of form and substance. Light the principle example of this duality. In science it is called a wave/particle duality. Light illuminates form for the eye to see, and warms substance for the body to live.
   In a spiritual way form and substance may be expressed as wisdom and love. But Mr. Swedenborg expresses the idea better than I do so I'll just quote him here:

DIVINE LOVE AND DIVINE WISDOM ARE SUBSTANCE AND ARE FORM. The idea of men in general about love and about wisdom is that they are like something hovering and floating in thin air or ether or like what exhales from something of this kind. Scarcely any one believes that they are really and actually substance and form. Even those who recognize that they are substance and form still think of the love and the wisdom as outside the subject and as issuing from it. For they call substance and form that which they think of as outside the subject and as issuing from it, even though it be something hovering and floating; not knowing that love and wisdom are the subject itself, and that what is perceived outside of it and as hovering and floating is nothing but an appearance of the state of the subject in itself. There are several reasons why this has not hitherto been seen, one of which is, that appearances are the first things out of which the human mind forms its understanding, and these appearances the mind can shake off only by the exploration of the cause; and if the cause lies deeply hidden, the mind can explore it only by keeping the understanding for a long time in spiritual light; and this it cannot do by reason of the natural light which continually withdraws it. The truth is, however, that love and wisdom are the real and actual substance and form that constitute the subject itself. [DLW 40]