Most elementary math students can calculate the area of a square or even the volume of a cube — it is simple arithmetic, width times height times depth. Circles and spheres, though, are much more difficult. That takes calculus, high-level math that deals with infinity and “irrational numbers.” Basically, it works by chopping the sphere into tinier and tinier cubes and measuring the cubes, which is highly useful. The catch is that you can always chop it up into more tinier cubes. So you can get closer and closer to the real value, but you will never quite reach it.
It makes sense, then, that Swedenborg says round objects in the Bible represent the desire to be good, our affections, our feelings. We know our feelings and there is nothing more important to us, but we can’t really measure them or express them in numbers or even very well in words. In a sense, that’s why we have poetry, art, dance and music, which at their best express emotions in ways that simpler words and numbers can’t. For the most part, we have to chop them up into flat-sided, square-cornered thoughts in order to share them and put them into action.
Passages from Swedenborg
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 8458
8458. ‘A tiny round thing’ means the good of truth in its initial form. This is clear from the meaning of ‘tiny’ as a word having reference to truth; and from the meaning of ‘round’ as a word having reference to good. Consequently ‘a tiny round thing’ has reference to the good of truth. The expression ‘good of truth’ describes good as it exists with a member of the spiritual Church; such good not only begins in truth, but also is in essence truth. One sees it as truth, but one feels it as good; that being so, as truth it forms the understanding part of the mind, and as good it forms the new will part. For a person’s understanding is distinguishable from the will in that the understanding presents things to itself in mental pictures, in order that it may see them as in light, whereas the will forms an affection for them, in order that it may simultaneously feel them as a delight, thus as good, doing so in conformity with the kind of picture that has been formed.
The use of ‘tiny’ to refer to truth and of ‘round’ to refer to good may be traced back to the visual presentations of truth and good that are made in the next life. When any truth or good is presented visually, which is done in the next life in a way clearly perceptible to the eyes of spirits and angels, truth is presented in a definite quantity, thus as something large or something tiny, depending on the nature of the truth. Truth is in addition presented as something angular-shaped; it is also presented as something white. But good there is presented in an indefinite quantity, thus not as something large or something tiny. Good is also presented as something rounded, as a shape that is uninterrupted, and in respect of colour as something blue, yellow, or red. Good and truth assume these different appearances when they are presented visually because each is different as to its essential nature; when the nature of either is made visual, they express and represent themselves in a natural form such as has just been described. So it is that things which in the world resemble such forms mean either truth or good; for nothing exists in creation that is unrelated, so far as its essential nature is concerned, either to good or to truth.