Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/247

Rh the waters; namely, that the waters of the flood or the inundating waters signify falsities. Here, because there were still greater falsities or persuasions of the false, it is said that "the waters were strengthened exceedingly exceedingly," which is the superlative form in the original tongue. Falsities are principles of what is false and persuasions of what is false, and that these immensely increased among the antediluvians is evident from what has been said above concerning them. Persuasions of what is false increase immensely when men immerse truths in their lusts, or cause them to favour self-love and the love of the world; for then they pervert them, and in a thousand ways force them into agreement.

"All the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered," signifies that all the goods of charity were extinguished. This appears from the signification of mountains among the most ancient people. With them mountains represented the Lord, because they worshipped Him upon mountains, for the reason that they are the most elevated parts of the earth. Mountains therefore signified things celestial,—which they also called the highest,—consequently love and charity, and therefore the goods of love and charity, which are celestial. .. . . What is signified by the waters with which the mountains were covered is therefore plain; namely, that they were persuasions of what is false, which extinguish all the good of charity, (ib. n. 794-797.)

It has been granted me to learn by experience what an inundation or flood is in the spiritual sense. This inundation is twofold; one is of lusts and the other of falsities. That which is of lusts is an inundation of the voluntary part, and of the right part of the brain; and that which is of falsities is an inundation of the intellectual part, in which is the left part of the brain. When a man who had lived in good is remitted into his proprium, thus into the sphere of his very own life, there appears as it were an inundation; while he is in that inundation he is indignant, is angry, thinks restlessly, desires vehemently; in one way when the left part of the brain is inundated, where falsities are, and in another way when the right is inundated, where evils are. But when the man is kept in the sphere of life which he had received from the Lord by regeneration, he is entirely beyond such an inundation, and is as it were in serenity and sunshine, and in joy and happiness; and therefore far from indignation, anger, restlessness, lust, and the like. This is the morning or spring of spirits, the other state is the evening or autumn. It has been given me to perceive that I was out of the inundation, and this for a considerable length of time, while I saw that other spirits were in it; but afterwards I was immersed, and then apperceived the similitude of an