Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/340

244 truth is a matter of knowledge; a rational truth is a truth known confirmed by reason; an intellectual truth is conjoined with an internal perception that it is so. (A. C. n. 1496.)

Knowledges are acquired in childhood with no other purpose than for the sake of knowing. ... The knowledges which are acquired in childhood are very many, but are disposed by the Lord in order, so that they may be subservient to use; first, that he may be able to think; afterwards that by means of thought they may be of use; and finally, that he may bring them into effect, that is that his very life may consist in use, and be a life of uses. These are the offices of the knowledges which he imbibes in childhood. Without these his external man cannot be conjoined with the internal, and together with it become a use. When man becomes a use, that is, when he thinks of all things from a purpose of use, and does all things for the sake of use (if not by manifest yet by tacit reflection, from a disposition thus acquired), then the knowledges which had subserved the first use, that he might become rational, are destroyed, because they are no longer serviceable; and so on. (ib. n. 1487.)

Genuine reasonings concerning spiritual things spring from an influx of heaven into the spiritual man, and thence through the rational into the knowledges and cognitions which are in the natural man, by which the spiritual man confirms himself. This way of reasoning concerning spiritual things is according to order. But reasonings about spiritual things which proceed from the natural man, still more those that proceed from the sensual man, are entirely contrary to order; for the natural man, — and still less the sensual man, — cannot flow into the spiritual, and from himself see anything there, since there is no physical influx; but the spiritual man can flow into the natural, and thence into the sensual, for there is spiritual influx. (A. E. n. 569.)

So far as a man has become rational in the world by means of languages and knowledges, he is rational after death; but not at all in proportion as he is skilled in languages and knowledges. I have talked with many whom they in the world believed to be learned, from the fact that they were acquainted with ancient languages, such as Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, but who had not cultivated their rational by the things that are written in them. Some of these appeared as simple as those who knew nothing of those languages; some appeared stupid; and yet there remained with them a pride as if they were wiser than others. I have conversed with some who in the world believed that a man is wise in proportion to the capacity of his memory, and who had also enriched their memory with many things; and they spoke also from it alone, thus not from themselves but from others, and had nowise perfected the rational by the things of memory. Some of these