Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/75

 is anything spiritual, or that there is eternal life. This comes from the principle which he assumes. And this is to "eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," of which the more any one eats, the more dead he becomes. But he who would be wise from the Lord, and not from the world, says in his heart that the Lord must be believed, that is, the things which the Lord has spoken in the Word, because they are truths; and according to this principle he regulates his thoughts. He confirms himself by things of reason, of knowledge, of the senses, and of nature (per rationalia, scientifica, sensualia et naturalia), and those which are not confirmatory he casts aside.

. Every one may know that man is governed by the principles he assumes, be they ever so false, and that all his knowledge and reasoning favor his principles; for innumerable considerations tending to support them present themselves to his mind, and thus he is confirmed in what is false. He therefore who assumes as a principle that nothing is to be believed until it is seen and understood, can never believe, because spiritual and celestial things cannot be seen with the eyes, or conceived by the imagination. But the true order is for man to be wise from the Lord, that is, from His Word, and then all things follow, and he is enlightened even in matters of reason and of memory-knowledge (in rationalibus et scientificis). For it is by no means forbidden to learn the sciences, since they are useful to his life and delightful; nor is he who is in faith prohibited from thinking and speaking as do the learned of the world; but it must be from this principle to believe the Word of the Lord, and, so far as possible, confirm spiritual and celestial truths by natural truths, in terms familiar to the learned world. Thus his starting-point must be the Lord, and not himself; for the former is life, but the latter is death.

. He who desires to be wise from the world, has for his "garden" the things of sense and of memory-knowledge (sensualia et scientifica); the love of self and the love of the world are his "Eden;" his "east" is the west, or himself; his "river Euphrates" is all his memory-knowledge (scientificum), which is condemned; his "second river," where is "Assyria," is infatuated reasoning productive of falsities; his "third river," where is "Ethiopia," is the principles of evil and falsity thence