Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/43

 if he is only willing, has been proved to me by much experience. I have often seen evil spirits who had become irrational in the world by denying the Divine and the truths of the church, and who had confirmed themselves in such denial, turned by a divine power toward spirits who were in the light of truth; and then they comprehended like the angels all the truths which they had before denied, confessing that they were truths, and also that they comprehended them all. But the moment they relapsed into themselves, and were turned to the love appertaining to their will, they comprehended nothing, and affirmed what was directly the opposite.

I have also heard infernal spirits say, that they know and perceive that what they do is evil, and that what they think is false; but that they cannot resist the delight of their love, thus their will, which leads their thoughts to see evil as good, and the false as truth.

Thus it was made plain that they who are in falsities derived from evil might understand and therefore be rational, but that they were not willing; and that the reason why they were not willing, was because they loved falsities rather than truths, since falsities agreed with the evils in which they were. To love and to will are the same thing; for what a man wills he loves, and what he loves he wills.

Since the state of men is such that they can understand truths if they only desire to understand them,