Conjugial Love #163

By Emanuel Swedenborg

Study this Passage

  
/ 535  
  

163. 7. A wife's union with her husband's intellectual wisdom takes place inwardly, but with his moral wisdom outwardly. Wisdom in men is twofold, intellectual and moral, and their intellectual wisdom has to do with their understanding alone, while their moral wisdom has to do with both their understanding and at the same time their life. This can be concluded and seen from simply viewing the matter and examining it. Still, to have it known what we mean by the intellectual wisdom of men, and what we mean by their moral wisdom, we will list some specific examples:

Various terms are used to designate those elements which have to do with men's intellectual wisdom. In general, they are called knowledge, intelligence and wisdom. In particular, however, they are rationality, judgment, genius, learning, sagacity. But because everyone has special kinds of knowledge peculiar to him in his occupation, these kinds of knowledge are therefore many and various. For there are special kinds of knowledge peculiar to clergymen, to civil officers, to their various officials, to judges, to physicians and pharmacists, to soldiers and sailors, to craftsmen and workmen, to farmers, and so on. To intellectual wisdom belong also all the fields of study to which adolescents are introduced in schools, and through which they are afterwards led into intelligence; and these studies are also called by various names, such as philosophy, physics, geometry, mechanics, chemistry, astronomy, law, political science, ethics, history, and many more, through which, as through gates, one enters into intellectual pursuits, from which comes intellectual wisdom.

  
/ 535  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.