The relationship between men and women is deep and nuanced, and one entire book of the Writings -- Conjugial Love -- is devoted to the subject. So we can hardly offer a full explanation here. In a very general sense, though, the Writings say that men are creatures of intellect, driven by the love of growing wise; women, meanwhile are creations of affection, driven by the love of wisdom and the good that wisdom can do. They are formed this way to reflect the Lord's Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, and so that they can form marriages that reflect the unity of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. Marking differences between men and women can be a touchy thing, but realistically it's easy to see that men tend to love acquiring knowledge whether it has any practical application or not. Many of them can spout out sports statistics or hold court on the workings of the internal combustion engine, even though it is knowledge they are not likely to ever use. They find such knowledge interesting for its own sake. It follows, then, that when the Bible speaks of men, the men represent facts, ideas, knowledge, truth, intellect and wisdom -- or in the negative sense falsity, twisted logic, and reasoning that is devoid of concern for others.

6598. INFLUX AND THE INTERACTION OF SOUL AND BODY - continued

It is well known that one person is endowed with a greater ability than another to understand and perceive what it is to behave honourably in private life, to be upright in public life, and to seek what is good in one's spiritual life. The reason why he has that greater ability lies in the fact that his thought has been raised towards the things of heaven and is consequently drawn away from the level of the external senses. For people whose thought does not rise above the level of the senses cannot begin to see what is honourable, upright, or good. They therefore rely on what others think, and base most of what they say on matters stored in the memory, and in doing this seem to themselves to be wiser than others. But those who can think on a level above the senses possess, if the contents of their memory are all in order, a greater ability than others to understand and perceive. Their ability depends on the height of the interior standpoint from which they look at things.