104. Today people do not know what perception is. It is a certain inward feeling, wholly from the Lord, as to whether a thing is true and good. Such perception was fully known to the Most Ancient Church, and with the angels it exists so excellently that they know and recognize what is true and good, what comes from the Lord and what comes from self, and also the character of anyone who approaches them merely from the manner of his approach and merely from a single one of his ideas. The spiritual man has no perception, but he does have conscience. The dead man does not even have conscience. Nor do most people know what conscience is, much less what perception is.

249. 'Eating dust all the days of its life' means that the sensory part had become such as could live from nothing else than the bodily and the earthly, and so had become hellish. This too is clear from the meaning of 'dust' in the Word, as in Micah, 7:14, 16-17.

Shepherd Your people as in the days of eternity. The nations will see and be ashamed at all their might, they will lick the dust like serpents of the earth they will be shifted from their strongholds.

'Days of eternity' stands for the Most Ancient Church, 'nations' for people who put their trust in the proprium, who are referred to as 'licking dust like a serpent'. In David,

Barbarians will bow down before God, and His enemies lick the dust. Psalms 72:9.

'Barbarians' and 'enemies' stand for those who look solely to earthly and worldly things. In Isaiah,

Serpents, dust will be their bread. Isaiah 65:25.

Because 'dust' meant people who did not look to spiritual and celestial things but to bodily and earthly, the Lord commanded the disciples to shake the dust off their feet if a city or house was not worthy, Matthew 10:14. For more on 'dust' meaning that which is condemned and hellish, see at verse 19.