215. The proprium is nothing but evil and falsity. This has been made clear to me from the fact that anything spirits at any time have spoken from themselves has been evil and false, and so much so that the moment I was made to realize that it originated in themselves I knew it was false, even though, when they spoke, they were so sure of its being the truth that they were in no doubt about it. The same is true of the person who speaks from himself. Similarly whenever people have started to reason about the things which constituted spiritual and celestial life or about those which comprised faith, I have been allowed to perceive that they doubted, indeed denied, those things; for reasoning about faith amounts to doubting and denying. And because they reason from themselves, that is, from the proprium, they plunge into utter falsities, and therefore into abysmal thick darkness, that is, thick darkness of falsities. At such times the tiniest quibble weighs more heavily than a thousand truths, just as a speck of dust deposited on the pupil of the eye prevents it from seeing the universe and everything it contains. The Lord speaks of these people in Isaiah as follows,

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and in their own sight are intelligent! Isaiah 5:21

And in the same prophet,

Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, I am, and there is no one else besides me. And evil will come upon you, whose origin you do not know, and disaster will befall you, which you will not be able to expiate, and vastation will come upon you suddenly of which you know not. Isaiah 47:10-11.

In Jeremiah,

Every man has been made stupid by knowledge; every metal-caster is put to shame by his statue, for the idol he moulds is a lie, and there is no spirit in those things. Jeremiah 51:17.

'Statue' stands for the falsity which belongs to the proprium, and 'idol' for the evil which belongs to it.

5162. 'And he lifted up the head' means [according to] what was of providence and what was of foresight. This is clear from the meaning of 'lifting up the head' as a decision attributable to providence and also to foresight, dealt with above in 5124, 5155. Providence is at work in the case of that power of sensory perception which is subject to the understanding part and is retained as something good, this being represented by 'the cupbearer'; but foresight is at work in the case of that sensory perception which is subject to the will part and is cast aside as something evil, this being represented by 'the baker'. That which is good is of providence while that which is evil is of foresight because everything good originates in the Lord but everything evil in hell or in the human proprium. As regards the human proprium being nothing but evil, see 210, 215, 694, 874-876, 987, 1023, 1044, 1047, 1581, 3812 (end), 4328.