4729. And we will say, An evil wild beast hath devoured him. That this signifies a lie from a life of cupidities, is evident from the signification of a “wild beast,” as being affection and cupidity (n. 45, 46); for a “wild beast” in the genuine sense denotes what is living (n. 774, 841, 908); hence by an “evil wild beast” is here signified a life of cupidities; that it is a lie is plain. This has reference to what goes before-that their rejecting that Divine truth among falsities, was a lie from a life of cupidities. For there are three sources of falsity, one the doctrine of the church, another the fallacy of the senses, and the third a life of cupidities. That which is from the doctrine of the church takes hold of man’s intellectual part only; for he is persuaded from infancy that it is so, and confirmatory things afterwards strengthen it. But that which is from the fallacy of the senses does not so much affect the intellectual part; for those who are in falsity from the fallacy of the senses have but little insight from the understanding, because they think from lower and sensuous things. But the falsity which is from a life of cupidities springs from the will itself, or what is the same, from the heart; for what man wills from the heart, he desires. This falsity is the worst of all, because it inheres, and is not eradicated except by new life from the Lord.

[2] There are, as is known, two interior faculties in man, the understanding and the will. What the understanding absorbs and becomes imbued with, does not for this reason pass into the will; but what the will absorbs does pass into the understanding. For whatever a man wills, he thinks; and therefore when he wills evil from cupidity, he thinks it and confirms it. The confirmations of evil by the thought are what are called falsities from a life of cupidities. These falsities appear to him as truths; and when he has confirmed them in himself, truths appear to him as falsities; for he has then shut out the influx of light through heaven from the Lord. But if he has not confirmed these falsities in himself, then the truths with which his understanding had previously been imbued, resist and do not permit them to be confirmed.