8942. 'For if you move your chisel over it' means if a product of the proprium or self. This is clear from the meaning of 'chisel' as counterfeit truth, thus a product of the self. For a chisel is a piece of iron used to carve and shape figures out of stones, and therefore the human self is meant here since this shapes things which are to compose religion, to make them look like the truth. Instead of the word 'chisel' some places elsewhere have '[a piece of] iron', while others elsewhere have 'axe', as in Deuteronomy 27:5; Joshua 8:30-31; 1 Kings 6:7; Isaiah 44:10-12; Hosea 13:2; Jeremiah 10:3-4; and these tools mean such things as are implements of self-intelligence used for fabrication.

4791. CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GRAND MAN - continued

IN THIS SECTION THE CORRESPONDENCE OF TASTE AND OF THE TONGUE, AND ALSO OF THE FACE, WITH THAT GRAND MAN

The tongue provides an entrance leading into both the lungs and the stomach, and so represents a kind of forecourt leading to spiritual things and to celestial ones, to spiritual because it serves the lungs and thereby speech, to celestial because it serves the stomach which supplies nourishment to the blood and the heart. For the lungs correspond to spiritual realities, the heart to celestial ones, see 3635, 3883-3896. All this being so, the tongue corresponds in general to the affection for truth, that is, to those in the Grand Man whose affection is for truth, and after that whose affection is for good which is a product of that truth. People therefore who love the Word of the Lord and wish to gain from it a knowledge of what is good and true belong to that province. Yet they differ from one another, in that some belong to the actual tongue, some to the larynx and trachea, some to the throat, some also to the gums, while others belong to the lips. For not even the smallest part of the human being fails to have a correspondence.

[2] I have been allowed on many occasions to learn by experience that those governed by an affection for truth belong to that province understood in the broad sense. On one occasion they plainly entered my tongue, on another my lips; and I have been allowed to talk to them. I have also noticed that some correspond to the more internal parts of the tongue and lips, others to their more external parts. There are some who have an affection for and receive only exterior truths, not interior ones, though they do not reject them. The operation of these I have felt in the exterior but not the interior parts of my tongue.