6398. 'Dan will be a serpent on the road' means their reasoning regarding truth, since good does not as yet lead them. This is clear from the representation of 'Dan' as those guided by truth but not as yet by good, dealt with above in 6396; from the meaning of 'a serpent' as reasoning based on sensory evidence, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'the road' as truth, dealt with in 627, 2733. Thus 'Dan is a serpent on the road' means their reasoning regarding truth, since good does not as yet lead them. The nature of that reasoning and the nature of the truth resulting from it will be stated below.

[2] The reason why 'a serpent' means reasoning based on sensory evidence is that the interiors of a person are represented in heaven by living creatures of various kinds, and therefore in the Word similar things are meant by those same creatures. A person's sensory powers have come to be represented by serpents because they are the lowest of his mental powers. Compared with other mental powers those of the senses are on the ground so to speak, crawling around there, as may also be recognized from the forms that sensory impressions adopt when they enter in, which will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with elsewhere. This explains why those sensory powers have come to be represented by 'serpents', so much so that the Lord's Divine sensory perception was represented by the bronze serpent in the wilderness, 4211 (end).

[3] True shrewdness and circumspection - qualities that reveal themselves in external affairs - were also meant by 'serpents', in Matthew,

Be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. Matthew 10:16.

But in the case of a person who is governed by his senses and is far removed from what is internal - as those people are who are guided by truth but not as yet by good - and who speaks as his senses tell him, 'a serpent' means false reasoning. This therefore is why here, where Dan is the subject, reasoning regarding truth because good does not as yet lead him is meant. In other contexts ill-will, deceitfulness, and trickery are also meant by 'serpents', though in those places they are poisonous serpents - such as vipers and the like - whose reasoning is their poison.

'A serpent' is reasoning based on sensory evidence, see 195-197.

'A serpent' is all evil in general, and evils are distinguished from one another by different kinds of serpents, 251, 254, 257.

2733. There were certain spirits who, from a practice followed by them during their lifetime, were molesting me with particular skill. They did so by means of a rather gentle wave-like influx, resembling the ordinary influx from upright spirits. But I perceived that within that influx trickery and the like were present, to entice and to deceive. At length I spoke to one of them who, I was told, had during his lifetime been the commander of an army. And because I perceived that licentiousness was present in the ideas comprising his thought, I talked to him about marriage in the language used by spirits, which is illustrated with representatives and which expresses one's sentiments completely and many things in an instant.

[2] He said that during his lifetime he had thought nothing of adulterous behaviour. But I was given to tell him that all adultery is quite unspeakable, even though to those who are guilty of it it does not seem - because of the delight they take in it and the persuasive beliefs that result from it - to be unspeakable, but even allowable. I said that he might also know this from the fact that marriages are the seminaries of the human race and therefore the seminaries of the heavenly kingdom as well, and for that reason must not on any account be violated but be held sacred. He might also know, I continued, that adultery is unspeakable from the fact, which he ought to know because he was now in the next life and in a state of perception, that conjugial love comes down from the Lord by way of heaven, and that from that love, as from a parent, mutual love is derived, which is the foundation on which heaven rests. And he might know it also from the fact that when they merely move towards heavenly communities adulterers become aware of their own stench and cast themselves away from there down towards hell. He might at least have known that violence done to marriages was contrary to Divine laws, and contrary to the civil laws of all people, as well as contrary to the genuine light of reason, since it is contrary to order, both Divine and human, not to mention many considerations besides these.

[3] But he replied that he had never known such things during his lifetime, nor had he thought about them. He wished to reason whether what he had heard was so, but he was told that in the next life truth leaves no room for reasonings, for reasonings lend support to a person's delights, and so to his evils and falsities. I went on to tell him that he ought first to think about the things he had been told, because they were true; or at least he ought to think from the principle very widely known in the world that nobody ought to do to another what he does not wish that other to do to him. If some other man, I asked, had in a similar way seduced the wife whom he loved - as men love their wives at the beginning of every marriage - would he not also, when feeling irate about what had occurred, have expressed, if he spoke from that feeling, a loathing for all adultery? Also, being a man with mental ability, would he not have confirmed himself more than others against all adultery, even condemning it to hell? Thus he might have judged himself from what he possessed within himself.