353. By false intelligence and wisdom we mean any intelligence and wisdom that is devoid of acknowledgment of the Divine. In fact, people who do not acknowledge the Divine Being but put nature in place of the Divine all think on the basis of their physical bodies. They are merely sense-centered, no matter how scholarly and learned they are considered in this world. ¹ Their learning, though, does not rise any higher than the things in front of their eyes in this world, things that they keep in their memory and inspect almost physically. This is the case even though the very same branches of knowledge serve truly intelligent people as a means of forming their understanding. By "branches of knowledge" we mean the various experimental disciplines such as physics, astronomy, chemistry, mechanics, geometry, anatomy, psychology, philosophy, and political history, as well as the realms of literature and criticism and language study.

[2] There are church dignitaries who deny the Divine. They do not raise their thoughts any higher than the sensory concerns of the outer person. They look on the contents of the Word as no different from knowledge about anything else; they do not treat those contents as subjects of thought or of any thorough consideration by an enlightened rational mind. This is because their own deeper levels are closed off, and along with them, the more outward levels that are next to these deeper ones. The reason they are closed is that they have turned their backs on heaven and reversed the things that they could see there, things that are proper to the deeper levels of the human mind, as we have noted before. This is why they cannot see what is true and good - because these matters are in darkness for them, while what is false and evil is in the light.

[3] Nevertheless, sense-centered people can think logically, some of them actually with more skill and penetration than other people. However, they rely on deceptive sensory appearances bolstered by their own learning, and since they can think logically in this fashion, they think they are wiser than other people. ² The fire that fuels their reasoning is the fire of love for themselves and the world.

These are the people who are devoted to false intelligence and wisdom, the ones meant by the Lord in Matthew: "Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand" (Matthew 13:13-15); and again, "Things are hidden from the intelligent and wise and revealed to children" (Matthew 11:25-26).

Poznámky pod čarou:

5077. 'The cupbearer of the king of Egypt' means among the things of the body which are subject to the understanding Part of the mind. This is clear from the meaning of 'the cupbearer' as the external or bodily senses that are subordinate or subject to the understanding part of the internal man, dealt with in what follows below; and from the meaning of 'the king of Egypt' as the natural man, dealt with below in 5079. Since the cupbearer and the baker are the subject of the narrative that follows and these mean the external senses belonging to the body, something must first be said about these. It is well known that the external or bodily senses are five in number - sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch - and also that these constitute the entire life of the body. For without those senses the body has no life at all, for which reason also when deprived of them it dies and becomes a corpse. The actual bodily part of the human being therefore is nothing else than a receiver of sensory impressions and consequently of the life resulting from these. The part played by the senses is the principal one and that by the body the instrumental. The instrumental without its principal which it is fitted to serve cannot even be called the body that a person carries around while living in the world; but the instrumental together with its principal, when they act as one, can be called such. The two together therefore constitute the body.

[2] A person's external senses are directly related to his internal ones, for they have been given to a person and placed within his body to serve his internal man while he is in the world and to exist subject to the sensory powers of that internal man. Consequently when a person's external senses begin to rule his internal ones he is done for. When this happens his internal sensory powers are regarded as no more than servants whose function is to reinforce whatever the external senses imperiously demand. When this is the state in which the external senses operate, order in their case has become turned around, a situation dealt with immediately above in 5076.

[3] A person's external senses are, as stated, directly related to his internal ones, in general to the understanding and to the will. Consequently some external senses are subject or subordinate to the understanding part of the human mind, others are subject to the will part. One sensory power specifically subject to the understanding is sight; another subject to the understanding, and after that to the will also, is hearing. Smell, and more especially taste, are subject to both simultaneously, while the power subject to the will is touch. Much evidence could be introduced to show that the external senses are subject to the understanding and the will, and also to show how they are subject; but it would take up too much space to carry the explanation so far. Something of what is involved may be recognized from what has been shown at the ends of preceding chapters about the correspondence of those senses.

[4] In addition it should be recognized that all truths that are called the truths of faith belong to the understanding part, and that all forms of good which are those of love and charity go with the will part. Consequently it is the function of the understanding to believe, acknowledge, know, and see truth - and good also. But the function of the will is to feel an affection for that truth and to love it; and whatever a person feels an affection for and loves is good. But how the understanding influences the will when truth passes into good, and how the will influences the understanding when it puts that good into effect, are matters for still deeper examination - In the Lord's Divine mercy those matters will be discussed at various points further on.

[5] The reason 'the cupbearer' means the senses subject or subordinate to the understanding Part of the internal man is that everything which serves as drink, or which is consumed as such, for example, wine, milk, or water, is related to truth, which feeds the understanding and so belongs to the understanding. Also, because the external or bodily senses play a ministering role, 'a cupbearer' therefore means those senses or what is perceived by them. For in general 'drinking' has reference to truths which feed the understanding, see 3069, 3071, 3168, 3772, 4017, 4018; the specific meaning of 'wine' is truth deriving from good, or faith from charity, 1071, 1798, while 'water' means truth, 680, 2702, 3058, 3424, 4976. From all this one may now see what 'the cupbearer' means.