834. As celestial love and spiritual love have been treated of, it now remains to say something about the spiritual-natural love in which are the angels of the first or ultimate heaven. This love is what is properly called charity towards the neighbor. As these angels are nearly alike in respect to the understanding as men in the world are, and as they are natural, their understanding is raised but little above what it was while they were in the world; therefore they do not see truths in the light as the angels of the second heaven do; but they receive, acknowledge, and believe truths from doctrine, in which they are instructed before they are admitted into heaven. For this reason only the more intelligent of them know what charity towards the neighbor is, the simple there believing that every man is the neighbor, and that charity is to assist the needy, and to do good to the poor, the sojourner, and so on. For the most part they consider persons and what they say, and not the interiors which are the source of what they say. This is so because they are natural; and a natural man does not think abstractedly from what his eyes see except to the extent that he admits light from heaven into his natural lumen. Nevertheless, those are there taught that "neighbor" does not mean in the Word a man merely in respect to person, but in respect to the quality in him that makes him to be such and such a man; also that the quality of a man is from his understanding and will, and the quality of his understanding is from truths, and the quality of his will is from goods, and the quality of both the understanding and the will is from his love. From this it is known that while every man is a neighbor, every man is a neighbor from his quality, and consequently that it is the quality of a man from which he is a man that is meant in the spiritual sense by "neighbor;" for otherwise a bad man would be as much a neighbor as a good man; and yet to do good to the evil is sometimes doing evil to the good. That this is so anyone can see from natural lumen. If you were to choose a helper or servant from those in your neighborhood, and ten were brought before your eyes from whom you were to choose one, would you choose from the face alone? Would you not choose from some quality that you love, as integrity, modesty, piety, uprightness? These you would consider as you looked upon them. It is similar in respect to the neighbor; it is the man's quality that is to be loved. From this it follows that the neighbor in the spiritual sense is that with a man which makes him be such and such a man.
