44. Verses 24-25 And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, beasts and creeping things and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds; and it was so. And God made wild animals of the earth according to their kinds, and beasts according to their kinds, and everything that creeps along the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Man, like the earth, can produce nothing good unless the cognitions of faith have already been sown in him enabling him to know what to believe and do. It is the function of the understanding to hear the Word, and of the will to do it. A person who hears the Word and does not do it is one who claims to believe, but he does not live according to it. Such a person separates hearing and doing, and splits his mind in two directions; and by the Lord he is called 'a foolish man',

Everyone who hears My words and does them I liken to a wise man who built his house upon the rock; but everyone who hears My words and does them not I liken to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. Matthew 7:24, 26.

Matters of the understanding, as has been shown, are meant by 'creeping things which the waters produce', and by 'birds over the earth and over the face ¹ of the expanse'. Matters of the will are here meant by 'living creatures which the earth brings forth', and by 'beasts and creeping things', and also by 'the wild animals of the earth'.

脚注:

3577. 'Like the odour of the field' means as the good ground from which truth is acquired. This is clear from the meaning of 'the odour of the field' as the perception of truth acquired from good, like the scent from the harvest in the field - 'the field' meaning good ground, see 3500. The reason 'odour' means perception is that all the delight that good yields and all the pleasantness that truth gives, which people perceive in the next life, also manifest themselves there as corresponding odours, see 1514, 1517-1519. From this and from correspondences it is evident that 'odour' is nothing else than the power of perception, though a natural power of perception corresponding to a spiritual power of it.