39. Verse 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things, living creatures; and let birds fly above the earth, upon the face ¹ of the expanse of the heavens.

After the great lights have been kindled and lodged in the internal man, from which the external man receives its light, a person starts to live for the first time. Till then he can hardly be said to have lived, for he had imagined that the good he had done he had done from himself, and the truth he had uttered he had spoken from himself. And since man functioning from himself is dead - there being nothing in him that is not evil and false - therefore whatever he brings forth from himself is not living. So true is this that of himself he is incapable of doing any good deed that is in itself good. The fact that man cannot begin to think about good or to will it, and so cannot do good, unless the Lord is the source, is clear to everyone from the doctrine of faith, for the Lord says in Matthew,

He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. Matthew 13:37.

Nor can good come from anywhere else than the one fount itself of all good, as yet again He says,

Nobody is good but one, God. Luke 18:19.

[2] Nevertheless when the Lord is revitalizing a person, or regenerating him, He does allow him, to begin with, to imagine that good and truth originate in himself, for at that point a person cannot grasp anything else, or be led to believe and finally perceive, that all good and truth come from the Lord alone. As long as he held the former opinion his truths and goods were comparable to 'a tender plant', then 'a plant bearing seed', and after that 'a fruit tree', which are inanimate. But once he has been brought to life by love and faith and believes that the Lord is at work in every good deed he does and in every truth he utters, he is compared first to creeping things from the water and to birds which fly above the earth, and then to beasts, all of which are animate and are called 'living creatures'.

脚注:

6309. I have talked to good spirits about the internal and external man. I have spoken about the amazing fact that few within the Church believe in the existence of an internal man distinct and separate from the external, even though they know about it from the Word. Yet they could know that the internal man exists by taking a brief look each day at their thought and will. That is to say, they could know it from the fact that their inward thoughts are often at variance with their outward ones, and that they express their outward thoughts in speech, face, and actions, but not their inward ones, which they keep deeply hidden, as dissemblers, hypocrites, and the deceitful habitually do. People governed by good may know of this from times when they think that they ought not to be doing what they are doing and reproach themselves for it. All this goes to prove the existence of a more internal man distinct and separate from the external.

[2] But the reason why people give no thought to the existence of the internal man or, if they do give it any thought, why they have no real conception of it, is that they consider the body to be the place where life resides. And since they flood their thought with what is bodily and worldly any insight into matters of that kind, or indeed even any belief in their existence, is destroyed. This too I have been allowed to know from experience. Whenever I have been considering some heavenly idea and have then lapsed into thoughts about worldly and earthly matters, heavenly things have faded so much from view that they could barely be recognized. The reason for this is that what belongs to the superior light of heaven turns into darkness when it sinks to the level of what belongs to the inferior light of the world; for the two are contrary to each other. To remove that contrariety however a person undergoes regeneration and is also raised above the level of the senses to more internal things; and to the extent he is raised above them he leaves behind evils and falsities. But he cannot be raised up unless the good of faith and life is present in him.