27. Verse 9 And God said, Let the waters under heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so.

Once a person knows of the existence of the internal man and of the external man, and knows that, contrary to appearance, truths and goods flow in from the internal man, or from the Lord by way of the internal into the external, then the things residing in him as cognitions of truth and good are stored away in his memory and registered among the facts there. For anything that finds its way into the memory or the external man, whether natural, spiritual, or celestial, lodges there as known fact, and from that place it is brought out by the Lord. These cognitions are 'the waters gathered together to one place' and are called 'seas'. But the external man itself is called 'the dry land' and immediately afterwards 'earth', as in the verses that follow.

9870. 'A lapis lazuli, an agate, and an amethyst' means the spiritual love of good. This is clear in a similar way from their colour; for the blue colour which is a product of white means spiritual good, or what amounts to the same thing, the spiritual love of good, see above in 9868. The spiritual love of good is charity towards the neighbour, and the spiritual love of truth is faith rooted in charity. That good and this truth are what constitute the second heaven. The internal part of that heaven consists in the good of charity, and the external in the good of faith. It is well known that a lapis lazuli is of a blue colour, and an amethyst as well. But it is less well known that an agate too is of this colour; for no one knows what kind of stone the word in the original language describes, whether an agate, turquoise, or some other.