737. 'Noah was a son of six hundred years' means his initial state of temptation. This is clear from the fact from here down to Eber in Chapter 11 nothing else is meant by numbers, years of age, or names than real things, as was the case also with the ages and names of all those mentioned in Chapter 5. Here 'six hundred years' means the initial state of temptation. This becomes clear from its prime factors which are ten and six multiplied again by ten. When the same factors are involved it makes no difference whether the number arrived at is large or small. As for ten, this has been shown already at 6:3 to mean remnants, while the meaning of six here as labour and conflict is clear from places throughout the Word. For the situation is this: What has gone before dealt with man's preparation for temptation, that is to say, he was supplied by the Lord with truths of the understanding and with goods of the will. These truths and goods are remnants, but they are not brought forth so as to be acknowledged until man is being regenerated. In the case of those who are being regenerated by means of temptations the remnants existing with any man are for the angels present with him. From these remnants they draw out those things with which they protect him against the evil spirits who activate falsities with him and in this way attack him. It is because remnants are meant by 'ten' and conflict by 'six' that six hundred years are spoken of, a number in which ten and six are the prime factors and which means a state of temptation.

[2] As regards conflict being the particular meaning of 'six', this is clear from Genesis 1, which describes the six days of man's regeneration prior to his becoming celestial. During those six days there was constant conflict, but on the seventh day came rest. Consequently there are six days of labour, and the seventh is the sabbath, a word which means rest. This also is why a Hebrew slave was to serve for six years and in the seventh was to go free, Exodus 21:2; Deuteronomy 15:12; Jeremiah 34:14, and why for six years they were to sow the land and gather in the produce, but in the seventh they were to leave it alone, Exodus 23:10-12. The same applied to a vineyard. It is also the reason why in the seventh year the land was to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to Jehovah, Leviticus 25:3-4. Because 'six' means labour and conflict it also means the dispersion of falsity, as in Ezekiel,

Behold, six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which looks towards the north, every man with a weapon of dispersion in his hand. Ezekiel 9:2.

And in the same prophet, against Gog,

I will cause you to turn about, and I will split you into six, and cause you to come up from the uttermost parts of the north. Ezekiel 39:2.

Here 'six' and 'splitting into six' stand for dispersion, 'the north' for falsities, and 'Gog' for people who seize on doctrinal matters based on things of an external nature with which they destroy internal worship. From Job,

He will deliver you in six troubles, and in a seventh no evil will touch you. Job 5:19.

This stands for the conflict that constitutes temptations.

[3] 'Six' occurs in other parts of the Word where it does not mean labour, conflict, or the dispersion of falsity, but the holiness of faith. In these instances it is related to twelve, which means faith and all things of faith in their entirety, and to three which means that which is holy. Consequently there is also a genuine derivative meaning to the number six, as in Ezekiel 40:5, where the man's measuring rod with which he measured the holy city of Israel was six cubits long; and in other places. The reason for this derivative is that in the conflict of temptation the holiness of faith is present, and also that six days of labour and conflict look forward to the holy seventh day.

4329. Some spirits arrived at a point fairly high up who, to judge by the sound they made, seemed to be many. I learnt from the ideas comprising their thought and speech which were channelled in my direction that they did not have a distinct idea of anything, only a general idea of many things. This led me to suppose that they were not capable of perceiving anything distinct and separate, but only something general and not distinct, and so something obscure; for I was of the opinion that something general could not be other than obscure. That their thought was general, that is, the thought of many things at one and the same time, I was able to recognize clearly from the ideas which were flowing into my thought from them.

[2] But they were provided with a spirit as an intermediary through whom they talked to me; for that kind of general thought could not be put into words without the help of others. And when I spoke to the spirits through the intermediary I said, as I supposed, that general things could not present a distinct and separate idea of any particular matter, only an idea so obscure as to be so to speak none at all. But after a quarter of an hour they showed that they had a distinct idea of things that were general, and of many aspects of those that were general. They showed this in particular by observing, so accurately and distinctly that no other spirits could do better, all the variations and changes in my thoughts and affections, and noting the smallest details in these. From these experiences I was able to deduce that a general idea which is obscure, as it is among people who have little knowledge and are therefore in obscurity about everything, is quite different from a general idea which is clear, as it is among those who have been taught about truths and forms of good. For those truths and forms of good have been introduced - in their own order and own connected series - into a general profile of them, and have been arranged in such a way that those people are able from that general profile to see them all distinctly.

[3] The spirits are those who in the next life constitute the general and voluntary sensory activity, and who by means of cognitions of goodness and truth have acquired to themselves the ability to look at things from what is general, and by doing that to contemplate things broadly and to discover instantly whether something is true. They see things, it is true, in obscurity so to speak, since they see them from the general profile to which they belong. Yet because they have been ordered and made distinct within the general profile, those things are therefore clear to them. This general sensory activity that is voluntary does not occur except in the wise. The fact that these spirits were such was another thing I learnt, for they could see in me every single detail of what I had concluded, and from this drew conclusions about the interior aspects of my thoughts and affections. Those conclusions were so accurate that I began to be afraid even to think anything more at all. For they uncovered things which I did not know to exist with me, and yet from the conclusions reached by them I had to admit to what they had uncovered. From this I perceived in myself a disinclination to talk to them, a disinclination which, when I became aware of it, took on the appearance of something hairy and of something in it speaking yet making no sound. I was told that this meant the general sensory awareness in the body that corresponds to those spirits. The next day I again spoke to them and once more discovered that they had a general perception that was not obscure but clear, and that as general things and the states that go with these varied so did particular ones and the states that go with them since the latter are related by their order and connected series to the former.

[4] I was told that general and voluntary sensory powers that are yet more perfect exist within the interior sphere of heaven and that when angels have a general or universal idea they have at the same time specific ideas which are ordered and made distinct by the Lord within the universal. General and universal wholes, I have been told, are not anything if they do not include within them the individual and the specific parts from which they exist and are so called, and that they exist just insofar as these individual and specific parts are present within them. From this it is also evident that without every most specific detail within it and from which it exists the Lord's Providence is nothing at all, and that it is quite stupid to think of the existence of something universal in the case of the Divine and to take specific details away from it.