47. A proper perception of these matters may show that the universe is a coherent whole from first to last, since it contains ends, causes and effects bound up in an indissoluble knot. Since every love has an end in view, and all wisdom is the advancement of the end through mediate causes, and through these proceeding to effects, which are the purposes it serves, it follows too that the universe contains the Divine Love, the Divine Wisdom and services, and is thus a coherent whole from first to last. Every wise man can study as in a mirror the fact that the universe is composed of a perpetual succession of services brought about by wisdom and initiated by love, if he forms for himself any general idea about the creation of the universe, and examines its details. For the details adapt themselves to the general pattern, and this arranges them into a consonant form. Many illustrations of this will be given in the following pages.

7680. 'The whole of that day and the whole of that night' means all the perception, both that which was darkened and that which was not darkened, of the molesting ones - that is to say, it was all destroyed. This is clear from the meaning of 'day' as a state of undarkened perception; and from the meaning of 'night' as a state of darkened perception. For periods of the day - morning, midday, evening, and night - correspond to degrees of enlightenment, that is, of intelligence and wisdom, 5672, 6110, and so to degrees of perception. In general day and night are called degrees of perception, not of enlightenment, because the evil who molest have no enlightenment, though they may still have perception. They have it for as long as there remains with them any knowledge at all of truth and goodness which they had acquired from the Church in which they had lived. For through truth and goodness they have contact with those who are in heaven. But once they have been deprived of such knowledge, as happens when they have undergone vastation, they no longer have any perception. Those in hell are, it is true, able to justify their evils, and also their falsities; but this is not perception. Perception is seeing that truth is truth and good is good, and also that evil is evil and falsity is falsity. But it is not perception when people see truth as falsity, or good as evil, and conversely see evil as good or falsity as truth. Those who do this have delusion instead of perception. That delusion takes on the appearance of perception, in that people such as they know how to justify falsities and evils by means of the kinds of ideas that suggest themselves to the senses and lend support to their evil longings.