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'.

Footnotes:

213. 3. In the case of people who are in a state of truly conjugial love, their happiness in living together increases, but with those who are not in a state of conjugial love, it decreases. Their happiness in living together increases in the case of those who are in a state of truly conjugial love, because they love each other with their every power of sensation. The wife sees nothing more lovable than her husband, and the husband nothing more lovable than her. Indeed, neither do they hear, smell or touch anything more lovable than each other. From this comes their happiness in living together and sharing house, bedroom, and bed.

You who are married men can confirm for yourselves that this is so from the first delights of marriage, which are then felt in their fullness; because at that time, of all the opposite sex, a husband loves his wife alone.

Everyone knows that the reverse is the case with those who do not possess any conjugial love.