1002. 'Not eating' means not mixing together. This follows from what has been said above. Regarded in itself eating animal flesh is something profane, for in most ancient times people never ate the flesh of any beast or bird, but only different kinds of grain, especially wheaten bread, also the fruit of trees, vegetables, milk, and milk products such as butter. Slaughtering living creatures and eating their flesh was to them abominable, akin to the behaviour of wild animals. Service and use alone was demanded of those creatures, as is clear from Genesis 1:29-30. But in the process of time when mankind began to be as savage as wild animals, indeed more savage, they first began to slaughter living creatures and eat their flesh. And because man had become such, he was permitted to do so and is still permitted today. And insofar as he does so from conscience, it is quite legitimate, for his conscience is given form from all those things he presumes to be true and so legitimate. Consequently nobody nowadays stands in any sense condemned because he eats meat.

2256. That 'as to make the righteous die with the wicked, so that the righteous will be as the wicked' means that good cannot die, because evil can be separated from it, is clear from the meaning of 'the righteous' as good and of 'the wicked' as evil, dealt with above in 2250. From this 'to make the righteous die with the wicked' means making good perish with evil; but because this ought never to be done, and also because the very thought of it evokes horror, it is removed in the internal sense, and the following is at the same time presented - that good cannot die, because evil can be separated from it.

[2] The implications of this particular matter are known to few, if any. It has to be recognized that all the good whatever that a person has thought and done from earliest childhood through to the very end of his life remains; and the same applies to all the evil, so much so that not even the least trace of it completely perishes. All that good and evil is written in his book of life, that is, in each of his memories, ¹ and in his true self, that is, in his character and disposition. From that good and evil he has formed a life for himself and, so to speak, a soul, the essential nature of which remains unchanged after death. But goods are never so mixed up with evils, nor evils with goods, that they cannot be separated; for if they were so mixed a person would perish for ever. The Lord sees to it that they are not. If he has led a life abiding in the goods of love and charity, then when a person enters the next life the Lord separates the evils, and by means of the goods present with him raises him into heaven. But if he has led a life immersed in evils, that is to say, in things contrary to love and charity, the Lord separates the goods from him, and his evils carry him into hell. Such is the experience of everyone after death. But it is a separation and in no way a complete removal.

[3] What is more, because the will of man, which constitutes the one part of his life, has been utterly destroyed, the Lord separates that destroyed part from the other part, which is that of his understanding, and in this other part He implants - in the case of those who are being regenerated - the good of charity and through this a new will. These are they who have conscience. In the same manner also the Lord in general separates evil from good. Such are the arcana that are meant in the internal sense by the statement that good cannot die, because evil can be separated from it.

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