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:

8209. 'And came after them' means the attempt to flow in. This is clear from the meaning of 'coming after someone', when done by those steeped in falsities arising from evil, as the attempt to do violence by flowing in with falsity arising from evil, dealt with in 8187. The reason why it is an attempt is that genii and spirits belonging to hell cannot inflict ill on the good, yet are nevertheless constantly attempting to do so. There is a sphere emanating from the hells, which may be called a sphere of endeavours; this is a sphere of doing ill. I have also been allowed sometimes to perceive this sphere. That attempt to flow in exists constantly, and is actualized the moment any opportunity presents itself. But that sphere is counteracted by a sphere of endeavours by heaven, which emanates from the Lord; this is a sphere of doing good, which has all power within it since it has a Divine origin.

[2] Nevertheless equilibrium is maintained between those diametrically opposed types of endeavour, to the end that a person may be in freedom and so have freedom to choose, and to the end that he may be able to be reformed; for all reformation takes place in freedom, and no reformation without it. Spiritually, attempting something is the same as willing it. While a person is being reformed he is kept in a state of equilibrium, that is, in freedom between willing good and willing evil. The closer he moves at this time towards willing good, the closer he moves to heaven and the further away from hell. His new will, acquired at this time from the Lord, also comes more and more to prevail over the will properly his own, which he acquired by heredity from his parents and then through his own actions in life. When therefore a person's reformation has progressed so far that he wills good and has an affection for it, good removes evil, since the Lord is present within that good. For good has its origin in the Lord, and so is the Lord's, indeed is the Lord. From all this one may see what the situation is so far as the things attempting to flow into him are concerned.