917. The fact that by their families means pairs can be seen from previous statements about the entry of the clean animals seven by seven and of the unclean animals two by two (Genesis 7:2-3, 15). The current verse, however, says that they went out by families. It says families and not seven at a time or two at a time because at this point the Lord has brought all elements into such good order that they represent families.

In a regenerate person, virtues and truths (or the attributes of charity and so the attributes of faith) relate to each other in such a way that they all regard each other as blood relatives and kin. That is to say, they regard each other as belonging to families that spring from the same stock or the same progenitor. The situation resembles that in heaven (§685). This is how the Lord organizes our positive qualities and true ideas.

The specific meaning here is that each and every form of good looks at its related truth as being united in marriage with itself. The way charity in general views faith is the same way that a single good impulse in particular always views a single truth.

A general rule is not general unless it emerges from specific cases. It is from the specific cases that the general rule has its existence and from them that it is described as general. The situation is the same in each of us; whatever we are like generally, we are like in every smallest detail of our feelings and thoughts. These form our constituent parts; these make us what we are as a whole. So when people have been reborn, they become the same in the most minute respects as they are overall. ¹

Footnotes:

685. The ties that connect people in the next life are remarkable. They are like family ties on earth, in that some acknowledge others as parents, as children, as siblings, as blood relatives, and as more distant connections. Their love for one another reflects these different levels of relationship. The varieties come in unlimited number. The way they are communicated and perceived is so exquisite that it cannot be described.

People there pay no attention at all to who was whose parent, child, blood relative, or connection on earth. They do not care what a person's outer identity was like, whether the individual had importance or wealth, and so on. They look only at differences in mutual love and in faith, and at what kind of capacity for welcoming love and faith a person has received from the Lord while living in the world.