977. Inner Meaning
BECAUSE the subject under discussion here is people who have been reborn, a brief statement needs to be made explaining what they are like compared to unregenerate people. From this comparison the character of the one kind and of the other can be recognized.
Regenerate people have a conscience for what is good and true; conscience moves them to do good, and conscience moves them to think truly. The good they do is the good associated with charity, and the truth they think is the truth embraced by faith. People who are not regenerate do not have a conscience. If they do, it is not a conscience that requires them to do what is good out of kindness, or to think what is true because they believe it, but to do so out of some form of love for themselves or the material world. They have either a false conscience or a distorted one.
Regenerate people feel joy when they do what conscience bids, and distress when forced to act or think against conscience. With the unregenerate, on the other hand, this is not so. Most do not know what conscience is, much less what obeying conscience or violating it is. They only know how to live by principles that advance their own interests, which gives them joy. Going against these principles creates distress for them.
[2] Regenerate people have a new will and a new intellect. The new will and intellect are their conscience, or rather exist in their conscience, through which the Lord puts neighborly kindness and religious truth to work. People who have not been reborn do not have a will but appetite instead, and are therefore attracted to every kind of evil. They do not have true intellect but shallow logic, and therefore sink into every kind of falsity.
Regenerate people have heavenly and spiritual life, but unregenerate people have only bodily 1 and worldly life. Any ability the unregenerate have to think about and understand what is good and true derives from the Lord's life force. This force comes by way of the remnant [of truth and goodness] described earlier [§§561, 661:2], which gives them the capacity to reflect.
[3] In regenerate people, the inner self is in charge and the outer self obeys. In people who have not been reborn, the outer self is in charge, while the inner self retires and seems to disappear.
Regenerate people recognize what the inner self is and what the outer self is, or at least they can recognize it if they ponder. People who are not regenerate have no idea at all what the inner and outer self are. They cannot tell even if they think about it, because they have no idea what the goodness and truth of a faith based on kindness is.
All this evidence shows what the regenerate person is like and what the unregenerate one is like — that they are as different as summer and winter, or light and darkness. So the regenerate person is a living individual, while the unregenerate one is a dead individual.
Footnotes:
1. "Bodily" here literally translates the Latin word corporeus. In Swedenborg's usage, however, "the body" can refer simultaneously to one's physical body and one's sense of self-importance. In §496 of his 1768 work "Marriage Love", Swedenborg describes three levels of the earthly self: the worldly, the sense-centered, and the body-centered, saying, "We are on the third level if all we love is ourselves and we set our hearts on getting respect... . This is because we invest our whole volition and consequent discernment in our bodies and see ourselves through the eyes of others, and love only what we claim as our own." (Passages of Marriage Love in these notes were translated by George F. Dole.) In §49 of the same work he identifies the desire for rank and high position as a love belonging to one's body. And in §507 of his 1771 work "True Christianity" he describes self-love — "which is also a love of dominating other people" — as a bodily love. (Passages of "True Christianity" in these notes are from the translation by Jonathan S. Rose.) See also note 2 in §8; and Shotwell 2009, 185-195. [LHC, SS]