4802. There are also spirits who, even though they are evil ones, do to some extent allow the light of heaven to come in and who accept the truths of faith, so that they have some perception of truth. They accept the truths enthusiastically, yet not so that they may live according to them, but so that they may boast about being seen to have more understanding and keen-sightedness than others. For the human understanding is such that it can accept truths, even though none make truths their own except those people who live according to them. Unless the human understanding was like this no one could be reformed.

[2] Those who have been like this in the world, that is to say, have understood truths and yet have led a life of evil, remain the same in the next life. But there they put their ability to understand truths to the misuse of gaining dominion over others; for there they know that in truths they have a means of communication with some communities of heaven, and consequently that they can exist among the evil and be strong; for truths in the next life have power within them. But because their life is one of evil they are in hell.

[3] I have talked to two who during their lifetime were like this. They were amazed they should be in hell even though they had believed very strongly in the truths of faith. But I told them that the light in them by which they understood truths was like that of winter in the world. I said that objects in all their beauty and colours were no less visible than in the light of summer; yet in that winter light everything died off and nothing at all pleasant and delightful showed itself. Then I told those two spirits that because the end they had in view to understanding truths had been their own exaltation and consequently had been a selfish end, the sphere emanating from their ends in view when these rose towards the interior heavens, to the angels there, who perceived solely people's ends, could not be tolerated and were cast aside. This is why they were in hell.

[4] I went on to say that in former times people of this kind, more than any others, were called serpents of the tree of knowledge; for when life is the subject of their reasoning they speak against truths. They are, what is more, like a woman who has a lovely face but a foul stench, and who is therefore an outcast from society wherever she goes. Like her, when such people in the next life move towards angelic communities they are in actual fact emitting a stench, which even they themselves are aware of when they approach those communities. From this also one may see what faith is when devoid of the life of faith.

6753. 'And said, Because I drew him out of the water' means a deliverance from falsities. This is clear from the meaning of 'the water', here the water of the river of Egypt, as falsities, dealt with in 6693; and from the meaning of 'drawing out' as a deliverance. These words contain the essential nature of the state meant by Moses' name; and the meaning in the highest sense is this: The nature of the state was such that, in order to make His Human the law of God the Lord delivered it from all falsity that clung to the Human He received from His mother. He continued doing this until He became the Divine Law, which is Divine Truth itself, and after that, having been glorified, became Divine Goodness, which is the Essential Being (Esse) of Divine Truth, that is, Jehovah.

5102. 'Saying, Why are your faces sad today?' means, What affection gives rise to this sadness? This is clear from the meaning of 'faces' as the things that are within, dealt with in 358, 1999, 2434, 3527, 4066, 4796, 4797, and so as the affections, for a person's interiors from which his thoughts spring - which are also things that are within - are his affections; and being aspects of his love, these affections are essentially his life. It is well known that the affections reveal themselves in the faces of those who are in a state of innocence; and when those affections reveal themselves, so too does a general impression of their thoughts, for people's thoughts are the forms their affections take. Regarded in itself therefore the face is nothing else than an image representing the things that are within.

[2] No face is looked at by the angels in any other way, for angels do not see the material but the spiritual form that a person's face takes; that is, they see the form presented by his affections and the thoughts springing from those affections. These are the essential components of the human face, as anyone may recognize from the fact that when bereft of thought and affections the face is completely dead, and that the face is enlivened by them and owes its pleasing looks to them. The sadness expressing some affection, or an affection which gives rise to sadness, is meant by Joseph's words, Why are your faces sad today?