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.

378, 3. Volition corresponds to the heart. As I mentioned above [375], this cannot be shown in a clearer and more precise way than by examining the effects of volition. It can be shown in some detail by the fact that all the feelings that arise from love induce changes in the motions of the heart. We can tell this from the arterial pulse that acts synchronously with the heart. It has countless changes and motions in response to feelings that arise from love. The only ones we can detect with the finger are that it may beat slower or faster, boldly or gently, soft or hard, regularly or irregularly, and so on. So it varies from happiness to sorrow, from peace of mind to rage, from courage to fearfulness, from fevers to chills, and so on.

Since the motions of the heart (called systole and diastole) do vary in this way depending on the feelings that arise from someone's love, many of the ancients and some moderns have ascribed feelings to the heart and named it as the home of the feelings. So in common language we have come to speak of a magnanimous heart or a timid one, a happy or a sorrowful heart, a soft or a hard heart, a great or a mean heart, a whole or a broken heart, a heart of flesh or one of stone, of being heavy, soft, or gentle at heart, of putting our heart into a task, of giving our whole heart, giving a new heart, resting at heart, taking to heart, of not laying something to heart, of hardening the heart, of being a friend at heart. We have the words concord and discord and envy and many others that have to do with love and its feelings.

The Word says similar things because it was composed in correspondences. It makes no difference whether you say love or volition, since volition is the vessel of love, as already noted [358-361].

1147. 'And sons were born to them' means matters of doctrine deriving from those three. This is clear from the meaning of 'sons' in the internal sense as truths of faith, and also as falsities. Consequently matters of doctrine, both true and false, are meant, for such are the doctrines of Churches. That 'sons' has such a meaning, see above in 264, 489, 491, 533.