582. And with them they do hurt.- That this signifies that thus they pervert the truths and goods of the church, is evident from the signification of hurting, as denoting to pervert the truths and goods of the church by crafty reasonings from sensual scientifics or fallacies. For the horses seen in the vision, of whose tails these things are said, signify falsifications of the Word by reasonings from fallacies, as may be seen above (n. 575). From the horses thus seen by John, the nature and quality of representative appearances in heaven is clear, namely, that affections there, when represented by animals, appear in the forms of such animals as are seen in our world, but still every where with variety as to their members, especially as to their faces, the details of which, from correspondence, signify various things connected with the affection represented. For example, in the present case, horses were seen, whose heads were like the heads of lions, and their tails were like those of serpents, and had heads, and those who sat upon the horses, had breast-plates which were fiery, purple (hyacinthinus), and sulphurous. Animals continually appear in the spiritual world in various forms, and they have also been frequently seen by me. And he who understands correspondences, knows the signification of each. For all the affections which flow from angelic minds, are imaged before their eyes by animals of every kind on the earth, in the air and in the sea, similarly by all those things that are in the vegetable kingdom of the earth, and all those things that are in the mineral kingdom of the earth. This is the reason, that such things in our world were made the representatives of celestial and spiritual things. Such representatives exist in the spiritual world, because interior and exterior spiritual things are there. Interior spiritual things are all those that relate to affection, and to thought therefrom, or to the intelligence of truth, and the wisdom of good; while exterior spiritual things are so created by the Lord, that they may clothe or invest interior spiritual things; and when these are clothed and invested, such forms then exist as are in the natural world, in which, therefore, interior spiritual things ultimately terminate, and in which they ultimately exist.