62. FROM THE ARCANA COELESTIA

Love is the esse of man's life (n. 5002). Man, spirit, and angel, are altogether as their love is (n. 6872, 10177, 10284). Man has for an end what he loves (n. 3796). What man loves and has for an end reigns universally with him, that is, in each and all things (n. 3796, 5130, 5949). Love is spiritual heat, and the very vital principle of man (n. 1589, 2146, 3338, 4906, 7081-7086, 9954, 10740). All the interiors with man, which are of his understanding and will, are disposed in a form according to his ruling love (n. 2023, 3189, 6690). Love is spiritual conjunction (n. 1594, 2057, 3939, 4018, 5807, 6195-6196, 7081-7086, 7501, 10130). Hence all in the spiritual world are consociated according to their loves (ibid.). Affection is continuation of love (n. 3938). All delight, pleasure, happiness, and joy of heart, are of love; and their quality is according to the quality of the love (n. 994-995, 2204). There are as many genera and species of delights and pleasures as there are of the affections which are of the love (n. 994-995, 2204). The delight of the love is more vile in proportion as it is more external (n. 996). Man after death has such a life as is the quality of his love (n. 2363).

7680. 'The whole of that day and the whole of that night' means all the perception, both that which was darkened and that which was not darkened, of the molesting ones - that is to say, it was all destroyed. This is clear from the meaning of 'day' as a state of undarkened perception; and from the meaning of 'night' as a state of darkened perception. For periods of the day - morning, midday, evening, and night - correspond to degrees of enlightenment, that is, of intelligence and wisdom, 5672, 6110, and so to degrees of perception. In general day and night are called degrees of perception, not of enlightenment, because the evil who molest have no enlightenment, though they may still have perception. They have it for as long as there remains with them any knowledge at all of truth and goodness which they had acquired from the Church in which they had lived. For through truth and goodness they have contact with those who are in heaven. But once they have been deprived of such knowledge, as happens when they have undergone vastation, they no longer have any perception. Those in hell are, it is true, able to justify their evils, and also their falsities; but this is not perception. Perception is seeing that truth is truth and good is good, and also that evil is evil and falsity is falsity. But it is not perception when people see truth as falsity, or good as evil, and conversely see evil as good or falsity as truth. Those who do this have delusion instead of perception. That delusion takes on the appearance of perception, in that people such as they know how to justify falsities and evils by means of the kinds of ideas that suggest themselves to the senses and lend support to their evil longings.