41. Anything that is man's own has no life in it; and when depicted visually it looks like something hard as a bone and black. But anything that comes from the Lord does contain life. It has that which is spiritual and celestial within it, and when depicted visually it looks human and alive. It is perhaps incredible, but nevertheless absolutely true, that every expression, every idea, and every least thought of an angelic spirit is alive. In even the most detailed areas of his thought there is an affection that comes from the Lord, who is life itself. Consequently all that derives from the Lord has life within it, for it contains faith in Him, and is here meant by 'a living creature'. It then has the outward appearance of a body, meant here by that which is moving, or creeping. To man these matters remain arcana, but since the subject here is the living and moving creature, they ought at least to be mentioned here.

6729. 'And the daughter of Pharaoh went down' means the kind of religion practised there. This is clear from the meaning of 'the daughter' as an affection for truth and good, and from this as the Church, dealt with in 2362, 3963, and in the contrary sense as an affection for falsity and evil, and from this as the kind of religion that springs from them, 3024. Here the kind of religion that springs from false factual knowledge is meant because the daughter is Pharaoh's; for 'Pharaoh' here represents false factual knowledge, 6651, 6679, 6683, 6692. In the Word Churches are meant by 'daughters', as may be recognized from the very many places in which the Church is called the daughter of Zion, and the daughter of Jerusalem. The false religions of quite a number of nations are also meant by 'daughters', as is evident from the places where those religions are called daughters, for example, the daughter of Tyre, Psalms 45:12; the daughter of Edom, Lamentations 4:22; the daughter of the Chaldeans and of Babel, Isaiah 47:1, 5; Jeremiah 50:41-42; Jeremiah 51:33; Zechariah 2:7, Psalms 137:8; the daughter of the Philistines, Ezekiel 16:27, 57; the daughter of Tarshish, Isaiah 23:10. 'The daughter of Egypt' is spoken of in Jeremiah,

Go up to Gilead and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt! Make for yourself vessels of migration, O inhabitant daughter of Egypt! The daughter of Egypt has been put to shame; she has been delivered into the hand of the people from the north. Jeremiah 46:11, 19, 24.

'The daughter of Egypt' stands for an affection for reasoning that relies, since a negative attitude of mind reigns, on factual knowledge - reasoning whether the truths of faith are indeed true. Thus she stands for the kind of religion which springs from that reasoning, a religion in which there is no belief in anything except what is false.