52. As long as someone is a spiritual man, the dominion over him runs from external man to internal man, as is said here, 'They will have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air', and over the beasts, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth'. When however he becomes celestial and does what is good out of love, then the dominion over him runs from internal man to external man. This is how the Lord describes Himself, and so simultaneously the celestial man, who is a likeness of Him, in David,

You have given him dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, flocks and all cattle, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, ¹ and the fish of the sea, and that crossing the paths of the seas. Psalms 8:6-8.

Here therefore the beasts are mentioned first, the birds next, and the fish of the sea after that, for the reason that the celestial man starts with love which resides in the will. With the spiritual man it is different. With him fish and birds, which have to do with the understanding, the domain of faith, come first, while beasts come afterwards.

Imibhalo yaphansi:

1385. There are spirits who belong to the province of the skin, especially its scaly area, who wish to reason about everything, but who have no perception of what good or truth is. Indeed, the more they go on reasoning the less they perceive. They identify reasoning with wisdom; and they do this so that they may appear wise. They have been told that angelic wisdom involves perceiving whether a thing is good or true without reasoning about it, but they have no conception of the possibility of a perception such as this. They are people who during their lifetime had thrown truth and good into confusion by means of scientific and philosophical arguments, and in so doing had seemed to themselves to be more learned than everybody else; but they had not in the first place grasped from the Word any basic ideas of truth, as a result of which they possess less common sense than anybody else