Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 3.djvu/46

This page needs to be proofread.
40
THE SWEDENBORG LIBRARY.

these faculties: they therefore make themselves men no further than in being able, from the rationality and liberty implanted in them, to understand if they desire it, and also in their ability to desire it. From these two faculties arises their ability to think, and from thought to speak; for the rest they are not men but animals, and some of them, by the abuse of these faculties, worse than animals.

Any one from a rationality unobscured may see or comprehend that man, without the appearance of its being his own, could have no affection for knowledge, and no affection for understanding; for all delight and pleasure, therefore all that belongs to will, is from affection which is a derivative of love. Who can desire to know anything or to understand anything, without some pleasure [in so doing] derived from affection? And who can have this pleasure from affection, unless that for which he has an affection appears as his own? If none of it were his own, but all another's, that is, if any one from his affections should infuse anything into the mind of another who had no affection for knowing and understanding as if of himself, would the latter receive it? Nay, if he could receive it, would he not be like a brute or a stock?


THE LORD GRANTS THAT GOOD AND TRUTH IN MAN, MAY SEEM MAN'S OWN.

From this it may be seen that, although all perception and consequent thought and knowledge, and all