erstood by a man who is not
rational, and for several reasons, the chief of which is that he has
no desire to understand it because it is opposed to the falsities
that he has made his truths; and he that is unwilling to understand
for this reason has closed to his rational faculty the way to heaven,
although that way can still be opened whenever the will's resistance
ceases (see above, n. 424). That man is able to understand truths and
be rational whenever he so wishes has been made clear to me by much
experience. Evil spirits that have become irrational in the world by
rejecting the Divine and the truths of the church, and confirming
themselves against them, have frequently been turned by Divine power
towards those who were in the light of truth, and they then
comprehended all things as the angels did, and acknowledged them to
be true, and also that they comprehended them all. But the moment
these spirits relapsed into themselves, and turned back to the love
of their will, they had no comprehension of truths and affirmed the
opposite. [2] I have also heard certain dwellers in hell saying that
they knew and perceived that which they did to be evil and that which
they thought to be false; but that they were unable to resist the
delight of their love, that is, their will, and that it is their will
that drives their thought to see evil as good and falsity as truth.
Evidently, then, those that are in falsity from evil have the ability
to understand and be rational, but have no wish to; and they have no
wish to for the reason that they have loved falsities more than
truths, because these agree with the evils in which they are. To love
and to will is the same thing, for what a man wills he loves, and
what he loves he wills. [3] Because the state of men is such that
they are able to understand truths if they wish to, I have been
permitted to confirm spiritual truths, which are truths of heaven and
the church, even by reasonings, and this in order that the falsities
by which the rational mind in many has been closed up may be
dispersed by reasonings, and thus the eye may perhaps in some degree
be opened; for to confirm spiritual goods by reasonings is permitted
to all that are in truths. Who could ever understand the Word from
the sense of its letter, unless he saw from an enlightened reason the
truths it contains? Is not this the source of so many heresies from
the same Word?{1}

{Footnote 1} The truths of doctrine of the c