s of falsities is not rational. There
are three kinds of truths, civil, moral, and spiritual. Civil truths
relate to matters of judgment and of government in kingdoms, and in
general to what is just and equitable in them. Moral truths pertain
to the matters of everyone's life which have regard to companionships
and social relations, in general to what is honest and right, and in
particular to virtues of every kind. But spiritual truths relate to
matters of heaven and of the church, and in general to the good of
love and the truth of faith. [2] In every man there are three degrees
of life (see above, n. 267). The rational faculty is opened to the
first degree by civil truths, to the second degree by moral truths,
and to the third degree by spiritual truths. But it must be
understood that the rational faculty that consists of these truths is
not formed and opened by man's knowing them, but by his living
according to them; and living according to them means loving them
from spiritual affection; and to love truths from spiritual affection
is to love what is just and equitable because it is just and
equitable, what is honest and right because it is honest and right,
and what is good and true because it is good and true; while living
according to them and loving them from the bodily affection is loving
them for the sake of self and for the sake of one's reputation, honor
or gain. Consequently, so far as man loves these truths from a bodily
affection he fails to become rational, for he loves, not them, but
himself; and the truths are made to serve him as servants serve their
Lord; and when truths become servants they do not enter the man and
open any degree of life in him, not even the first, but merely rest
in the memory as knowledges under a material form, and there conjoin
themselves with the love of self, which is a bodily love. [3] All
this shows how man becomes rational, namely, that he becomes rational
to the third degree by a spiritual love of the good and truth which
pertain to heaven and the church; he becomes rational to the second
degree by a love of what is honest and right; and to the first degree
by a love of what is just and equitable. These two latter loves also
become spiritual from a spiritual love of good and truth, because
that love flows into them and conjoins itself to them and forms in
them as it were its own semblance.

469. Spirits and angels, equally with men, have a memory, whatever
they hear, se