ithdrawn from hell. From all this, and from what precedes
in this chapter, it can be seen what the origin of evil is.

269. (4) Such things as have come to be of the love, and consequently of
the life, are engendered in offspring. It is known that man is born into
evil, and that he derives it by inheritance from parents; though by some
it is believed that he inherits it not from his parents, but through
parents from Adam; this, however, is an error. He derives it from the
father, from whom he has a soul that is clothed with a body in the mother.
For the seed, which is from the father, is the first receptacle of life,
but such a receptacle as it was with the father; for the seed is in the
form of his love, and each one's love is, in things greatest and least,
similar to itself; and there is in the seed a conatus to the human form,
and by successive steps it goes forth into that form. From this it follows
that evils called hereditary are from fathers, thus from grandfathers and
great-grandfathers, successively transmitted to offspring. This may be
learned also from observation, for as regards affections, there is a
resemblance of races to their first progenitor, and a stronger resemblance
in families, and a still stronger resemblance in households; and this
resemblance is such that generations are distinguishable not only by the
disposition, but even by the face. But of this ingeneration of the love
of evil by parents in offspring more will be said in what follows, where
the correspondence of the mind, that is, of the will and understanding,
with the body and its members and organs will be fully treated of. Here
these few things only are brought forward, that it may be known that evils
are derived from parents successively, and that they increase through the
accumulations of one parent after another, until man by birth is nothing
but evil; also that the malignity of evil increases according to the
degree in which the spiritual mind is closed up, for in this manner the
natural mind also is closed above; finally, that there is no recovery
from this in posterity except through their fleeing from evils as sins
by the help of the Lord. In this and in no other way is the spiritual
mind opened, and by means of such opening the natural mind is brought back
into correspondent form.

270. (5) All evils and their falsities, both engendered and acquired,
have their seat in the natural mind. Evils and their falsities have their
seat i