FIRST. I was once
in the midst of the angels and heard their conversation. It was
respecting intelligence and wisdom; that a man perceives no other than
that each is in himself, and thus that whatever he thinks from his
understanding and intends from his will, is from himself; when
nevertheless not the least portion thereof is from the man, but only the
faculty of receiving the things of the understanding and the will from
God: and as every man (_homo_) is by birth inclined to love himself, it
was provided from creation, to prevent man's perishing by self-love and
the conceit of his own intelligence, that that love of the man (_vir_)
should be transferred into the wife, and that in her should be implanted
from her birth a love for the intelligence and wisdom of her husband,
and thereby a love for him; therefore the wife continually attracts to
herself her husband's conceit of his own intelligence, and extinguishes
it in him, and vivifies it in herself, and thus changes it into
conjugial love, and fills it with unbounded pleasantnesses. This is
provided by the Lord, lest the conceit of his own intelligence should so
far infatuate the man, as to lead him to believe that he has
understanding and wisdom from himself and not from the Lord, and thereby
make him willing to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
and thence to believe himself like unto God, and also a god, as the
serpent, which was the love of his own intelligence, said and persuaded
him: wherefore the man (_homo_) after eating was cast out of paradise,
and the way to the tree of life was guarded by a cherub.
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