Divine Love and Wisdom #244

244. A similar circumstance occurs in the world. A person not altogether lacking in intellect, and who has not been led by a conceit in his own intelligence to confirm in himself falsities - the same, upon hearing others speaking on some lofty subject, or upon reading such things, if he has some affection to learn about them, then understands them, and also retains them, and can afterward affirm them. An evil person as well as a good person can do this. Even if an evil person at heart denies Divine concepts which are tenets of the church, still he can understand them, and also speak about and preach them, and learnedly affirm them in writing. But yet when thinking left to himself, he thinks in accord with his infernal love in opposition to those concepts and denies them.

It is apparent from this that the intellect can be in spiritual light, even if the will is not in spiritual warmth.

[2] It also follows from this that the intellect does not lead the will, or that wisdom does not produce love, but that the intellect only informs and points the way - informing the person how he should live, and pointing the way he should go.

It follows, too, that the will leads the intellect and causes it to operate in harmony with it, and that the love which resides in the will calls wisdom anything in the intellect which accords with it.

We will see in following discussions that the will does nothing by itself apart from the intellect, but that everything it does, it does in conjunction with the intellect. Still, it is the will that, by flowing into it, takes the intellect into partnership with itself, and not the reverse.