397. ¹ (i) THE WILL AND THE UNDERSTANDING.

1. Man possesses two faculties which make up his life, one is called the will, the other the understanding. They are distinct, but so created as to make one, and when they are one they are called the mind. So the human mind consists of them, and there the whole of a person's life is in its beginnings, and this is the source from which it is present in the body.

2. Just as everything in the universe which is in due order has reference to good and truth, so everything in a person has reference to his will and understanding, for good in a person has to do with his will and truth to his understanding. For these two faculties, his twin lives, act as receivers and subjects upon which good and truth act. The will is the receiver for everything to do with good and the subject on which it acts; and the understanding is the receiver for everything to do with truth and the subject on which it acts. There is nowhere else in a person for the various kinds of good and truth; and since there is nowhere else in a person for them, nor is there therefore for love and faith, seeing that love belongs to good and good to love, and faith belongs to truth and truth to faith.

3. The will and the understanding also make up a person's spirit. For that is where his wisdom and intelligence reside, as also do his love and charity, and in general it is the seat of his life. The body is merely an obedient servant.

4. There is nothing it is more important to know than how the will and the understanding make up one mind. They do so, just as good and truth make one, for there is a marriage between the will and the understanding similar to that between good and truth. The facts about to be cited concerning good and truth will make clear what sort of a marriage that is; namely, that just as good is the very being (esse) of a thing, and truth is its coming-into-being (existere) as a result, so in a person his will is the very being of his life, and the understanding is the coming-into-being of his life as a result. For good belonging to the will takes on form in the understanding and becomes visible.

Footnotes:

466. I. The fact that two trees, one of life and one of the knowledge of good and evil, were put in the Garden of Eden, means that man was given free will in spiritual matters.

Many people have believed that by Adam and Eve in the book of Moses are not meant the first human beings to be created, and in support of this view they have employed proofs that there were people before Adam, drawn from computations and chronologies preserved by some peoples. It is also supported by what Cain, Adam's firstborn, said to Jehovah:

I shall be a wanderer, driven to and fro on the earth, so that anyone meeting me will kill me. For which reason Jehovah set a mark on Cain, that anyone meeting him should not kill him, Genesis 4:14-15.

And after he went from before the face of Jehovah, he dwelt in the land of Nod, and built a city, Genesis 4:16-17.

It follows from this that the earth was inhabited before Adam.

I proved at length in the work called ARCANA CAELESTIA, which I published in London, that Adam and his wife mean the most ancient church on this earth. I also proved there that the Garden of Eden means the wisdom of the people in that church, the tree of life means the Lord being in man and man being in the Lord, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means man not being in the Lord but immersed in his own self (proprium), as is everyone who believes that he does everything, even good, of himself. Eating from this tree means making evil one's own.