rationality; and because the natural mind can be elevated to such an
extent, it follows that a bad man can also think and speak about heavenly
truths. Moreover, that he is able to will and to do them, even though he
does not will and do them, both reason and experience affirm. Reason
affirms it: for who cannot will and do what he thinks? His not willing
and doing it is because he does not love to will and do it. This ability
to will and to do is the freedom which every man has from the Lord; but
his not willing and doing good when he can, is from a love of evil, which
opposes; but this love he is able to resist, and many do resist it.
Experience in the spiritual world has often corroborated this. I have
listened to evil spirits who inwardly were devils, and who in the world
had rejected the truths of heaven and the church. When the affection for
knowing, in which every man is from childhood, was excited in them by
the glory that, like the brightness of fire, surrounds each love, they
perceived the arcana of angelic wisdom just as clearly as good spirits
do who inwardly were angels. Those diabolical spirits even declared that
they were able to will and act according to those arcana, but did not
wish to. When told that they might will them, if only they would flee
from evils as sins, they said that they could even do that, but did not
wish to. From this it was evident that the wicked equally with the good
have the capacity called freedom. Let any one look within himself, and
he will observe that it is so. Man has the power to will, because the
Lord, from whom that capacity comes, continually gives the power; for,
as was said above, the Lord dwells in every man in both of these
capacities, and therefore in the capacity, that is, in the power, of
being able to will. As to the capacity to understand, called rationality,
this man does not have until his natural mind reaches maturity; until
then it is like seed in unripe fruit, which cannot be opened in the soil
and grow up into a shrub. Neither does this capacity exist in those
mentioned above (n. 259).