419. (xvi) Love or the will is purified in the understanding if they are elevated together. From birth, man loves nothing but himself and the world, for nothing else is apparent to his eyes, and therefore nothing else occupies his mind. This love is corporeal-natural, and may be called material love. Moreover, this love has become impure on account of heavenly love having been separated from it in parents. This love can only be parted from its impurity if the man acquires the faculty of raising his understanding into the light of heaven, and if he sees how he ought to live, so that his love may be raised together with the understanding into wisdom. Through the understanding, love, that is, the man, sees which evils corrupt and defile love, and he sees also that if he shuns those evils because they are sins, and rejects them, he loves the opposite, all of which are heavenly things; and then also he sees the means by which he may shun those evils as sins and reject them. Love, that is, the man, sees all this by the exercise of the faculty of raising his understanding into the light of heaven, the source of wisdom. Then so far as love puts heaven first and the world second, and at the same time puts the Lord in the first place and himself in the second, to that extent love is cleansed from its filth and is purified; that is, love is raised into heavenly heat and conjoined to the light of heaven in which the understanding is dwelling, and a marriage is made that is called the marriage of good and truth, that is, of love and wisdom. Everyone can understand intellectually and see rationally that in the measure that any man shuns and rejects theft and fraudulence, to that extent he will love sincerity, uprightness, and justice; in the measure that he shuns and rejects revenge and hatred, he will love the neighbour; and in the measure that he shuns and rejects adulteries, he will love chastity, and so on. Indeed there is scarcely anyone who knows what there is of heaven and of the Lord in sincerity, uprightness, justice, love towards thy neighbour, chastity, and the other affections of heavenly love, until he has removed their opposites. When the opposites are removed, he comes into those affections and therefrom recognizes and sees them; meanwhile it is as if a veil were interposed, which does indeed transmit to love the light of heaven; but because love does not in that degree love its partner, wisdom, it does not receive it, indeed may even refute and rebuke it, when it returns from its elevation. Yet man is consoled by the thought that the wisdom of his understanding may prove the means to honour, glory, or gain. Indeed then he puts himself and the world in the first place, and the Lord and heaven in the second; and what is put in the second place is loved only so far as it is serviceable; and if not of use, is given up and rejected, if not before death, yet after it. From these things the truth now stands out that love or the will is purified in the understanding, if they are elevated together.