A natural, sensual and bodily person is just as rational intellectually as a spiritual one; this was proved to me by the satans and devils who were permitted to come up from hell and converse with angelic spirits in the world of spirits, as described in many places in the accounts of experiences. But since the love of the will is what makes a person, and this attracts the intellect to agree with it, such people are only rational when in a state distant from the love of the will. When they come back to this love again, their folly is worse than that of wild beasts.

However, a person who lacked the ability to lift his intellect above the level of the love of the will, would not be a person, but an animal, since this is an ability no animal enjoys. He could not therefore make any choice, and do what is good by choice, so that he could not be reformed, led towards heaven and live for ever. It is as a result of this that deliberate and confirmed adulterers, despite being purely natural, sensual and bodily, are still like others endowed with the power of understanding or rationality. But when they are in the grip of the lust of adultery, and this directs their thinking and speaking, they do not enjoy that rationality. The reason is that then the flesh acts upon the spirit, and not the spirit on the flesh. It should, however, be known that these people eventually after death become foolish, not that they are deprived of the ability to be wise, but they do not want to be wise since wisdom is displeasing to them.