[2] Take for example the truth that a person lives after death. When those with a negative attitude towards this truth consult facts they confirm the contrary for themselves by means of countless ideas, such as that animals have life, sensory perception, and activity no less than man does, and in many respects to a more perfect degree; that thought which man possesses pre-eminently over animals is something he comes to have because he takes longer to reach maturity, and that man is an animal belonging to a genus of this kind; and a thousand other ideas besides these. From this it is evident that if those with a negative attitude consult facts they sink themselves all the more into falsities, so that at length they believe nothing whatever about eternal life.

[3] But when those with an affirmative attitude to the truth that man lives after death consult facts they confirm themselves in it by means of them, doing so by means of countless ones. They see that everything in nature is below man; that animals act from instinct-but man from reason; and that animals cannot do other than look downwards, whereas man can look upwards and by the use of thought can come to understand things belonging to the spiritual world and also to feel an affection for them - indeed that through love he can be joined to God, thereby making life from the Divine his own; and that it is to enable him to be led and raised up to Him that he takes longer to reach maturity. And in everything else in addition belonging to nature he sees confirmations, and at length within the whole natural order sees that which is representative of the heavenly kingdom.

[4] It is a common and well-known fact that the learned have less belief than the simple in a life after death, and that in general they see Divine Truths less clearly than the simple do. The reason is that they consult facts, of which they possess a greater abundance than others, with a negative attitude, and by this destroy in themselves any insight gained from a higher or more interior position. Once this has been destroyed they no longer see anything in the light of heaven but in the light of the world; for facts exist in the light of the world, and if they are not lit up by the light of heaven they bring darkness, however different it may seem to be to them. This was why the simple believed in the Lord but not the scribes and Pharisees, who were the learned in that nation, as is evident from the following in John,

Many from the crowd when they heard this utterance said, This is truly the Prophet. Others said, This is the Christ (Messiah). The Pharisees answered them, Has any of the leaders believed in Him, or any of the Pharisees? John 7:40, 41, 47, 48.

And in Luke,

Jesus said, I confess to You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden such things from the wise and intelligent but have revealed them to infants. Luke 10:21.

'Infants' stands for the simple. Also in Matthew,

Therefore I speak to them in parables, because those who see do not see, and those who hear do not hear, nor do they understand. Matt 13:13.