Chapter VII. Internal Will and Understanding, and External Will and Understanding.

The external will and understanding may be either conjoined with the internal and act in harmony with them, or be severed from them and act in opposition.

In a state of order the external will and understanding are in agreement and co-operation with the internal and are conjoined with them, so that they constitute as it were one will and understanding.

With the wicked, the spiritual will and understanding, although never perverted, are yet closed and quiescent; but their natural will and understanding, though open and operative, are defiled with evil and falsity and severed from the spiritual, and hence act in opposition to them.

The will and understanding are here presented as organic faculties of the mind; the external organism being an outbirth from the internal. Their varying states will be presented in other diagrams.

The will is drawn in red because it is the receptacle of love, the understanding in white because it is the receptacle of truth.

The spiritual body F and the natural body H are only more ultimate forms and instruments of the will and understanding. (DLW 362. See Chap. IV. page 21)

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