perceives this when he hears it stated, and may himself say to another, This man means well, but does not understand clearly; while that one’s understanding is good, but his will is not; I like the man whose understanding and will are both good; but I do not like him whose understanding is good and his will bad.  Yet when he thinks about the will and the understanding he does not make them two and distinguish them, but confounds them, since his thought then acts in common with the bodily sight.  When writing he apprehends still less that will and understanding are two distinct things, because his thought then acts in common with the sensual, that is, with what is the man’s own.  From this it is that some can think and speak well, but cannot write well.  This is common with women.  It is the same with many other things.  Is it not known by everyone from common perception that a man whose life is good is saved, but that a man whose life is bad is condemned?  Also that one whose life is good will enter the society of angels, and will there see, hear, and speak like a man?  Also that one who from justice does what is just and from what is right does right, has a conscience?  But if one lapses from common perception, and submits these things to thought, he does not know what conscience is; or that the soul can see, hear, and speak like a man; or that the good of life is anything except giving to the poor.  And if from thought you write about these things, you confirm them by appearances and fallacies, and by words of sound but of no substance.  For this reason many of the learned who have thought much, and especially who have written much, have weakened and obscured, yea, have destroyed their common perception; while the simple see more clearly what is good and true than those who think themselves their superiors in wisdom.  This common perception comes by influx from heaven, and descends into thought even to sight; but thought separated from common perception falls into imagination from the sight and from what is man’s own.  You may observe that this is so.  Tell some truth to any one that is in common perception, and he will see it; tell him that from God and in God we are and live and are moved, and he will see it; tell him that God dwells with man in love and in wisdom, and he will see it; tell him further that the will is the receptacle of love, and the understanding of wisdom, and explain it a little, and he will see it; tell him that God is Love itself and Wisdom itself, and he will see it; ask him what conscience is, and he will tell you.  But say the same things to one of the learned, who has not thought from common perception, but from principles or from ideas obtained from the world through sight, and he will not see.  Then consider which is the wiser.

362.  Will and understanding, which are the receptacles of love and wisdom, are in the brains, in the whole and in every part of them, and therefrom in the body, in the whole and in every part of it.