565.  But in respect to the love of the world:  it is a love opposed to heavenly love in a less degree than love of self, because the evils hidden within it are lesser evils.  The love of the world consists in one’s desiring to secure to himself, by any kind of artifice, the wealth of others, and in setting his heart upon riches, and permitting the world to draw him and lead him away from spiritual love, which is love towards the neighbor, and thus from heaven and from the Divine.  But this love is manifold.  There is a love of wealth for the sake of being exalted to honors, when these alone are loved.  There is a love of honors and dignities with a view to the increase of wealth.  There is a love of wealth for the sake of various uses that give delight in the world.  There is a love of wealth merely for the sake of wealth, which is a miserly love; and so on.  The end for the sake of which wealth is sought is called its use; and it is the end or use that gives to love its quality; for the love is such as is the end in view, and all other things merely serve it as means.

566.  LVIV.  What hell fire is and what the gnashing of teeth is.

What eternal fire is, and what the gnashing of teeth is, which are mentioned in the Word in reference to those who are in hell, scarcely any one as yet has known, because the contents of the Word have been thought about only in a material way, and nothing has been known about its spiritual sense.  So fire has been understood by some to mean material fire, by others to mean torment in general, by others remorse of conscience, and others have held that it is mentioned merely to excite terror in the wicked.  Likewise some have supposed the gnashing of teeth to mean actual gnashing, and some only a horror, such as is excited when such a collision of teeth is heard.  But any one who is acquainted with the spiritual meaning of the Word may know what eternal fire is, and what the gnashing of teeth is; for every expression and every meaning of the expressions in the Word contains a spiritual meaning, since the Word in its bosom is spiritual; and what is spiritual can be set before man only in natural forms of expression, because man is in the natural world and thinks from the things of that world.  Therefore it shall now be told what is meant by “eternal fire” and “the gnashing of teeth” into which the spirits of evil men enter after death, or which their spirits, then in the spiritual world, endure.

567.  There are two origins of heat, one the sun of heaven which is the Lord, and the other the sun of the world.  The heat that is from the sun of heaven, that is, the Lord, is spiritual heat; and this in its essence is love (see above, n. 126-140); but the heat from the sun of the world is natural heat, and this in its essence is not love, but serves spiritual heat or love as a receptacle.  Evidently love in its essence is heat, since it is love, in accord