258. Every man is born into a capacity of understanding truths even to the inmost degree in which the angels of the third heaven are. For the human understanding, rising up by continuity around the two higher degrees, receives the light of the wisdom of those degrees in the manner stated above (n. 256). Hence it is that man can become rational according to the elevation. If he is raised to the third degree he becomes rational from that degree, if he is raised to the second degree he becomes rational from that degree, and if he is not raised he is rational in the first degree. It is said that he becomes rational from those degrees, because the natural degree is the general receptacle of their light. The reason man does not become rational, even to the maximum possible to him, is that love, which is of the will, cannot be raised in the same manner as wisdom, which is of the understanding. Love, which is of the will, is raised only by shunning evils as sins, and then, by goods of charity which are uses which the man afterwards performs from the Lord. Consequently, if love, which Is of the will, is not at the same time raised, wisdom, which is of the understanding, however it may have ascended, relapses even to its own love. And so it is that the man whose love is not at the same time with his wisdom raised into the spiritual degree, is still not rational except in the lowest degree. From these facts it can be established that man's rational is in appearance as if it were of three degrees, a rational from the celestial, a rational from the spiritual, and a rational from the natural. Also that rationality which is the capacity capable of being elevated, is still in man whether he be elevated or not.