612. From birth everyone has a propensity to evils of every kind, and this makes him long for them and do them so far as he is free to do so. For from birth he longs to control others and possess other people's property, the two things which shatter love toward the neighbour. Then he hates anyone who opposes him, and his hatred breathes revenge, a feeling inwardly nursing thoughts of murder. This too is why he makes light of adultery and cheating, which is secret theft, as well as of blasphemy, which includes false witness. Anyone who pays no heed to all these is an atheist at heart.
That is what a person is like from birth, and it is plain from this that he is a hell on the smallest scale. Now since a person is born, as far as the interiors of his mind are concerned, to be spiritual, as animals are not, and since he is consequently born to go to heaven, yet his natural or external man is, as I have just said, a hell on the smallest scale, it follows that heaven cannot be planted in hell, but this must be removed.
This page is part of 
© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church