492. XII. THAT ADULTERIES OF THE FOURTH DEGREE ARE ADULTERIES FROM THE WILL, WHICH ARE COMMITTED BY THOSE WHO MAKE THEM ALLOWABLE AND PLEASING AND NOT OF SUFFICIENT IMPORTANCE TO MERIT CONSULTING THE UNDERSTANDING IN RESPECT TO THEM. These adulteries are distinguished from the former by their origin. That origin is the depraved will connate with man, that is, hereditary evil. When he comes into possession of his own judgment, the man blindly obeys this heredity, making no judgment concerning adulteries as to whether they are evil or not. Therefore it is said that he does not account them of sufficient importance to merit consulting the understanding in respect to them. But the origin of the adulteries which are called adulteries from the reason is a perverse understanding, and these adulteries are committed by those who confirm them as not being evils of sin. With the latter, the understanding takes the lead; with the former the will. These two distinctions are not apparent to man in the natural world, but they are plainly apparent to angels in the spiritual world. In that world, all [the evil] are distinguished in general according as the evils received and appropriated spring originally from the will or from the understanding; and it is according to this that they are separated in hell. There, those who are evil from the understanding dwell towards the front and are called satans, while those who are evil from the will dwell at the back and are called devils. Because of this universal distinction, mention is made in the Word, of Satan and the Devil. With those evil spirits - and also adulterers - who are called satans, the understanding takes the lead; but with those who are called devils, the will takes the lead. But so to explain the distinctions that the understanding may see them, is not possible until the distinctions between will and understanding are known, and until the formation of the mind by the will through the understanding is described, and also its formation by the understanding through the will. This knowledge must first give light before the above-mentioned distinctions can be seen by the reason. But this is the work of many pages.