537. Here, however, something about that equilibrium will first be told. It is known that when two things act one against another, and when the one is reacting and resisting just as much as the other is acting and impelling, neither has any force, because there is equal power on each side and then both can be set in motion freely by a third. For when, as a result of an equal opposition, the two have no force, the force of the third sets everything in motion, and does so as easily as if there were no opposition. [2] Such is the equilibrium between heaven and hell. Yet it is not an equilibrium like that between two bodily combatants whose strength is equal; but it is a spiritual equilibrium, that is, an equilibrium of falsity against truth and of evil against good. From hell, falsity from evil continually exhales, and from heaven, truth from good. It is this spiritual equilibrium that causes man to think and will in freedom; for whatever a man thinks and wills has reference either to evil and falsity therefrom or to good and truth therefrom. [3] Therefore when he is in that equilibrium he is in freedom either to admit or receive evil and its falsity from hell or to admit or receive good and its truth from heaven. Every man is held in this equilibrium as a result of the Lord's ruling both heaven and hell. But why man is held in this freedom by such an equilibrium, and why evil and falsity are not taken away from him and good and truth implanted in him as a result of the Divine power, will be told hereafter in the appropriate section.