A person is human and differs from an animal in that his mind is divided into three regions, the same number of divisions as there are heavens. He can be raised from the lowest to a higher region, and also from this into the highest, thus becoming an angel of one of the heavens, and also of the third heaven. For this purpose he has been given the ability to raise his intellect even to this level. But if the love of his will is not raised at the same time, he does not become spiritual, but remains natural. All the same he retains the ability to raise his intellect. The reason for this is so that he can be reformed; for reformation takes place by means of the intellect, and through getting to know* good and truth and as a result gaining the power to see rationally. If he rationally sees this knowledge, and lives as it prescribes, then the love of his will is raised at the same time, and to that degree his humanity is perfected and he becomes more and more human.

[2] The case is different, if he does not live in accordance with his knowledge of good and truth. Then the love of his will remains natural, and his intellect from time to time becomes spiritual. For it soars at times like an eagle, and spies out what there is below that answers to its love; and on seeing this it flies down and joins itself with it. If therefore the lusts of the flesh answer to its love, it plunges down from on high, and by joining with them takes its delight in the pleasures they afford; and then it soars aloft again, seeking the reputation of being thought wise, and so alternately soars and falls, as was said.

[3] Adulterers in the third and fourth degree, those who have become adulterers by a deliberate act of will and by conviction of the intellect, are plainly natural, and progressively become sensual and bodily; this is because they have plunged the love of their will, and then together with it their intellect, in the filth of scortatory love, taking as much pleasure in it as unclean birds and animals do in stinking dung-heaps as if delicacies and tid-bits. For the noxious gases rising from their flesh fill the seat of the mind with their grossness, causing the will to feel nothing as more elegant and desirable. These are the people who after death become bodily spirits, the source from which well up the impurities of hell and the church (as mentioned above in 430, 431). * Reading cognitiones, as later in this section, for cogitationes.