7398. 'Survive only in the river?' means that they are destined to remain with falsities, in the place where these reside. This is clear from the meaning of 'the river,' here the river of Egypt, as falsity, dealt with in 6693, 7307; and from the meaning of 'surviving' as remaining. The situation is this: Everything without exception that enters a person's mind remains with him, especially what is received with affection. People think that what enters has been completely eradicated and cast out when a person no longer recollects it. But it has been neither eradicated nor cast out; rather, it remains infixed either in the interior memory or among those thing in the exterior memory which have become familiar to the person. For what has become familiar is so to speak instinctive; it flows spontaneously and is not stimulated by any conscious summoning from the memory. A person's speech is like this; the words he uses flow spontaneously from his thought, as do gestures and actions, and indeed his walk. The same applies also to thinking. These abilities enter in successive stages from infancy, and in time become familiar, when they flow spontaneously. These abilities, and others like them show that everything entering a person remains, and that things which become habitual, that is, familiar, cease to be recognized by him as being present in him, although they are present. The same applies to the falsities and evils entering a person, and also the truths and forms of good. Such things are what fashion him and make him the kind of person he is. Everything a person has seen, heard, thought, spoken, or done is recorded within him, see 2474, 2489. From all this one may now see how one should understand the idea that reasonings are destined to remain with falsities, in the place where these reside. For after falsities have been removed they are allotted places of their own elsewhere in the natural, and with the falsities go the endeavour and desire to use reasonings. But they are not, as they were before, the central and immediate object of mental attention. This explains why, as described in what follows, the frogs were gathered into heaps, and caused the land to stink, meaning that those false reasonings were arranged in the natural into bundles, producing what was foul and repulsive, see below in 7408, 7409.