249. THE NATURAL SCIENCES, OR THE SCIENCES OF NATURAL THINGS, ARE AT THE PRESENT DAY LIKE THE ULTIMATE HEAVEN WHICH STILL PERVERTS VERITIES INTO FALSITIES Today I spoke with the spirits and angels around me concerning various matters, and afterwards about the sciences, or modern wisdom, which is such that it cannot serve as a plane for spiritual, still less for celestial, verities, but it is such as is the ultimate heaven which perverts the verities that have descended thither from heaven into things contrary. For at this day, whatever is taught by the sciences concerning the natural causes of phenomena - such as the causes of those things that are in the human body, concerning the senses and similar things, also whatever is deduced concerning a knowledge of the soul, and the like - is full of false hypotheses in which not a single verity is laid open to the sight: further, the way [to interior things] is also closed by these hypotheses, so that the thoughts are not allowed to extend beyond grossest Nature; therefore spiritual and celestial things are considered as nothing. Since the plane into which spiritual verities fall is of such a nature, it is necessary that they should be kept back and not penetrate, for no natural verity receives, continues, and thus confirms them, but it either entirely repels them or perverts them into what is contrary. From this it can be concluded what use scientific verities, or those which are brought forth by means of the sciences, can serve. 1747, Nov. 14, o.s.