250. I say, "use", but with reference to those who study knowledges in such a way that they are unwilling to believe anything without them. There is also their use in the schools where nothing but such matter; are set forth and taught by philosophers, even by those who are to perform the office of the priesthood. Then, because similar subjects belong to the exercises of youth, since they favor their desires, there is in addition the use that in this way spiritual things sent down from heaven are not thus perverted, and do not blind men's minds and insensibly lead them to doubt, and thus to infidelity. Because the world is such at this day that it is reputed learned, and is willing to believe nothing but what it can understand, therefore, with those who are of such a nature, the spiritual can scarcely operate unless that false and mendacious plane is either entirely dispersed and perishes, or else is turned into a plane of natural verities. What such persons will be like after death, those of them who possess any judgment can conclude from the fact that the life after death is the continuation of the life of the body, and that there are similar things, as falsities in spiritual things and blindness, which induce as it were a crust when the special and particular things of the memory perish, and thus as it were pervert the kernel, or the nature. Hence they cannot but become most stupid: and the wiser they thus are in the body, so much the more stupid do they become; indeed, they become more stupid than those who had learned nothing whatever of the sciences, inasmuch as they have applied the sciences to the investigation of spiritual things. 1747, Nov. 14, o.s.