2634. HOW IT IS WITH THE NATURAL SCIENCES AND THEIR TRUTHS IN RESPECT TO SPIRITUAL AND CELESTIAL TRUTHS. When in tacit speech [sermmone] with spirits, it was then insinuated that the erudite in the world are at a loss to understand that the natural sciences and human philosophy not only obscure, but even wholly cover up, and so extinguish the light of spiritual truths, when yet therein are truths; and they only conduce to the confirming, and, as it were, the illuminating of spiritual truths. Wherefore spirits, who also could not understand it, represent natural truths, as it were, pellucid, through which shone spiritual truths. Thus, also, suppose the erudite of the world, nor does anyone otherwise apprehend it, save he whom the Lord has taught; but it was given me to read and represent that these truths are in themselves darkness and mists; but when they are illuminated by spiritual truths, which [are] from the Lord, they then become, as it were, pellucid, for in spiritual truths is the light of the Lord, and makes natural truths transparent, and not at all the reverse; for it is contrary to order, as also to all reason, that that which in itself is dead and mist can give life and light to those things which are of life and light.