5944. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. Few are aware what their having sinned against God by eating of the tree of knowledge signifies; and they who are spiritual are not able to know this, but only those know who are celestial. This was made clear by the following considerations: (1) For instance, anyone is able to think well from the analytical faculty implanted in every man, and from its rules, which are innumerable; and afterwards he desires to think from metaphysical and logical rules: immediately he, in thinking, [wishes] to think of these, and afterwards from them, his former faculty perishes. (2) In like manner, when anyone is able to bear himself with propriety, so that nothing is deficient: if he afterwards learns the rules of etiquette from science, and regulates his conduct, and moves his body and face, according to this, then his natural faculty perishes, and he regulates himself from simulation belonging to proprium. (3) The case is similar if an excellent dancer afterwards wishes to learn rules, and dances according to them; still more if he wishes to dance according to a knowledge of the muscles. (4) In a word, so far as a man wishes to think and act from science, which resides in the memory, so far he acts from his intellectual proprium but so far as he does so from affection, so far it is from a different origin. As respects truth and good, so far as he thinks, wills and does these things from science, which is of the memory, thus from mere mechanical compliance, so far he acts from the intellectual proprium, thus from evil: the proprium is evil. (5) It is hence manifest, that, so far as a man is led by the Lord, so far he is led by affection within him, and by means of innumerable laws almost all of which are unknown: if he, then, desires to act from science, at that moment, the former faculty, which is from the Lord's Divine influx, perishes, and there exists a state from proprium, which is from evil. (6) This is meant by the Lord's words: "Let your speech be yea, or nay; what is beyond, is from evil."