kes away
freedom and reason or liberty and rationality. Love opens the mind's
interiors but fear closes them, and when they are closed man thinks
little and only what comes to the lower mind or to the senses. All fears
that assail the lower mind have this effect.

[2] We showed above that man has an internal and an external of thought.
Fear can never invade the internal of thought; this is always in freedom,
being in a man's life-love. But it can invade the external of thought.
When it does, the internal of thought is closed and thereupon man can no
longer act in freedom in accord with his reason, nor be reformed.

[3] The fear which invades the external of thought and closes the
internal is chiefly fear of losing standing or profit. Fear of civil
penalties or of outward ecclesiastical penalties does not close the
internal, for the laws respecting them pronounce penalties only on those
who speak and act contrary to the civil requirements of the kingdom and
the spiritual of the church, but not on those who think contrary to them.

[4] Fear of infernal punishment invades the external of thought, to be
sure, but only for some moments, hours or days; it is soon restored to
its freedom by the internal of thought, which is man's spirit and
life-love and is called thought of the heart.

[5] Fear of losing one's standing or wealth, however, does invade man's
external of thought, and when it does, closes the internal of thought
above to influx from heaven and makes it impossible for man to be
reformed. This is because everyone's life-love from birth is love of self
and the world, and self-love is at one with the love of position, and
love of the world with the love of wealth. When a man has position or
wealth, therefore, for fear of losing them he strengthens the means at
hand--whether civil or churchly and in either case means to power--which
serve him for position and wealth. The man who does not yet have standing
or wealth but aspires to them, does the same, but for fear he will lose
the reputation they give.

[6] It was said that this fear seizes on the external of thought and
closes the internal above to heaven's inflowing. The internal is said to
be closed when it makes one completely with the external, as it is then
not in itself but in the external.

[7] But as the loves of self and the world are infernal loves and the
fountain-heads of all evils, it is plain what the internal of thought in
itself is like with men