The one instance is that of
eminence and standing, and the other that of riches and wealth. These are
all natural and temporal in outward form but spiritual and eternal in
inward form. Distinction with its standing is natural and temporal when a
man has regard in them only to himself personally and not to the common
welfare and to the uses. For he is bound then to think inwardly that the
community exists for his sake and not he for its sake. It is like a
king's thinking that the kingdom and all its members exist for his sake,
and not he for the sake of kingdom and people.

[9] The identical distinction, however, along with the standing it
brings, is spiritual and eternal when man considers that he exists for
the sake of the common well-being and for uses, and not these for his
sake. Doing this, he is in the truth and essence of the distinction and
of the standing it brings. But doing as described above, he is in the
correspondence and appearance; if then he confirms these, he is in
fallacies and has conjunction with the Lord only as those have who are in
falsities and evils therefrom, for fallacies are falsities with which
evils unite themselves. Such men have indeed done uses and good but from
themselves and not from the Lord, thus have put themselves in the Lord's
place.

[10] The same is true of riches and wealth; for these also are natural
and temporal, and spiritual and eternal. They are natural and temporal
with those who have regard only to them and to themselves in them and who
find all their pleasure and enjoyment in them. But they are spiritual and
eternal with those who regard good uses in them and take an interior
pleasure and enjoyment in uses. The outward pleasure and enjoyment in
such men also becomes spiritual, and the temporal becomes eternal. They
are therefore in heaven after death and in palaces there, the useful
designs of which are resplendent with gold and precious stones. They look
on these things, however, as the shining and translucent external of
inward things, namely, of uses, in which they take a pleasure and
enjoyment which are the happiness and joy of heaven. The opposite is the
lot of those who have looked on riches and wealth just for the sake of
riches and wealth and for their own sake, thus on the externalities and
on nothing inward; thus on appearance and not on the essential reality.
When they put off the externalities, as they do on dying, they come into
their internals, and as the