y
to it, which are natural? A bird knows how to build its nest, lay its
eggs, hatch its young and recognize its food, besides other wonders which
are named instinct.

318. How this state is changed, however, by confirmations and consequent
persuasions will be told now in this order:

1. There is nothing that cannot be confirmed, and falsity is confirmed
more readily than truth.
2. Truth does not appear when falsity has been confirmed, but falsity is
apparent from confirmed truth.
3. The ability to confirm whatever one pleases is not intelligence but
only ingenuity, to be found in the worst of men.
4. Confirmation may be mental and not at the same time volitional, but
all volitional confirmation is also mental.
5. Confirmation of evil both volitional and intellectual causes man to
believe that one's own prudence is everything and divine providence
nothing, but not confirmation solely intellectual.
6. Everything confirmed by the will and at the same time by the
understanding, remains to eternity, but not what has been confirmed only
by the understanding.

[2] Touching the first, that _there is nothing that cannot be confirmed,
and that falsity is confirmed more readily than truth._ What, indeed,
cannot be confirmed when atheists confirm that God is not the Creator of
the universe but that nature is her own creator; that religion is only a
restraint and is for simple and common folks; that man is like the beast
and dies like one; that adultery and secret theft, fraud and deceitful
schemes are allowable, and that cunning is intelligence and wickedness is
wisdom. Everyone confirms his heresy. Volumes are filled with
confirmations of the two heresies prevalent in Christendom. Assemble ten
heresies, however abstruse, ask an ingenious man to confirm them, and he
will confirm them all. If you regard them then solely from the
confirmations of them, will you not be seeing falsities as truth? Since
all that is false lights up in the natural man from its appearances and
fallacies, but truth lights up only in the spiritual man, plainly falsity
can be confirmed more readily than truth.

[3] For it to be known that everything false and everything evil can be
confirmed even to the point that what is false seems true and what is
evil seems to be good, take for example the confirmation that light is
darkness and darkness is light. A man may ask: "What is light `in
itself'? Is not light only something which appears in the eye accord