the tables
exclaimed, "Alas! what times are come on the earth! What changes has
wisdom undergone? How is she transformed into a false and infatuated
ingenuity! The sun is set, and in his station beneath the earth is in
direct opposition to his meridian altitude. From the case here adduced
respecting such as have been left and found in forests, who cannot see
that an uninstructed man is such as here represented? For is not the
nature of his life determined by the nature of the instruction he
receives? Is he not born in a state of greater ignorance than the
beasts? Must he not learn to walk and to speak? Supposing he never
learnt to walk, would he ever stand upright? And if he never learnt to
speak, would he ever be able to express his thoughts? Is not every man
such as instruction makes him,--insane from false principles, or wise
from truths? and is not he that is insane from false principles,
entirely possessed with an imagination that he is wiser than he that is
wise from truths? Are there not instances of men who are so wild and
foolish, that they are no more like men than those who have been found
in forests? Is not this the case with such as have been deprived of
memory? From all these considerations we conclude, that a man without
instruction is neither a man nor a beast; but that he is a form, which
is capable of receiving in itself that which constitutes a man; and thus
that he is not born a man, but that he is made a man; and that a man is
born such a form as to be an organ receptive of life from God, to the
end that he may be a subject into which God may introduce all good, and,
by union with himself, may make him eternally blessed. We have perceived
from your conversation, that wisdom at this day is so far extinguished
or infatuated, that nothing at all is known concerning the relative
state of the life of men and of beasts; and hence it is that the state
of the life of man after death is not known: but those who are capable
of knowing this, and yet are not willing, and in consequence deny it, as
many Christians do, may fitly be compared to such as are found in
forests: not that they are rendered so stupid from a want of
instruction, but that they have rendered themselves so by the fallacies
of the senses, which are the darkness of truths."

153.* At that instant a certain person standing in the middle of the
Palladium, and holding in his hand a palm, said, "Explain, I pray, this
arcanum, How a man, created a