Selection from Arcana Cœlestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
'Theft' means an alienation caused by evil that happens in the place which such evil takes possession of; for it expels everything good and true and fills up that place with evils and falsities.'Theft' also means its laying claim to what belongs to others; for it takes to itself everything good and true in that place and makes such its own as well as attaching it to evils and falsities.
But to enable anyone to know what is meant by 'theft' in the spiritual sense, a statement must be made about what happens to evils and falsities when they enter in and take possession of a place, and also when they lay claim to everything good and true there.
From infancy to childhood, and sometimes on into early youth, a person is absorbing forms of goodness and truth received from parents and teachers, for during those years he learns about those forms of goodness and truth and believes them with simplicity - his state of innocence enabling this to happen. It inserts those forms of goodness and truth into his memory; yet it lodges them only on the edge of it since the innocence of infancy and childhood is not an internal innocence which has an influence on the rational, only an external one which has an influence solely on the exterior natural.
When however the person grows older, when he starts to think for himself and not, as previously, simply in the way his parents or teachers do, he brings back to mind and so to speak chews over what he has learned and believed before, and then he either endorses it, has doubts about it, or refuses to accept it. If he endorses it, this is an indication that he is governed by good, but if he refuses to accept it, that is an indication that he is governed by evil. If however he has doubts about what he has learned and believed before, it is an indication that he will move subsequently either into an affirmative attitude of mind or else into a negative one.
The truths that a person learns and believes in his earliest years when he is a young child but which later on he either endorses, has doubts about, or refuses to accept, are in particular these:
- There is God, and He is one
- He created everything
- He rewards those who do what is good and punishes those who do things that are bad
- There is life after death, when the bad go to hell and the good go to heaven, and so there is a hell and a heaven
- The life after death lasts for ever
- People ought to pray every day and to do so in a humble way
- They ought to keep the Sabbath day holy
- Honour parents
- Not commit adultery
- Not kill
- Not steal
Such truths are learned and absorbed by a person from earliest childhood; but if, when he starts to think for himself and to lead his own life, he endorses them, adding to them further truths of a more interior kind, and leads a life in conformity with them, all is well with him.
But if he starts to disobey them, refusing at length to accept them, then even though outwardly he leads a life in conformity with them, because the law and society expect him to do so, he is governed by evil.
This evil is what is meant by 'theft', to the extent that thief-like it usurps the position held previously by good. With many people it is thief-like to the extent that it takes away the forms of goodness and truth previously there and uses them to lend support to evils and falsities. So far as is possible with these people the Lord removes the forms of goodness and truth absorbed in early childhood from where these are to a more internal position, where - within the interior natural - He stores them away for future use. These forms of goodness and truth that are stored away within the interior natural are meant in the Word by 'the remnant'. But if evil steals the forms of goodness and truth there and uses them to lend support to evils and falsities, especially if it does so by the use of deceit, it destroys those remnants; for in this case it mingles evil with good, and falsity with truth, to such an extent that one cannot be separated from the other; and then a person is done for.
The fact that 'theft' means the kinds of things mentioned above may be seen from the mere use of that word to refer to what constitutes a person's spiritual life:-
For the only riches in that life are cognitions of good and truth, and the only possessions and inheritances are the different forms of happiness in life which are gained from forms of good and from truths deriving from these.
(from Arcana Cœlestia 5135