318 HEAVEN and HELL §530
person—which is essentially a spiritual person—is opened. When this
is our nature, the Lord adopts and leads us without our realizing it, and
whatever things we do that are honest and fair—the deeds of our moral
and civil life—come from a spiritual source. Doing what is honest and
fair from a spiritual source is doing it from genuine honesty and fairness,
or doing it from the heart.
[ 2 ] Outwardly, such honesty and fairness look just like the hon-
esty and fairness of natural people or even evil and hellish people, but
inwardly they are totally different. Evil people do what is fair and honest
solely for the sake of themselves and the world. If they were not afraid
of the law and its penalties, of losing their reputation, their wealth, and
their life, they would act with utter dishonesty and unfairness. Since they
have no fear of God or of any divine law, they have no inner restraint
that keeps them in check; so to the extent that they can, they cheat and
rob and plunder others just for the pleasure of it. Their inner nature is
especially clear from people like them in the other life, when all people’s
outer natures are stripped away and their inner natures disclosed, the
natures in which they will go on living to eternity (see above, §§ 499 –
511 ). Since they are then acting without external restraints, which are (as
just noted) fears of the law and of losing reputation, prestige, profi t, and
life, they act wildly and scoff at honesty and fairness.
[ 3 ] In contrast, people who have lived honestly and fairly because
of divine laws act wisely when their outer natures are stripped away and
they are left to their inner natures, because they are united to heaven’s
angels, who share their wisdom with them.
This enables us to gather initially that spiritual people can behave
much the same as natural people in their civil and moral life, provided
they are united to the Deity in their inner person, in their intent and
thought (see above, §§ 358 , 359 , 360 ).531 The laws of spiritual life, the laws of civil life, and the laws of moral
life are handed down to us in the Ten Commandments. The fi rst three
commandments contain the laws of spiritual life, the next four the laws
of civil life, and the last three the laws of moral life. Outwardly, purely
natural people live by these same commandments just the way spiritual
people do. They worship the Divine, go to church, listen to sermons,
wear devout faces, do not kill or commit adultery or steal or bear false
witness, do not cheat their companions of their goods. However, they
behave this way solely in their own interest, in order to look good in
the world. Inwardly, these same people are exactly the opposite of what
they seem to be outwardly. Because at heart they deny the Divine, they