The Doctrine of the Proprium

We have said that there is a marked difference between the proprium that is characteristic of childhood and youth and the proprium that can come into being only in adult age. Children and young people are not responsible for their proprium. They cannot help believing that the emotions which stir them, whether good or evil, are really their own. They cannot avoid the appearance that they have two opposite selves. They may be taught that good affections inflow from heaven, and evil affections from hell, but this they cannot really comprehend. They mistake the appearance of self-life for the reality, but they do not confirm that appearance to the point of denial that life inflows from the Lord.

Evil, therefore, is not imputed to them, and they are not condemned on account of it; nor can good be imputed to them, because their conscience, which they perceive as a heavenly proprium, takes form from the environment in which they are brought up. Children accept as true the religious principles and the moral standards of those who teach them. As far as this teaching is true, the remains of heavenly affections inflowing from the angels are enriched and strengthened; but as far as the teaching received is false, children cannot help acquiring mistaken ideas and forming disorderly habits of life. Into these the angels cannot inflow, and in consequence the influence of evil spirits is increased. Furthermore, even when children are imbued with true principles, and with high standards of moral conduct, they cannot avoid a sense of merit. They may know, and intellectually acknowledge, that the good they do is not their own, but this they cannot deeply comprehend.

When adult age is reached, however, everyone begins to form a proprium for which he is personally responsible. He is released from obvious dependence upon parents and teachers, and is required to think for himself and to make his own decisions. This does not happen suddenly, because one can be liberated from dependence upon others only by gradual stages. The reason is that at first one can think and judge only on the basis of what one already knows, or of that with which one has been imbued by instruction and training during childhood and youth. It takes time for one to acquire new knowledge by personal investigation, study and experience. Only as far as this is done can one even begin to form individual opinions that are not borrowed from others. As a matter of fact, all through life we all rely very largely upon borrowed opinions; nor can we avoid doing so because we can investigate for ourselves only a very small segment of the knowledge by which we live. In a great many respects we continue to be dependent upon others.

Nevertheless, the very fact that one is compelled to think for himself produces a new kind of proprium, both good and evil. In regard to the heavenly proprium, we are specifically taught that it is different in adult age from what it is in infancy and childhood. As children grow, they acquire, in succession, three different kinds of remains, which are called respectively

"the goods of infancy, the goods of ignorance, and the goods of intelligence. The goods of infancy are those which are insinuated into man from his very birth up to the age in which he is beginning to be instructed and to know something. The goods of ignorance are what are insinuated when he is being instructed, and is beginning to know something. The goods of intelligence are what are insinuated when he is able to reflect upon what is good and what is true. The good of [innocence] exists from man's infancy up to the tenth year of his age; the good of ignorance from this age to his twentieth year. From this year the man begins to become rational, and to have the faculty of reflecting upon good and truth, to procure for himself the good of intelligence." ('AC 2280)

Everyone at adult age must reflect upon what he wishes to become, what he will regard as the highest good, what he will adopt as the goal toward which to strive. At first this ideal of life may not be too clearly visualized, and it may undergo successive modifications as he gains in knowledge and experience. But it will be something which he has determined for himself, not because of what he has been taught, but because, at least to some extent, he has examined it for himself, compared it with alternative concepts, and selected it with some degree of intelligent understanding and personal conviction.

This "good of intelligence" now forms his conscience, and from it he begins to think in determining the principles according to which he endeavors to live. On it he builds a personal code of conduct, and erects his own moral standard and his religious creed. It becomes a heavenly proprium which he himself has freely chosen. If, however, he fails to live up to this standard, if for the sake of selfish or worldly advantage he permits himself to compromise his conscience, he acquires an evil proprium for which he is personally responsible. He has no blanket of innocence which can protect him from the consequences of so doing. This adult proprium for which one is individually responsible is nevertheless similar to the proprium of childhood and youth in this, that man still believes his life to be his own. He may acknowledge, from a borrowed religious faith, that all life inflows from God, but he cannot help feeling that he has chosen his goal in life by his own intelligence. He has thought it out himself. This, it appears to him, is what makes it really his own, and distinguishes it from what he had merely accepted on faith from others. For this reason he cannot avoid claiming merit for it; nor can he help feeling that the impulse to evil against which he is called upon to do battle is also from himself.

In short, he is still under the illusion that he has two opposite selves. Because of this, at the beginning of adult age, man can think only from what the Writings call the "first rational." From the heavenly affections insinuated as remains, children love spiritual things, that is, the things of religion, but they do not really understand them. They can think of them only in terms of natural ideas of space, time and person. They love the Lord, but they can think of Him only as a natural man. They can think of heaven only as a place. They can understand only the literal or the moral sense of the Word. They can think of charity only in terms of kindness toward those who are externally in need, who are poor, sick, or suffering from hunger and thirst.

Now this does not change suddenly merely because the child has become an adult. The ability to think spiritually can be developed only by an ordered process that requires time, effort and experience. That which is most immediately pressing is the necessity to earn a living, to find one's use, one's place in society, and to establish a home. In the process of doing these things, questions are bound to arise as to what is fundamentally right or wrong. These require one to reflect upon what he has been taught, to adopt it, to modify it, or to reject it in favor of what now appears to him to be true. But all one's thinking is inspired by the desire to know, to know for one's self, to discover firm ground on which to base one's opinions and beliefs. That is why the "first rational" is produced by the affection of knowledges. Because of hereditary tendencies to evil, "man's rational must be formed . . . by means of knowledges introduced through the senses, thus flowing in by an external way.” (AC 1902)

Everyone is created with the ability to understand spiritual truth. Spiritual truth itself "flows in through heaven, and this by an internal way, with every man . . . [but] man is not aware of this intellectual truth because it is too pure to be perceived by a general idea. It is like a light that illuminates the mind, and confers the faculty of knowing, thinking and understanding." (AC 1901)  But this light does not become visible until it falls upon objects; that is, upon knowledges stored in the memory, and recalled thence by the imagination. It is with the spiritual light of truth as it is with the natural light of the sun, which becomes visible when reflected from material objects. Furthermore, in order that the quality of spiritual truth may be rightly perceived, it must fall upon objects of the mind, which are called abstract ideas, that is, ideas abstracted from time, space and person. Such ideas cannot be conceived by children. They can begin to be formed only as the mind approaches maturity. "The thought," we are told, "which is above the imagination, requires for its objects, ideas abstracted from what is material." (AC 6814) This, then, is the kind of thinking toward which the adult aspires from a love of spiritual truth, the quality of which he does not yet realize. The first step, therefore, toward rational understanding is to gather knowledge of spiritual things. One must formulate definite principles from which to think—concepts of love, of wisdom, of use, of justice, of honor, and of all human virtues. Such things form the basis for man's personal judgment, independent of the opinions of others. They constitute what is called the "first rational," inspired by a love of knowing, and by the determination to do his own thinking that is characteristic of man in adult age. (Concerning this rational, see AC 2657: 2, 5)

This first rational must be established and built up before man can attain to truly spiritual understanding; but as long as one thinks and believes that his ideas are the product of his own intelligence, his understanding remains natural. We read:

"The rational first conceived cannot acknowledge intellectual or spiritual truth because there adhere to this rational many fallacies from scientifics drawn from the world, and from nature, and many appearances from the knowledges taken from the literal sense of the Word, and these are not truths. For example: it is an intellectual truth that all life is from the Lord; but the rational first conceived does not apprehend this, and supposes that if it did not live from itself it would have no life. . . . It is an intellectual truth that all good and truth are from the Lord; but the rational first conceived does not apprehend this, because it has the feeling that they are from itself; and it also supposes that if good and truth were not from itself, it could have no thought of good and truth, and still less do anything good and true." (AC 1911)

The remarkable thing is that one can be unable to apprehend such spiritual truths, even though he knows from the Word that all life and all good and truth are from the Lord, and acknowledges intellectually from the precepts of religion that it must be so. Because of this knowledge and belief, he is withheld by the Lord from so confirming the idea of self-life as to deny that life inflows from the Lord. By this means the Lord protects him while the first rational is being formed and built up, and meanwhile he is being prepared for the reception of genuine spiritual understanding and wisdom. The nature of this first rational, and how it serves to promote man's spiritual life, are further described in Arcana Coelestia No. 2679, as follows

"The quality of the state of those who are being reformed, in the beginning, is that they are carried away into various wanderings; for it is given them by the Lord to think much about eternal life, and thus much about the truths of faith; but because from their proprium they cannot do otherwise than wander hither and thither, both in doctrine and in life, seizing as truth that which has been inseminated from their infancy, or is impressed upon them by others, or is thought out by themselves . . . they are like fruits as yet unripe, on which shape, beauty and savor cannot be induced in a moment. . . . But the things which enter in at that time, though for the most part erroneous, are still such as are serviceable for promoting growth; and afterward when the men are being reformed, these are partly separated, and are partly conducive to introducing nourishment, and as it were juices into the subsequent life, which again can afterwards be partly adapted to the implanting of goods and truths from the Lord, and partly to being serviceable to spiritual things as ultimate planes; and thus as continual means to reformation, which means follow in perpetual connection and order; for all things, even the least with man, are foreseen by the Lord, and are provided for his future state to eternity."

Such is the proprium of adult age before regeneration. It is not imposed upon man by others, but is adopted by his own choice; yet it is adopted only in the light of what he, at that time, is capable of understanding, which is still largely fallacious. With him the heavenly proprium is still contaminated by the sense of merit; and the evil proprium still appears to be his very own. But we shall consider further the quality of this proprium in the next chapter, and shall describe how it differs from the heavenly proprium that can be acquired only through regeneration.

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