264. The origin of evil comes from abuse of the faculties which are peculiar to mankind and are called rationality and freedom. By rationality we mean the faculty of understanding truths and thus falsities, and of understanding goods and thus evils; and by freedom we mean the faculty of thinking, willing and doing these freely. It can be seen from preceding discussions, and it will be further seen from subsequent ones, that a person possesses these two faculties from creation and so from birth; that they come from the Lord; that they are not taken away; that they produce the appearance that a person thinks, speaks, wills and acts as though of himself; that the Lord dwells in every person in these faculties; that owing to that conjunction a person lives to eternity; that a person can be reformed and regenerated in consequence of these faculties and not apart from them; and that it is these faculties which distinguish the human being from animals.