62. The inhabitants of the earth Jupiter place wisdom in thinking well and justly of all things that happen in life. This wisdom they derive from their parents from infancy, and it is successively transmitted to posterity, and increases from the love they have for it because of its belonging to their parents. Of sciences, such as are in our earth, they know nothing whatever, nor do they wish to know. They call them shades and compare them to clouds which hide the sun. This idea concerning the sciences they have conceived from some spirits from our earth who boasted that they were wise from sciences. The spirits from our earth who thus boasted were such as made wisdom to consist in things appertaining merely to the memory, as in languages, especially the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in a knowledge of the things related in the literary world, in criticism, in mere experiments, and in terms, particularly such as are philosophical, with other things of a like nature, not using such things as means leading to wisdom, but making wisdom to consist in those things themselves. Such persons, because they have not cultivated their rational faculty by the sciences, as by means leading to wisdom, have little perception in the other life; for they see only in terms, and from terms, in which case those things are as clods and clouds obstructing the intellectual sight (see above, n. 38); and they who have been proud of their erudition therefrom, have still less perception; but they who have used the sciences as means of invalidating and annihilating the things appertaining to the church and to faith, have totally destroyed their intellectual faculty, and like owls they see in the thick darkness falsity for truth, and evil for good. The spirits of Jupiter, from the conversation they had with such, concluded that sciences induce shade and blindness. But they were informed that on our earth the sciences are means of opening the intellectual sight, which sight is in the light of heaven; but because such things as appertain to the mere natural and sensual life reign, therefore the sciences to the men of our earth are means of becoming insane, namely, of confirming them in favor of nature against the Divine, and in favor of the world, against heaven. They were further informed that the sciences in themselves are spiritual riches, and that they who possess them are like those who possess worldly riches, which in like manner are means of performing uses to himself, his neighbor, and his country, and also means of doing evil. Moreover, that they are like garments, which serve for use and ornament, and also for pride, as with those who would be honored for these alone. The spirits of the earth Jupiter understood these things well; but they wondered that, being men, they should rest in means, and prefer things leading to wisdom before wisdom itself; and that they should not see, that to immerse the mind in such things, and not to elevate it above them, was to becloud and blind it.