61. That from the things that are according to order God perceives, knows, and sees each and all things even to the most minute that take place contrary to order, is because He does not keep man in evil, but withholds him from evil; thus He does not lead him on, but strives with him. From this perpetual striving, struggling, resistance, repugnance, and reaction of evil and falsity against His good and truth, thus against Himself, God perceives both their quantity and their quality. This follows from God's omnipresence in all things and in each thing of His order, and also from His perfect knowledge of each thing and all things of it, comparatively as one with an ear for harmony and consonance notices accurately what is inharmonious and dissonant, when it comes in, also the extent and character of the discord; or as one whose feelings are occupied with what is delightful detects the intrusion of what is undelightful; or as one whose eye is occupied with what is beautiful notices it with more precision when anything unshapely is beside it; for which reason it is customary for painters to place an ugly face beside a beautiful one. It is the same with good and truth when evil and falsity are striving against them; since from good and truth evil and falsity are distinctly perceived. For everyone who is in good can perceive evil; and he who is in truth can see falsity. And the reason is that good is in the heat of heaven, and truth is in its light; while evil is in the cold of hell, and falsity in its darkness. This may be illustrated by the fact that the angels of heaven can see whatever is done in hell, and what kind of monsters exist there; while, on the other hand, the spirits of hell can see nothing whatever that is going on in heaven; they can no more see the angels than if they were blind, or were gazing into the empty air or ether. Those whose understandings are in light from wisdom are like men who at midday are standing upon a mountain and seeing clearly all that is below; while those who are in still superior light are comparatively like men who see, through telescopes, outlying and lower objects as if they were near at hand. But those who are in the false light of hell, through the confirmation of falsities, are like men standing upon the same mountain at night with lanterns in their hands, who see only the objects nearest to them, and these with forms indistinct and colors confused. A man who is in some light of truth, although in evil of life, while he finds delight in his love of evil, sees truths at first much as a bat sees linen hanging in a garden, to which it flies as to a place of refuge. Afterwards he becomes like a bird of night, and at length like a screech-owl. Then he becomes like a chimney-sweep sticking fast in the gloom of a chimney, and seeing, when he looks upward, the sky through smoke, and when downward the hearth from which the smoke comes.