[12] And yet, when self-love has proved such things, it becomes so blind that it sees man only as a beast, and that man and beast both think, and if a beast could also speak, conceives it would be man in another form. If it were induced by some manner of persuasion to believe that something of the human being survives death, it then is so blind as to believe that the beast also survives; and that the something which lives after death is only a subtle exhalation of life, like a vapor, constantly falling back to its corpse, or is something vital without sight, hearing or speech, and so is blind, deaf and dumb, soaring about and cogitating. Self-love entertains many other insanities with which nature, in itself dead, inspires its fantasy. Such is the effect of self-love, which regarded in itself is love of the proprium. Man's proprium, in respect of its affections which are all natural, is not unlike the life of a beast, and in respect of its perceptions, inasmuch as they spring from these affections, is not unlike a bird of night. One who constantly immerses his thoughts in his proprium, therefore, cannot be raised out of natural light into spiritual light and see anything of God, heaven or eternal life. Since the love of the proprium is of this nature and yet excels in the ability to confirm whatever it pleases, it has a similar ability to adulterate the goods of the Word and falsify its truths, even while it is constrained by some necessity to confess them. [13] 7. _The Lord therefore does not admit man inwardly into truths of wisdom and goods of love except as man can be kept in them to the close of life._ The Lord does this lest man fall into that most serious kind of profanation of which we have treated in this chapter. In view of that peril the Lord also tolerates evils of life and many heresies in worship, the tolerance of which will be the subject of the following chapter. XIII. LAWS ON PERMISSION ARE ALSO LAWS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE 234. There are no laws of permission per se or apart from the laws of divine providence; rather they are the same. Hence to say that God permits something does not mean that He wills it, but that He cannot avert it in view of the end, which is salvation. Whatever is done for the sake of that end is in accord with the laws of divine providence. For divine providence, as was said, constantly travels in a different direction from that of man's will and against his will, always intent on its objective. At each moment of its activity or at each step in its progress, as it perceives man straying from that end, it directs, turns and disposes him according to its laws, leading him away from evil and to good. It will be seen in what follows that this cannot be done without the tolerance of evil. Furthermore, nothing can be permitted for no cause, and the cause can only be in some law of divine providence, explaining why it is permitted.