24. Conjunction of good and truth is provided by the Lord through _contrast._ For the nature of good is not known except by contrast with what is less good and by its contrariety to evil. All perceptiveness and sensitivity arise so; their quality is thence. All pleasantness is perceived and felt over against the less pleasant and the unpleasant; all the beautiful by reference to the less beautiful and the unbeautiful; similarly all good of love by reference to lesser good and to evil; all truth of wisdom by a sense of lesser truth and of falsity. Everything inevitably varies from greatest to least, and with the same variation in its opposite and with equilibrium between them, there is contrast degree by degree, and the perception and sensation of a thing increase or diminish. But be it known that an opposite may either lower or exalt perceptions and sensitivities. It lowers them when it mingles in and exalts them when it does not mingle in, for which reason the Lord separates good and evil with man that they shall not mingle, as exquisitely as He does heaven and hell. 25. Conjunction of good and truth in others is provided by the Lord through _purification_ in two ways; one through temptations, and the other through fermentations. _Spiritual temptations_ are nothing else than combats against the evils and falsities exhaled from hell and affecting man. By these combats a man is purified from evils and falsities, and good and truth are united in him. _Spiritual fermentations_ take place in many ways, and in heaven as well as on earth; but in the world it is not known what they are or how they come about. For evils and their falsities, let into societies, act as ferments do in meal or in must, separating the heterogeneous and conjoining the homogeneous until there is clarity and purity. Such fermentations are meant in the Lord's words: The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened (Mt 13:33; Lu 12:21). 26. The Lord provides these uses through the united evil and falsity of those in hell. The Lord's kingdom, which extends over hell as well as over heaven, is a kingdom of uses. It is the Lord's providence that there shall be no creature and no thing whereby a use is not performed. II. THE LORD'S DIVINE PROVIDENCE HAS FOR ITS OBJECT A HEAVEN FROM THE HUMAN RACE