491. XI. THAT ADULTERIES COMMITTED BY THESE ARE GRIEVOUS [AND ARE IMPUTED] ACCORDING TO THE CONFIRMATIONS. The understanding alone confirms, and when it confirms, it makes an ally of the will and stations it round about itself, and so drives it to compliance. Confirmations are effected by reasonings which the mind takes from either its higher region or its lower; if from its higher region which communicates with heaven, it confirms marriages and condemns adulteries; but if from its lower region which communicates with the world, it confirms adulteries and makes light of marriage. Every one can confirm evil just as well as good, and the same is true of falsity and truth. But the confirmation of evil is perceived as more delectable than the confirmation of good, and the confirmation of falsity as clearer than the confirmation of truth. The reason is because the confirmation of evil and falsity draws its reasonings from the delights, pleasures, appearances, and fallacies of the bodily senses, while the confirmation of good and truth draws its reasons from the region above the sensual things of the body.
Now because evils and falsities can be confirmed just as well as goods and truths; and because the confirming understanding draws the will to its side, and the will together with the understanding forms the mind; it follows that the form of the human mind is according to its confirmations, being turned to heaven if its confirmations are in favor of marriages, and to hell if they are in favor of adulteries. And as the form of man's mind is, such is his spirit and consequently such the man. From this it is now manifest that after death adulteries of this degree are imputed according to their confirmations.