Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 211

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211. II. THAT WITH THOSE WHO ARE IN LOVE TRULY CONJUGIAL, THE FACULTY OF BECOMING WISE INCREASES, BUT WITH THOSE WHO ARE NOT IN CONJUGIAL LOVE IT DECREASES. That the faculty of becoming wise increases with those who are in love truly conjugial is because with married partners, as shown with abundant reasons in the preceding chapters, this love is from wisdom and according to it. Moreover, because the sense belonging to this love is touch, and because this is common to all the senses and is also full of delights, therefore it opens the interiors of the mind just as it opens the interiors of the senses, and with them the organic parts of the whole body. Hence it follows that those who are in this love, love nothing more than to become wise; for a man becomes wise in proportion as the interiors of his mind are opened, since by this opening, the thoughts of his understanding are elevated into superior light and the affections of his will into superior heat; and superior light is wisdom, and superior heat is the love thereof. The spiritual delights conjoined with natural delights, which those have who are in love truly conjugial, make it pleasant to become wise and hence give the ability so to become. Hence it is, that angels have conjugial love according to their wisdom; and that the increments of that love and at the same time of its delights, are according to the increments of wisdom; also, that the spiritual offspring which are born of their marriages are such things as pertain to the wisdom from the father and the love from the mother. These they love from a spiritual love of offspring, and this love adds itself to their conjugial love, continually elevating it and conjoining the partners.


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