Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 165

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165. That the conjunction of the wife with the rational wisdom of the man is from within, is because this wisdom is proper to the understanding of men and climbs into a light in which women are not. This is the reason why women do not speak from it, and when in the company of men where such matters are discussed, they are silent and simply listen. That nevertheless these rational things are with wives from within, is manifest from their listening, in that they inwardly recognize and favor what they hear and have heard from their husbands. That the conjunction of the wife with the moral wisdom of the men is from without, is because the virtues of that wisdom are for the most part akin to the like virtues with women and partake of the intellectual will of the man, with which the will of the wife unites itself and makes a marriage. And because the wife knows these virtues in a man better than the man knows them in himself, it is said that the wife's conjunction with them is from without.


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