Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 249

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249. XIII. OF THE EXTERNAL CAUSES OF COLD, THE FOURTH IS LACK OF DETERMINATION TO ANY STUDY OR BUSINESS, WHENCE COMES WANDERING LUST. Man was created for use because use is the containant of good and truth, and from the marriage of these is creation and also conjugial love, as shown in the chapter on the Origin of Conjugial Love. By study and business is meant every application to uses; for while a man is in some study and business, that is, in some use, his mind is limited and circumscribed as by a circle, within which it is successively coordinated into a form truly human. From this as from a house he sees the various concupiscences as outside himself, and from sanity of reason within, banishes them and consequently banishes also the beastly insanities of scortatory lust. With such men, therefore, conjugial heat remains in greater fullness and for a longer period than with others. [2] The contrary is the case with those who give themselves up to sloth and idleness. Their mind is unrestrained and unbounded, and the man then admits into the whole of his mind all manner of vain and frivolous things which flow in from the world and the body and carry him along into the love of them. That conjugial love also is then cast into exile is evident; for from sloth and idleness, the mind is rendered stupid and the body torpid, and the whole man becomes insensible to every vital love, especially to conjugial love, it being from this love as from a fountain that the activities and alacrities of life emanate. The conjugial cold with such men is, however, different from that cold with others. It is indeed the privation of conjugial love, but from defect.


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