Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 281

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281. X. THAT WITH NATURAL MEN THESE CONJUGIAL SIMULATIONS SAVOUR OF PRUDENCE FOR THE SAKE OF VARIOUS CAUSES. Between two married partners of whom one is spiritual and the other natural--by a spiritual man being meant one who loves spiritual things and thus is wise from the Lord, and by a natural, one who loves only natural things and so is wise from himself--when the two are consociated in marriage, conjugial love with the one who is spiritual is heat, while with the one who is natural it is cold. That heat and cold cannot be together, and that the heat cannot enkindle the partner who is in cold unless the cold be first dispelled, nor the cold inflow into the partner who is in heat unless the heat be first removed, is evident. It is from this that there can be no inward love between partners, one of whom is spiritual and the other natural; but on the part of the spiritual partner, as stated in the preceding article, there can be a love emulative of inward love. [2] On the other hand, between partners, both of whom are natural, inward love is not possible because both are in cold; if they grow warm, it is from what is unchaste. But although separated in animus, they can yet lie together in the home, and also can put on a countenance as though there were love and friendship between them, however mutually discordant their minds. With them, the external affections which, for the most part, concern wealth and possessions or honors and dignities, may be as though ardent; and because this ardor induces fear for the loss of them, to such persons conjugial simulations are necessities, especially those the causes of which are adduced in articles XV-XVII below. The other causes enumerated with them may have something in common with the causes spoken of in no. 280 above, which obtain with the spiritual man, but only in case the prudence in the natural man savors of intelligence.


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