39. V. THESE STATEMENTS FULLY CONFIRMED BY OCULAR EXPERIENCE. That man lives as a man after death, that the male is then a male and the female a female, and that with every one his own love remains and especially love of the sex and conjugial love, are propositions which I have thus far sought to confirm by considerations such as belong to the understanding and are called rational. But because in childhood, from his parents and masters, and in later years from the learned and the clergy, man has acquired the belief that after death he will not live as a man until after the day of the Last Judgment, in expectation whereof men have now been for six thousand years; and because many have placed this matter among things which must be received by faith and not by the understanding; it has been necessary to confirm them by the testimony of experience. Otherwise, the man who believes only in the senses would say from the faith impressed upon him: "If men were living as men after death, I would see and hear them"; and also, "Who has come down from heaven or risen up from hell and told us this?" But because it could not and cannot be that any angel of heaven should descend, or any spirit of hell ascend, and talk with a man, save with those, the interiors of whose mind which are those of his spirit have been opened by the Lord; and because this cannot be done to the full save with those who have been prepared by the Lord for the reception of the things of spiritual wisdom; therefore, it has pleased the Lord to do this with me, to the end that the state of heaven and of hell, and the state of the life of men after death, may not be unknown and be put to sleep in ignorance, and finally buried in denial. But the testimonies of experience with respect to the above-mentioned propositions cannot be adduced here on account of their abundance. They have been adduced, however, in the work HEAVEN AND HELL, and afterwards in the CONTINUATION CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL WORLD, and later in THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED. Moreover, as specifically regards marriages, they will be given in the present work, in the Memorable Relations which follow the paragraphs or chapters.