34. (3) Everyone's own love remains in him after death. People know that love exists, but they do not know what love is. They know that it exists from common conversation. For instance, people say that "he loves me," that a king loves his subjects and the subjects love their king, that a husband loves his wife, and a mother her children, and vice versa, also that this person or that loves his country, his fellow citizens, his neighbor. So, too, with matters abstracted from person, as in saying that one loves this or that thing. But even though love is so frequently mentioned, nevertheless scarcely anyone knows what love is. Whenever someone meditates on it, he cannot then form for himself any idea in his thought about it, thus he cannot bring it into the light of his understanding, because it is not a matter of light but of warmth. Therefore he says either that love is not anything, or that it is merely some stimulus flowing in through his vision, hearing and social interaction, which thus affects him. He does not know that love is his very life, not only the general life in his whole body and the general life in all his thoughts, but also the life in every single particle of them. The wise person can perceive this from considering the following proposition: If you take away the impulse of love, can you form any thought? Or can you perform any action? In the measure that the affection belonging to love cools, is it not true that in the same measure thought, speech and action cool? And the warmer the affection grows, the warmer they grow? Love, therefore, is the warmth in a person's life or his vital heat. The warmth of the blood, and also its redness, have no other origin. The fire of the angelic sun, which is pure love, causes it.