440. (15) The delights of licentious love arise from the flesh, and are delights of the flesh even in the spirit; while the delights of conjugial love arise in the spirit, and are delights of the spirit even in the flesh. The delights of licentious love arise from the flesh because the promptings of the flesh are where they begin. They infect the spirit and are delights of the flesh even in the spirit, because it is not the flesh but the spirit which feels the sensations that occur in the flesh. It is the same with this sense as with the rest. So, for example, it is not the eye that sees and distinguishes various particulars in objects, but the spirit. Neither is it the ear which hears and distinguishes the harmonies of the melodic lines in a song, or the assonances in the articulation of sounds in speech, but the spirit. It is the spirit that senses everything, in accordance with its elevation into wisdom. The spirit that does not rise above the sensual promptings of the body, and so becomes enmeshed in them, does not feel any other delights than those which spring from the flesh or which flow in from the world through the physical senses. These it seizes on; these it delights in and makes its own. [2] Now, because the origins of licentious love are merely the promptings and urges of the flesh, it is apparent that they are, in the spirit, sordid attractions, which excite and inflame according as they rise and subside and come and go. Passions of the flesh in general, regarded in themselves, are nothing else than a conglomerate mass of lusts for evil and falsity. Hence comes this truth in the church, that "the flesh lusts against the spirit,"* meaning, against one's spiritual self. It follows accordingly that the delights of the flesh connected with the delights of licentious love are nothing but the bubblings up of lusts, which in the spirit become outpourings of wanton immoralities. * Galatians 5:17.