Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 66

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

66. The same idea clearly follows from the creation of human beings into this love, and from their formation as a result of it afterwards. The male was created to become a form of wisdom from a love of growing wise, and the female was created to become a form of love for the male on account of his wisdom, thus in accordance with that wisdom. It is evident from this that two partners are real forms and reflections of the marriage between love and wisdom or between good and truth. It should properly be known that no good or truth exists which is not the attribute of some concrete thing in which it inheres as a quality in its subject. Abstract goods and truths have no real existence, because they are not grounded in anything, having no underlying foundation. Indeed, neither can they be seen as flitting about in the air. Consequently, as abstractions they are merely figments, which reason supposes it can think about abstractly, but which it really cannot except as attributes of concrete subjects. For every idea a person has, however extrapolated, is concrete, that is to say, it is attached to concrete things. It should further be known that no concrete thing exists without having form. A thing unformed is not anything, because nothing can be predicated of it, and a subject without predicates is also the figment of a fanciful imagination. I have added these philosophical considerations in order to be able to show in this way as well that two married partners who are in a state of truly conjugial love actually are forms of the marriage between goodness and truth, or between love and wisdom.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church