The fact that love and the linking it produces are inspired by the wife in her husband is a secret not revealed to men today; in fact without exception they deny it. The reason is that wives persuade people that men alone love and they themselves receive that love; in other words men are forms of love, women of obedience. They are heartily pleased when men believe this. There are many reasons for this persuasion, all of which have to do with the wives' prudence and caution; something more will be said on this subject in the following pages, and in particular in the Chapter [XI] on the reasons for the coldness, separation and divorce of married couples. The reason why love is inspired or instilled into men by their wives is that men do not have a scrap of conjugial love, nor even of sexual love, but this is only to be found in wives and women. I received a vivid demonstration of this fact in the spiritual world.

[2] There was once a conversation there on this subject, and under the influence of their wives' persuasion the men were insistent that it was they and not their wives who loved, and their wives received love from them. In order to settle this question, all the women, including the wives, were taken away from the men; and at the same time the very sphere of sexual love was also removed. With this gone the men came into an utterly strange state, which they had never before experienced; and they complained a great deal about it. While they were in that state the women were brought to them, and the wives joined their husbands. Both of these groups addressed their menfolk affectionately. But their endearments left them cold; they turned their backs and said to one another, 'What's all this? What are these women?' When some of the women said that they were their wives, they replied 'Wives indeed! We don't know you.' But when the wives began to feel hurt by their husbands' chilling indifference, and some started to cry, the sphere of love of the female sex and of conjugial love, which had been taken away, was restored, and then the men at once returned to their former state. Those who loved marriage became as they had been before, those who were lovers of the female sex as they had been. In this way the men were convinced that nothing at all of conjugial love, and not even of sexual love, was lodged with them, but only with women and their wives. All the same, the wives were prudent enough to make their husbands believe that the love was lodged with the men, but that some spark of it could pass over from them to themselves.

[3] This experience is brought in here to make it known that wives are forms of love, men receivers of love. It is plain that men receive love in proportion to the wisdom they possess, and especially in so far as this is based on the religious belief that only one's wife is to be loved, from the fact that, when love is directed solely to one's wife, it is concentrated. Since it is also ennobled, it retains its strength, is established and endures. If this were not so, it would be as when wheat is taken from the barn and thrown to the dogs, causing a famine at home.