There is a rule, which ought to be recognised in the educated world because it is true, that the final state is such as the stages which form and bring it about. For this reveals what influence is and what its effects are. Influence means everything which precedes and makes up what follows, and through successive stages the last stage. For instance, in the case of a human being all that precedes and makes up his wisdom; or in the case of a politician, all that precedes and makes up his prudence; in the case of a theologian, all the precedes and makes up his learning. Likewise all that precedes from childhood and makes up a man, as well as what proceeds in due order from a seed and a sapling and makes up a tree; and later what proceeds from the flower and makes up its fruit. It is exactly the same with what precedes and proceeds in the case of an engaged couple, and which makes up their marriage. This is what the term influence is used to mean.

[2] All the preceding stages form series in the mind, and the series are tied together, one alongside another, or one after another, so that taken together they make up the last stage. This is up to now unknown in the world, but since it is a true fact revealed from heaven, I bring it in here. For by this means is disclosed what are the effects of influence, and what is the nature of the last stage, in which the series of stages just mentioned are formed and come to exist together. These considerations allow it to be seen that the states of mind in each party, as they develop in succession, influence the state of the marriage. But the couple are after their marriage in complete ignorance of the successive stages introduced into their characters by the preceding ones and present in them. Yet it is these which give a form to conjugial love and cause the mental state which determines their behaviour to each other.

[3] The reason why the states and the order in which they are formed are different in the case of spiritual and natural people is that the spiritual advance in the proper order, and the natural do not. For the spiritual look to the Lord, and the Lord provides and guides the order. But the natural look to themselves, so that they advance in the opposite order. The state of their marriage is therefore inwardly full of unchastity; and each act of unchastity brings on coldness, and each coldness is an obstacle to inmost life, so that its flow is stopped and the spring runs dry.