After completing my reflections on conjugial love and beginning to think about scortatory love, two angels suddenly came to me and said, 'We perceived and understood your previous reflections, but the things you are now thinking about pass us by, and we do not perceive them. Abandon them, because they are of no value.'

'The love which is the subject of my present reflection,' I replied, 'is not nothing, since it certainly exists.'

'How,' they said, 'can any love exist which is not from creation? Surely conjugial love is from creation, and this is a love between two people who are able to become one. How can there be a love which divides and separates people? Can any young man love a girl unless she loves him in return? Does not the love of the one know and recognise that of the other, and so when these loves meet they join of their own accord? Can anyone love something which is not love? Is not conjugial love the only one which is mutual and reciprocal? If it is not reciprocated, does it not rebound and become nothing?'

[2] On hearing this I asked the two angels what community of heaven they came from. 'We are,' they said, 'from the heaven of innocence. We came as children into this heavenly world and were brought up under the Lord's guidance. When I grew up and my wife, who is with me here, became old enough to get married, we were engaged and betrothed, and joined for the first time** in marriage. Since we know of no other love than the true love of marriage, conjugial love, when the ideas you thought about came across to us about a different kind of love, the exact opposite of ours, we could understand nothing. So we have come down to ask why you are reflecting on things we cannot perceive. Tell us then how a love can exist which is not only not from creation, but is opposed to creation. We regard what is opposed to creation as subjects of no validity.'

[3] When he said this, I was heartily glad to talk with angels so innocent that they were totally ignorant of sexual impropriety. So I opened my mouth to tell them. 'Are you not aware,' I said, 'that good and evil exist, and good is from creation, but evil is not? Yet evil regarded in essence is not nothing, even though it is nothing from the point of view of good. Good exists from creation, and it varies in degree from the highest to the lowest. When its lowest degree reaches zero, evil arises on the other side. So there is no relationship or progress of good to evil, but it relates and progresses to what is more or less good. Evil relates and progresses to what is more or is less evil, because these are opposites in every single detail. Since evil and good are opposites, there must be a mean point distinguished by equilibrium, where evil acts against good; but because it is not stronger, it cannot advance beyond making the effort.

'Everyone is brought up in this state of equilibrium; and since this is between good and evil, or what is the same thing, between heaven and hell, it is a spiritual equilibrium, and this confers freedom on those who enjoy it. As the result of this equilibrium the Lord draws all to Himself; and if a person freely follows Him, He leads him out of evil into good, and so to heaven. It is much the same with love, especially conjugial love and scortatory love. The latter is an evil, the former a good. Everyone who hears the Lord's voice and freely follows is brought by the Lord into conjugial love and into all its joys and happiness. But someone who does not hear and follow brings himself into scortatory love and first into its joys, and then into its unpleasantnesses, and finally into unhappiness.'

[4] When I said this, the two angels asked, 'How could evil come into being, when nothing but good had come into being from creation? For anything to come into being it must have a source; good could not be the source of evil, because evil is a negation of good, since it takes away and destroys good. Still, because evil exists and is felt, it is not nothing, but it is something. Tell us then from what source this comes from nothing into being something.'

I replied to them, 'This secret cannot be revealed without knowing that none is good save God alone, and that there is nothing good that is inherently good unless it comes from God. Anyone therefore who looks to the Lord and wants to be guided by Him is in a state of good. But anyone who turns away from God and wants to be guided by himself is not in a state of good; for the good he does is done either for his own sake or for worldly reasons, so that it is either intended to acquire merit, or pretended, or hypocritical. This makes it plain that man himself is the source of evil, not because man had that fate assigned to him from creation, but because he assigned it to himself by turning away from God. That source of evil was not in Adam and his wife; but when the serpent said:

On the day when you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will be like God. Gen. 3:5.

and then they turned away from God, and turned towards themselves as if they were gods, they produced the source of evil in themselves. "Eating of that tree" means believing that one knows good and evil and is wise of oneself, and not from God.'

[5] But then the two angels asked, 'How could man turn away from God and towards himself, when it is still true that man can will nothing, think nothing and so do nothing except from God? Why did God allow this?'

'Man was created,' I replied, 'so that everything he wills, thinks and does appears to be inside him and so to come from him. Without this appearance he would not be a man, for he could not receive, retain or make as it were his own any trace of good and truth, or of love and wisdom. It follows from this that unless this were exactly the appearance, man could not be linked with God, and so he could not have everlasting life. However, if this appearance induces him to believe that he himself, and not the Lord, is the source of what he wills, thinks and does, however much it looks as if he were the source, he turns good in himself into evil and so produces a source of evil in himself. This was Adam's sin.

[6] 'But I can cast a little more light on this subject. The Lord looks on every person in the forehead, and His gaze passes through to the back of the head. Behind the forehead is the cerebrum, and beneath the rear of the head is the cerebellum. This is devoted to love and the various kinds of good it produces; the cerebrum is devoted to wisdom and the truths which compose it. Anyone therefore who looks face first towards the Lord receives wisdom from Him, and by this means he receives love. But anyone who turns his back and looks away from the Lord receives love but not wisdom, and love without wisdom is the love that comes from man and not from the Lord. Since this love links itself with false beliefs, it does not acknowledge God, but puts itself in God's place, finding silent confirmation of this through the ability to understand and to be wise with which he is endowed from creation, as if it came from himself. This love is therefore the source of evil. I can give you a visual demonstration that this is so, by calling here a wicked spirit who has turned away from God; I shall speak to his back, that is, to the back of his head, and you will see that what he is told turns into its opposite.'

[7] So I called such a spirit, and when he came, spoke to him from behind. 'Do you know,' I said, anything about hell, damnation and the torments of hell?' At once he turned towards me, and I asked him, 'What did you hear me say?'

'This,' he answered, 'is what I heard: "Do you know anything about heaven, salvation and the happiness of heaven?"' Then when he was asked this question behind his back, he said that what he heard was the first question.

Afterwards the following question was put from behind his back. 'Are you not aware that those in hell are made mad by false ideas?' When I asked him what he had heard, he said, 'Are you not aware that those in heaven are made wise by truths?' When this question was repeated to him behind his back, he said that what he heard was, 'Are you not aware that those in hell are made mad by false ideas?' and so on. These facts made it obvious that when a mind turns away from the Lord, it turns towards itself and so perceives the reverse of everything. This is the reason why, as you know, in the spiritual world no one is allowed to stand behind another's back and talk to him. For by doing so love is breathed into him, and because it is pleasant the intelligence approves and obeys it. But since it comes from man and not from God, it is a love of evil or of falsity.

[8] 'I shall in addition report to you another similar experience. I have on a number of occasions heard kinds of good and truth fall from heaven into hell, and as they fell they progressively changed to their opposites; good became evil and truth falsity. This is due to the same cause, the fact that all in hell turn away from the Lord.'

On hearing this the two angels thanked me and said, 'As you are now thinking and writing about a love which is the opposite of our conjugial love, we shall depart. Anything opposed to that love depresses our minds.'

When they said, 'Peace be with you,' I begged them not to tell their brothers and sisters in heaven anything about this love, since it would damage their innocence.

I can place it on record as a fact that those who die as children grow up in heaven. When they reach the stature of young men of eighteen years, and girls of fifteen, they stop at that point, and the Lord then provides marriages for them. These, both before and after marriage, are quite unaware what sexual impropriety is or that it can exist. * This number was used twice in the original, here and at the beginning of the next chapter. ** Literally 'with the first omens.' The phrase may be taken from Vergil (Aeneid 1.345).

444bis XIX

FORNICATION

Fornication means the sexual pleasure of a young man with a woman of loose morals before marriage. Sexual pleasure, however, with a woman who is not of loose morals, that is, with a girl or another man's wife is not fornication, but is debauchery in the case of a girl, or adultery in the case of another's wife. There is no rational means of seeing how these two differ from fornication without observing the degrees and diverse forms of sexual love, how it is chaste in one direction and unchaste in the other, and distinguishing either side into genera and species to keep them apart. Without this a person could not form a notion of the difference between more and less chaste, and more or less unchaste. Without these distinctions the total relationship is lost, and together with it the ability to decide clearly on matters of judgment. Indeed the intellect is so overshadowed as to be unable to distinguish fornication from adultery, much less the milder types of fornication from the more serious types, and likewise with adultery. The result is a mixing of evils and the combination of different evils to make a single broth, and the combination of different kinds of good to make a single pastry. In order then to make known the distinctions by which sexual love on the one hand verges and progresses towards scortatory love, the direct opposite of conjugial love, it is convenient to begin with a discussion of its beginning, fornication.

This will be done in the following order. (i) Fornication is a product of sexual love. (ii) Sexual love starts when a youth begins to use his own intellect to think and act, and his speaking voice begins to show male characteristics. (iii) Fornication belongs to the natural man. (iv) Fornication is a lust, but not a lust for adultery. (v) In certain cases sexual love cannot without damage be completely prevented from being expressed in fornication. (vi) Consequently in large cities brothels are tolerated. (vii) The lust for fornicating is not serious, so far as it has conjugial love in view and prefers this. (viii) The lust for fornicating is serious, so far as it has adultery in view. (ix) The lust for fornicating becomes more serious, in so far as it tends towards a desire for variety or for deflowering virgins. (x) The sphere of the lust for fornicating is, at its first stage, midway between the sphere of scortatory love and that of conjugial love, and it creates an equilibrium. (xi) Care must be taken to prevent conjugial love being destroyed by uncontrolled and immoderate indulgence in fornication, (xii) Seeing that the principle of marriage of one husband and one wife is the jewel of human life and a treasure-house of Christian religion. (xiii) This principle of marriage can be preserved in the case of those who for various reasons are unable as yet to enter upon marriage, and by reason of incontinence cannot restrain their lusts, provided a roving sexual love is restricted to a single mistress. (xiv) Having a mistress is preferable to roving lust, so long as it does not involve several mistresses, or a girl or a virgin, or a married woman; and provided it is kept separate from conjugial love.

The discussion of these points now follows.