There were a number of spirits around me, some of whom told me that they could hear this very sweet music, and it was the music of some affection, but they did not know what its subject was. They made various guesses, but without success. One guess was that the song expressed the affection of the bridegroom and bride on plighting their troth, another that it was their affection on entering wedlock, another that it was the earliest stage in the love of husband and wife.

[2] Then an angel from heaven suddenly appeared among them, and said that they were singing about chaste sexual love. The bystanders enquired what chaste sexual love was. The angel replied that it was a man's love for a young woman or a wife of lovely appearance and good manners, free from any idea of lewdness; and the similar love of a woman for a man. With these words the angel vanished.

The singing continued, and since they then knew the subject of the affection it expressed, they began to hear it in many different ways, in each case depending on the state of their own love. Those who looked on women chastely heard the singing as harmonious and sweet. But those who looked on women unchastely heard it as inharmonious and depressing, and those who looked on women with distaste, heard it as discordant and harsh.

[3] The ground on which they were standing was suddenly changed into a theatre, and a voice was heard, saying, 'Discuss this love.' Spirits then quickly appeared from various communities, and among them some angels dressed in white, who said, 'In the spiritual world we have made enquiry into all the kinds of love, not only the love of a man for a man and a woman for a woman, and the reciprocal love of husband and wife, but also a man's love for women and a woman's love for men. We have been allowed to work through communities checking, and we have not yet found any shared chaste sexual love, except among those endowed with constant potency by truly conjugial love; and these are in the highest heavens. We have also been allowed to feel the influence of that love on the affections of our hearts, and our feeling was that it surpassed in sweetness every other love, except the love of a married couple whose hearts are one. But we should like you to discuss this love, since it is a new and unfamiliar one to you. Since it is the height of loveliness, we in heaven call it the sweetness of heaven.

[4] So in the discussion the first to speak were those who were unable to think of chastity in connexion with marriage. 'Can anyone,' they said, 'on seeing a lovely or loveable girl or wife so control the ideas he thinks about and keep them so untainted by lust, as to love her beauty and yet not wish, if he were allowed, to taste it? Can anyone turn the lust innate in every man into such chastity as to make it what it is not, and still go on loving? Can sexual love, when it passes from the eyes into the thoughts, stop at the woman's face? Does it not instantly go down to the chest, and beyond? The angels were talking nonsense when they said that there is a chaste form of that love, which is none the less the sweetest of all; a love which is only possible for husbands who have truly conjugial love, so that they have extraordinary potency with their wives. Are these so much above others that on seeing lovely women they can keep the ideas they think about uplifted and as it were in suspense, to prevent them coming down and proceeding to what makes that love?'

[5] The next speakers were those who felt both heat and cold, coldness towards their wives, but heat towards the other sex. 'What is chaste sexual love?' they said. 'Surely to add chastity to love is a contradiction in terms. Can you add a contradiction without taking away what is predicated of a thing, so making it non-existent? How can chaste sexual love be the sweetest of all loves, when chastity robs it of its sweetness? You all know where the sweetness of that love is located. So when the idea of union is thrown out together with that, where is its sweetness, and where is it to come from?'

Then some others intervened, saying, 'We have been with the loveliest women without desiring them. So we know what chaste sexual love is.' But their companions, knowing their lewdness, replied, 'You were then reduced to loathing the other sex as the result of impotence, and this is not chaste sexual love, but the depth of unchaste love.'

[6] On hearing this the angels were angry and asked those who stood on the right, that is, to the south, to speak. 'There is,' they said, 'the love of two men for each other, and the love of two women for each other, and the love of a man for a woman and of a woman for a man. These three pairs of loves are completely different. The love of two men is like the love of two intellects, for man was created and therefore is by birth designed to become an intellect. The love of two women is like the love of two affections for man's intellect, for woman was created and is designed by birth to become the love of a man's intellect. These loves, those between two men or two women, do not sink far into the breast, but stay outside, making merely superficial contact and not leading to any inner union of the two. This too is the reason why two men fence with reasoned arguments on either side, like boxers; and two women sometimes with lusts on either side, like actors pretending to fight with fists.

[7] But the love of a man and a woman is the love of the intellect and its affection, which sinks in deep and leads to union. That union is love; but the union of minds, and not of bodies at the same time, or an impulse towards that union and no other, is spiritual love, and so a chaste one. This love is only possible for those who possess truly conjugial love, and thus have abundant potency, because these people's chastity does not allow them to feel any influence of love from the body of any woman other than their wife. Being in this state of surpassing potency, they cannot help loving the other sex and at the same time loathing unchastity. As a result they have chaste sexual love, which regarded in essence is an inner spiritual friendship; this gains its sweetness from their abundant, but chaste, potency. That abundant potency is the result of a total forswearing of promiscuity, and, since the wife alone is loved, it is chaste. Now since that love in their case does not partake of the flesh, but only of the spirit, it is chaste; and because their innate attraction makes the woman's beauty at the same time enter the mind, it is delightful.'

[8] On hearing this many of the bystanders clapped their hands over their ears, saying, 'Your remarks offend our ears, and we regard what you have said as nonsense.' They were unchaste. Then the singing from heaven was heard again, and it was even sweeter than before. But to the ears of the unchaste it sounded such a discordant din, that to avoid the racket they rushed out of the theatre and took to their heels, leaving a few behind, whose wisdom made them love chastity in marriage.