The reason why conjugial love, regarded in its essence, is the foundation of all the loves of heaven and the church is that its source is the marriage of good and truth; and from this marriage arise all the loves which make heaven and the church present with a person. The good of this marriage makes love, and its truth makes wisdom. When love approaches wisdom or joins itself to it, it becomes real love; and when wisdom in turn approaches love and joins itself to it, it becomes real wisdom. Truly conjugial love is nothing else but the linking of love and wisdom.

A married couple between whom or in whom that love is together shared are models and a visible form of it. Indeed, all in the heavens, where faces are true images of the affections of one's love, are likenesses of it; for it is in them both generally and in every part of them, as shown before. Now since a married couple are that love in model and form, it follows that every love which arises from the form of love itself is a copy of it. So if conjugial love is celestial and spiritual, so are the loves arising from it. Thus conjugial love is like a parent, and the other loves are like its children. This is how it is that the marriages of angels in the heavens lead to the birth of spiritual offspring, things to do with love and wisdom, or good and truth; on this see 51 above.