5832. MARRIAGES AND ADULTERIES. I saw a vast crowd driven into deserts outside societies. They were those who regarded adulteries as of no consequence - not only from a principle in thought, but also in acts amongst whom were many endowed with high rank; and it was said that they were all no longer like men but like wild beasts, inasmuch as they have put off the human nature through the fact that they rent asunder and profaned a society of marriage, and consequently made nothing of the Divine commands, nothing of the civil laws, nothing of rationality which is founded upon these: on which account they cannot be said to be like men, but as wild beasts. For, when that bond is ruptured, then the human is banished. The idea of them was like that of the vilest rabble, which divests itself of humanity, and can be no longer tolerated in society. They were cast out into deserts, so that they might live according to their nature, lest they should have anything in common with spirits. That such is the case with spirits, can be known principally from the fact that all who are in the hells are in favor of adulteries, and all who are in the heavens against adulteries; and the more so, the more interiorly in the heavens they are. Hence it may be known, that the Rational is destroyed with those who have been adulterers from principle and from life; neither did these know what is the distinction between man and beast, except that man is able to speak. Hence, also, it was manifest, that these have destroyed their human rationality and nature with themselves. It was stated, that, as regards adulteries, and the principles about them in the Christian world, it is as if hell is opened and received: not so outside the Christian world.