Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 68

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68. VI. AND THAT INTO THIS LOVE ARE GATHERED ALL JOYS AND ALL DELIGHTS FROM THEIR FIRST TO THEIR LAST. All delights whatsoever which are felt by man are delights of his love, it being by delights that love manifests itself, yea, that it exists and lives. That delights are exalted in the degree that the love is exalted and also according as incidental affections more nearly touch the ruling love, is known. Now because, as already shown, conjugial love is the fundamental of all good loves and is inscribed upon the very least parts of man, it follows that its delights exceed the delights of all other loves, and also that it makes all other loves delightful according to its presence and at the same time its conjunction with them; for it expands the inmost parts of the mind, and at the same time the inmost parts of the body, as the delicious current of its fountain flows through them and opens them up. [2] That all delights from their first to their last are gathered into this love, is because of the excellence of its use above all other uses. Its use is the propagation of the human race, and thence of the angelic heavens; and because this use was the end of ends of creation, it follows that all the states of blessedness, happiness, delight, pleasantness, and pleasure which, by the Lord the Creator, could ever be conferred on man, are gathered into this his love. That delights follow use and are present with man according to the love thereof, is manifest from the delights of the five senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Each of these has its own delights with variations according to their specific uses. What then should not be the delights of the sense of conjugial love, whose use is the complex of all other uses!


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