Conjugial Love (Acton) n. 223

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223. XIV. THAT THIS SPHERE IS RECEIVED BY THE FEMALE SEX, AND THROUGH THIS SEX IS TRANSFERRED INTO THE MALE SEX. That there is no conjugial love with the male sex and that it is with the female sex alone, and from this sex is transferred into the male, this I have seen attested by experience; see no. 161. In agreement with this experience is the following reason: The masculine is intellectual and the feminine voluntary, and an intellectual form cannot grow warm with conjugial heat from itself but only from the conjunctive heat of one in whom that heat has been implanted by creation. Consequently, it cannot receive that love except through the voluntary form of a female adjoined to itself, that form being a form of love. [2] This could be more fully confirmed from the marriage of good and truth, and, for the natural man, from the marriage of the heart and lungs, inasmuch as the heart corresponds to love and the lungs to understanding. But since most men are deficient in the science of these organs, confirmation by them might obscure rather than enlighten. It is from the transfer of this sphere from the female sex into the male that the mind is enkindled even at the mere thought of the sex; consequently, thence also comes propagative formation, and thus excitation; for on earth, unless heat is added to light, nothing flourishes and nothing is aroused for the production of fruit.


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