311. XV. THAT THIS IS THE ORDER OF CONJUGIAL LOVE,WITH ITS MODES, FROM ITS FIRST HEAT TO ITS FIRST TORCH. It is said, from its first heat to its first torch because vital heat is love, and conjugial heat or love increases more and more, and finally as though to a flame or torch. It is said to the first torch, because what is meant is the first state after the wedding when the love is ardent. What it becomes after this torch, in the marriage itself, has been described in preceding chapters. This part of the lucubration has explained its order from the first starting point to this its first goal. [2] From what is known and visible in the world, it can be adequately confirmed and made clear before the reason that all order proceeds from first things to last, and that the last of one order becomes the first of the next following order; also that all things of an intermediate order are the last of a prior and the first of a posterior order; and that it is in this way that ends go forth continually through causes into effects. But these matters are passed by, since all that is here treated of is the order in which [conjugial] love goes forth from its first starting point to its goal. Respecting this, we say only the following: As is the order of this love from its first heat to its first torch, such for the most part it is, in and within its subsequent progress; for in that progress, this first heat reveals itself such as it was in itself; if chaste, then, in its progressions, its chasteness is strengthened; but if unchaste, then in its progress its unchasteness increases until it is deprived of all the chasteness in which it had been outwardly but not inwardly from the time of betrothal.