Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 108

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108. A fifth time the angel drew a piece of paper from the urn, and he read from it the following opinion:

"We fellow countrymen at our table, with the rationality our minds possess, looked into the origin of conjugial love and the origin of its vigor or potency. And with well-considered reasonings we saw and confirmed that conjugial love takes its origin simply from the following circumstance: that owing to inflammations and thus stimulations concealed in the inmost recesses of his mind and body, after experiencing various lusts with his eyes, everybody at last turns and inclines his mind to one of the feminine sex, until he inwardly burns with passion for her. From that time on, his burning passion mounts from flame to flame till it becomes a blazing fire. In this state sexual lust is banished, and instead of lust comes conjugial love. "In this blazing state of passion, a young man engaged to be married does not know but that the vigor or potency of this love will never cease, for he has not experienced and so does not know about the state in which the powers fail and in which love then grows cool after its delights are over. "The origin of conjugial love, therefore, comes from that first state of passion before the wedding, and from this comes its vigor or potency. After the wedding, however, its fires change, sometimes lessening, sometimes increasing. But still its potency continues with steady change or with a steady lessening and increasing until old age, by the prudent exercise of self-control and by restraining the lusts that break out from the caverns of the mind before they have been cleansed of their filth. For lust exists before wisdom. "That is our judgment regarding the origin and continuance of conjugial vigor or potency." This statement was signed below with the letter P.


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