401. A like proceeding from end through cause into effect is true also of the atmosphere of procreating and of protecting what has been procreated. The end there is the will or love for procreating; the mediating cause by which and into which the end infuses itself is conjugial love; the progressive series of efficient causes is the lovemaking, conception and gestation of the embryo or fetus to be produced; and the effect is the infant itself thus born. Yet even though the end, cause and effect proceed as three successive elements, still, in the love of procreating, and inwardly in each of the causes, and in the final effect, they are nevertheless united. It is only the efficient causes which progress through durations of time, because they exist in nature - the end, or will and love, remaining continually the same. For ends in nature proceed through durations of time independently of time, but they cannot appear or manifest themselves before the effect or useful result exists to become their vessel. Until then the love could love only the progression, but could not fix and establish itself. [2] As for the cycles of these progressions, people know that they exist, and that by them creation is preserved in its foreseen and provided state. However, the course that a love of little children follows, from its height to its wane, thus to the point at which it stops and terminates, is a retrograde one, since it recedes according to the decrease of innocence in its object, and also as a result of its cycles.