425. (2) Licentious love is opposed to conjugial love. There is nothing in the universe which does not have its opposite; and opposites are not relative to each other but contrary. Matters that are relative lie in a range between the maximum and minimum limits of the same thing, while matters that are contrary stand in opposition to them, being relative to each other as the first are to each other, so that the relative degrees of the one and the other are themselves also opposed. That each and all things have their opposites is apparent from the examples of light, heat, intervals of time in the world, affections, perceptions, sensations, and many other things. The opposite of light is darkness. The opposite of heat is cold. Instances of opposites in intervals of time in the world are day and night, summer and winter. Instances of opposites in affections are states of joy and states of sorrow, states of happiness and states of sadness. Instances of opposites in perceptions are perceptions of good and perceptions of evil, perceptions of truth and perceptions of falsity. And instances of opposites in sensations are pleasant sensations and unpleasant ones. From this one may conclude, on the basis of all the evidence, that conjugial love has its opposite. And the opposite is adultery, as everyone can see, if he wills, from the universal dictates of sound reason. Say, if you can, what else the opposite of it is. Moreover, because sound reason has been able by its own light to see this plainly, therefore it has enacted laws, called civil laws of justice, in support of marriages and against adulterous relationships. [2] To make it still more clearly apparent that these two are opposites, let me relate something I have seen quite often in the spiritual world. When people who, in the natural world, were deliberate adulterers perceive the atmosphere of conjugial love flowing down from heaven, they immediately either flee away into caverns and hide, or, if they stiffen themselves against it, are whipped up into a rage and begin to act like madmen. This phenomenon occurs because all qualities having to do with people's affections, delightful and undelightful, are there perceived, and sometimes as clearly as an odor is by the sense of smell; for they do not have a material body to swallow up such things. [3] Nevertheless, the opposition of licentious love to conjugial love is not known by many in the natural world, owing to delights of the flesh which in outmost respects seemingly emulate the delights of conjugial love; and people who focus on the delights alone do not know anything about that opposition. I can also surmise that if you said to them that everything has its opposite, and concluded that conjugial love has its opposite, too, adulterers would reply that that love does not have an opposite, because licentious love does not differ from it in any physical sensation. From this it is apparent as well that anyone who does not know the nature of conjugial love, also does not know the nature of licentious love; and further, that the nature of conjugial love is not known from the experience of licentious love, but rather the nature of licentious love from the experience of conjugial love. No one knows good from the experience of evil, but evil from the experience of good. For evil dwells in darkness, while good abides in light.