59. The reason why truly conjugial love is so rare that its nature is unknown and almost its very existence is that the state of being charmed before marriage is afterwards turned into one of indifference, as the result of a failure to continue feeling this charm. There are more reasons for this change of state than can be cited here, but I shall deal with them later in discussing in due order the reasons for coldness, separation and divorce. It will be seen from these that for most people today the picture of conjugial love is blotted out, and with it the possibility of recognising it, so that its nature is unknown and almost its very existence. It is well known that at birth every human being is simply concerned with the body; from this state he becomes more and more inwardly natural and so rational, and finally spiritual. This takes place by stages, because the bodily level is, as it were, the ground, in which natural, rational and spiritual ideas are planted, one after the other. Thus a person becomes more and more human.
[2] What happens on entering upon marriage is almost the same. Then a person becomes more fully human, because by being joined with his partner he acts as one person with her. But this happens at the first stage, when there is a kind of picture [of conjugial love], as mentioned before. It begins in the same way from the bodily level, and progresses to the natural, but in respect of married life, and so to union into one. Those who then love what is bodily or natural, and only the rational ideas arising from them, cannot be joined as it were into one with their partner, except at this outward level. And when the outward level fails, coldness invades the inward levels driving the pleasures of that love from the body as it does from the mind, and later from the mind as it does from the body. This process goes so far that nothing is left of the remembrance of the earliest state of their marriage, and so there is no knowledge of it. Since this is the case with most people today, it is now plain that the nature of truly conjugial love is unknown, and almost its very existence. The case of spiritual people is quite different. For them the first state is an introduction to perpetual bliss, and this progressively grows, as the spiritual rational level of the mind, and as a result the natural sensual level of the body, in each person join with that of the other and unite. But such people are rare.
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