4229. CONCERNING CONJUGIAL LOVE. Conjugial love is the fundamental of all mutual love. Mutual love is to wish better for another than for one's self; but the tie of conjugial love is still closer. One in that relation not only experiences the highest felicity in giving himself up to his conjugial partner, that their minds may be united as one but this love is the love of the conservation of the whole human race; it is the Lord's mercy towards the universal human race which inflows into conjugial love, and from thence into the conjugial love of married partners flows the love of procreating offspring, and the love of offspring itself; and they are moreover so created that their minds [mentes] and minds [animi] may be more and more closely united. - 1749, April 21.