delights of its blessedness, and from the breasts fills also the ultimates of that love in the body; in consequence whereof, the spirit with these ultimates, and these ultimates with the spirit, afterwards act in full communion.

442. XVI. THAT THE DELIGHTS OF SCORTATORY LOVE ARE THE PLEASURES OF INSANITY, BUT THAT THE DELIGHTS OF CON

JUGIAL LOVE ARE THE DELIGHTS OF WISDOM. The reason why the delights of scortatory love are the pleasures of insanity is, because none but natural men are in that love, and the natural man is insane in spiritual things, for he is contrary to them, and therefore he embraces only natural, sensual, and corporeal delights. It is said that he embraces natural, sensual, and corporeal delights, because the natural principle is distinguished into three degrees in the supreme degree are those natural men, who from rational sight see insanities, and are still carried away by the delights thereof, as boats by the stream of a river; in a lower degree are the natural men, who only see and judge from the senses of the body, despising and rejecting, as of no account, the rational principles which are contrary to appearances and fallacies; in the lowest degree are the natural men, who without judgement are carried away by the alluring stimulant heats of the body. These last are those who are called naturalcorporeal, the former are called natural-sensual, but the first natural. With these men, scortatory love, its insanities and pleasures, are of similar degrees.

443. The reason why the delights of conjugial love are the delights of wisdom is, because none but spiritual men are in that love, and the spiritual man is in wisdom; and hence he embraces no delights but such as agree with spiritual wisdom. The respective qualities of the delights of scortatory love and of conjugial love, may be elucidated by a comparison with houses: the delights of scortatory love by comparison with a house, whose walls glitter outwardly like sea shells, or like specular stones, called selenites, of a color resembling gold; whereas in the apartments within the walls, are all kinds of filth and nastiness: but the delights of conjugial love may be compared to a house, the walls of which are refulgent as with sterling gold, and the apartments within are resplendent as with cabinets full of divers precious stones.

* * * * * * *

444. To the above I shall add the following MEMORABLE RELATION. After I had concluded the meditations on conjugial love, and had begun the meditations on scortatory love, on a sudden two angels presented themselves, and said, "We have perceived and understood what you have heretofore meditated upon; but the things upon which you are now meditating pass away, and we do not perceive them. Lay aside these things, because they are of no account." But I replied, “This love,

on which I am now meditating, is not of no account; because it exists." But they said, "How can there be any love, which is not from creation? Is not conjugial love from creation; and does not this love exist between two who are capable of becoming one? How can there be a love which divides and separates? What youth can love any other virgin than the one who loves him in return? Must not the love of the one know and acknowledge the love of the other, so that when they meet, they may of themselves conjoin themselves? Who can love what is not love? Is not conjugial love alone mutual and reciprocal? If it be not reciprocal, does it not rebound, and become nothing?" On hearing these things, I asked those two angels, from what society of heaven they were? They said, "We are from the heaven of innocence; we came infants into this heavenly world, and were educated under the Lord's auspices; and when I became a youth, and my wife, who is here with me, a marriageable damsel, we were betrothed and entered into contract, and were joined under the first favorable impressions; and as we were not acquainted with any other love than what is truly nuptial and conjugial, therefore when the ideas of your thought were communicated to us concerning a strange love, directly opposed to our love, we could not at all comprehend it; and for this reason we have descended that we may ask you, why you meditate on imperceptible things? Tell us, therefore, how a love, which not only is not from creation, but is also contrary to creation, could possibly exist? We regard things opposite to creation as objects of no account." As they said this, I rejoiced in heart that I was permitted to converse with angels of such innocence, that they were altogether ignorant of the nature and meaning of scortation; wherefore I was free to discourse with them, and I instructed them as follows: "Do you not know, that there exist both good and evil, and that good is from creation, but not evil; and still that evil viewed in itself is not nothing, although it is nothing of good? From creation there exists good, and also good in the greatest degree and in the least degree; and when this least becomes nothing, there rises up on the other side evil wherefore there is no relation or progression of good to evil, but a relation and progression of good to a greater and less good, and of evil to a greater and less evil; for in all things there are opposites. And since good and evil are opposites, there is an intermediate principle, and therein an equilibrium, in which evil acts against good; but as it does not prevail, it stops in a conatus. Every man is educated in this equilibrium, which, because it is between good and evil, or, what is the same thing, between heaven and hell, is a spiritual equilibrium, which, with those who are in it, produces a free principle. From this equilibrium, the Lord draws all to himself; and if man follows from a free principle, he leads him out of

:

evil into good, and thereby into heaven. The case is the same with love, especially with conjugial love and scortatory love: the latter love is evil, but the former good. Every man who hears the voice of the Lord, and follows from a free principle, is introduced by the Lord into conjugial love and all its delights and satisfactions; but he who does not hear and follow, introduces himself into scortatory love, first into its delights, afterwards into what is undelightful, and lastly into what is unsatisfactory." When I had thus spoken, the two angels asked me, "How could evil exist, when nothing but good had existed from creation? The existence of any thing implies that it must have an origin. Good could not be the origin of evil, because evil is nothing of good, being privative and destructive of good; nevertheless, since it exists and is sensibly felt, it is not nothing, but something: tell us therefore whence this something existed after nothing." To this I replied, "This arcanum cannot be explained, unless it be known that no one is good but God alone, and that there is not any thing good, which in itself is good, but from God; wherefore he that looks to God, and wishes to be led by God, is in good; but he that turns himself from God, and wishes to be led by himself, is not in good; for the good which he does, is either for the sake of himself, or of the world; thus it is either meritorious, or pretended, or hypocritical: from which considerations it is evident, that man himself is the origin of evil; not that that origin was implanted in him by creation; but that he, by turning from God to himself, implanted it in himself. That origin of evil was not in Adam and his wife; but when the serpent said, In the day that ye shall eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall be as God, Gen. iii. 5, they then made in themselves the origin of evil, because they turned themselves from God, and turned to themselves, as to God. To eat of that tree, signified to believe that they knew good and evil, and were wise, from themselves, and not from God." But the two angels then asked, "How could man turn himself from God, and turn to himself, when yet man cannot will, think, and thence do any thing but from God? Why did God permit this?" I replied, "Man was so created, that whatever he wills, thinks, and does, appears to him as in himself, and thereby from himself: without this appearance, a man would not be a man; for he would be incapable of receiving, retaining, and as it were appropriating to himself, any thing of good and truth, or of love and wisdom: whence it follows, that without such appearance, as a living appearance, man would not have conjunction with God, and consequently neither would he have eternal life. But if from this appearance he induces in himself a belief that he wills, thinks, and thence does good from himself, and not from the Lord, although in all appearance as from himself, he turns good

into evil with himself, and thereby makes in himself the origin of evil. This was the sin of Adam. But I will explain this matter somewhat more clearly. The Lord looks at every man in the fore-front of his head, and this aspect passes into the hinder part of his head. Beneath the fore-front is the cerebrum, and beneath the hinder part is the cerebellum; the latter was designed for love and the goods thereof, and the former for wisdom and the truths thereof; wherefore he that looks with the face to the Lord, receives from him wisdom, and by wisdom love; but he that looks backward from the Lord, receives love and not wisdom; and love without wisdom, is love from man and not from the Lord; and this love, since it conjoins itself with falses, does not acknowledge God, but acknowledges itself for God, and confirms this tacitly by the faculty of understanding and of growing wise implanted in it from creation as from itself: wherefore this love is the origin of evil. That this is the case, will admit of ocular demonstration: I will call hither some wicked spirit who turns himself from God, and will speak to him from behind, or into the hinder part of the head, and you will see that the things which are said are turned into their contraries." I called such a spirit, and he presented himself, and I spoke to him from behind, and said, "Do you know any thing concerning hell, damnation, and torment in hell?" And presently, when he was turned to me, I asked him what he heard? He said, "I heard, 'Do you know any thing concerning heaven, salvation, and happiness in heaven ?"" and afterwards, when the latter words were said to him from behind, he said that he heard the former. It was next said to him from behind, "Do you know that those who are in hell are insane from false principles ?" and when I asked him concerning these words what he heard, he said, "I heard, 'Do you know that those who are in heaven are wise from truths?'" and when the latter words were spoken to him from behind, he said that he heard, "Do you know that those who are in hell are insane from false principles?" and so in other instances: from which it evidently appears, that when the mind turns itself from the Lord, it turns itself to itself, and then it perceives things contrary. "This, as you know, is the reason why, in this spiritual world, it is not allowed any one to stand behind another, and to speak to him; for thereby there is inspired into him a love, which his own intelligence favors and obeys for the sake of its delight; but since it is from man, and not from God, it is a love of evil, or a love of the false. In addition to the above, I will relate to you another similar circumstance. On certain occasions I have heard goods and truths let down from heaven into hell; and in hell they were progressively turned into their opposites, good into evil, and truth into the false: the cause of this, the same as above, is, because all in hell turn themselves from the Lord."

On hearing these things, those two angels thanked me, and said, "As you are now meditating and writing concerning a love opposite to our conjugial love, and the opposite to that love makes our minds sad, we will depart;" and when they said, "Peace be to you," I besought them not to mention that love to their brethren and sisters in heaven, because it would hurt their innocence. I can positively assert that those who die infants, grow up in heaven, and when they attain the stature which is common to youths of eighteen years old in the world, and to virgins of fifteen years, they remain of that stature; and then marriages are provided for them by the Lord; and further, that both before marriage and after it, they are altogether ignorant what scortation is, and that such a thing can exist.

OF FORNICATION.

444. BY fornication is meant the lust of a grown up man or youth with a woman a harlot before marriage; but lust with a woman not a harlot, that is, with a virgin or with another's wife, is not fornication; but with a virgin it is the act of deflowering (stuprum), and with another's wife it is adultery. In what manner these two differ from fornication, cannot be seen by any rational being, unless he takes a clear view of the love of the sex in its degrees and diversities, and of its chaste principles on one part, and of its unchaste principles on the other, arranging each part into genera and species, and thereby distinguishing them. Without such view and arrangement, it is impossible there should exist in any one's idea a discrimination between the chaste principle as to more and less, and between the unchaste principle as to more and less; and without these distinctions all relation perishes, and therewith all perspicacity in matters of judgement, and the understanding is involved in such a shade, that it does not know how to distinguish fornication from adultery, and still less the milder kinds of fornication from the more grievous, and in like manner of adultery; thus it mixes evils, and of divers evils makes one pottage, and of divers goods one paste. In order therefore that the love of the sex may be distinctly known as to that part by which it inclines and makes progress to scortatory love altogether opposite to conjugial love, it is expedient to examine its beginning, which is fornication; and this shall be done in the following series : I. That fornication is of the love of the sex. II. That this love

commences, when a youth begins to think and act from his own understanding, and his voice begins to be masculine. III. That fornication is of the natural man. IV. That fornication is lust,