Conjugial Love #443
443. The delights of conjugial love are delights of wisdom because only spiritual people are in the enjoyment of that love, and a spiritual person is governed by wisdom. Therefore he also embraces no other delights than ones which accord with spiritual wisdom.
The nature of the delights of licentious love and of those of conjugial love can be made clearer by comparing them to houses. The delights of licentious love may be compared to a house whose walls on the outside glow with a reddish hue like shellfish, or with a false hue of gold like specular stones 1 called selenites 2 , while the rooms inside within the walls contain piles of dirt and trash of every kind. In contrast, the delights of conjugial love may be likened to a house whose walls glisten as though of pure gold, and whose rooms within are sparkling, as though filled with treasure-troves of many precious things.
Fußnoten:
1. A term formerly applied to stones of a transparent or semi-transparent substance, sometimes used as glass or for ornamental purposes, associated with species of mica, selenite and talc.
2. A term in the 17th and 18th centuries often used of stones described by travelers or existing in collections. Perhaps to be identified with the mineral now so called, a variety of gypsum occurring in transparent crystalline or foliated forms.
