Conjugial Love #409

By Emanuel Swedenborg

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409. 18. So it is that this love is found in partners who love each other, and also in partners who have absolutely no love for each other. In other words, it is found just as much in natural partners as in spiritual partners; though spiritual partners have conjugial love, while natural partners do not, except one that is illusory and feigned.

Nevertheless, a love of little children and conjugial love are still united, because conjugial love is implanted in every woman from creation, and together with it a love of procreating - a love which is directed to and centers on the offspring produced, and which is conveyed from women to men, as said above. 1 So it is that, in homes in which there is no conjugial love between husband and wife, it nevertheless still exists in the wife, through which she has some external conjunction with her husband.

It is for this same reason that even licentious women love their offspring. For anything that has been implanted in souls from creation and looks to procreation, is indelible and cannot be eradicated.

Footnotes:

1. See no. 393.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.