12. The sixth state is when he utters truths and performs good deeds from faith and consequently from love. What he brings forth at this point are called a living creature and a beast. And because at this point he starts to act from faith and also simultaneously from love, he becomes a spiritual man, who is called an image. The spiritual life of that man finds its delight in, and is sustained by, the things which are associated with cognitions of faith and with charitable acts, which are called his food; and his natural life finds its delight in, and is sustained by, those which belong to the body and the senses. The latter give rise to conflict until love rules and he becomes a celestial man.

2727. HOW MARRIAGES ARE REGARDED IN HEAVEN AND ALSO ADULTEROUS SITUATIONS

What genuine conjugial love is and where it originates few know at the present day, the reason being that it exists with few. Almost everyone believes that it is inborn and so flows from, they say, a kind of natural instinct, such belief being strengthened by the fact that the inclination to pair off as in marriage also occurs among animals. But the difference between conjugial love with human beings and that inclination with animals is as the difference between the human condition and that of any animal.