94. 6. A love for the opposite sex is a love of the external or natural man, and is therefore common to every animal. Everybody is born carnal and becomes more and more inwardly natural, and to the extent that he loves intelligence he becomes rational, and afterwards, if he loves wisdom, he becomes spiritual. (We will say later, in no. 130, what that wisdom is, by which a person becomes spiritual.)

Now as a person advances from knowledge to intelligence, and from this to wisdom, his mind also changes its form accordingly, for it opens up more and more and becomes more closely connected with heaven and through heaven with the Lord. Consequently the person becomes a greater lover of truth and more devoted to goodness of life.

If a person stops, therefore, at the first stage in his progress towards wisdom, the form of his mind remains natural, and it receives the inflowing of the universal atmosphere - the atmosphere of the marriage between good and truth - in just the same way as it is received by the lower members of the animal kingdom called beasts and birds. And because these are merely natural, the person becomes like them, and consequently he feels a love for the opposite sex in the same way they do.

This is what we mean by the statement that a love for the opposite sex is a love of the external or natural man, and is therefore common to every animal.

506. THE LUST FOR VARIETY

By the lust for variety that we take up here, we do not mean the lust to fornicate which we considered in its own chapter. ¹ Even though the latter is usually promiscuous and indiscriminate, still it does not lead to a lust for variety except when it becomes excessive and the fornicator begins to take account of the number and to lustfully boast of it. Attention to this introduces the lust for variety. But what its character is in its progress cannot be clearly perceived unless it is presented in some order, which we will do as follows:

1. By a lust for variety we mean a lust to fornicate that has become utterly dissolute.

2. This lust involves a love for the opposite sex and at the same time a loathing for it.

3. This lust totally annihilates any conjugial love in it.

4. The lot of these people after death is a miserable one, since the inmost element of life is missing in them.

Explanation of these statements now follows.

അടിക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ: