112. A final and ninth time the angel took up a piece of paper, and he read from it the following opinion:

"We fellow countrymen in our committee applied our judgment to the two aspects of the subject proposed - to the origin of conjugial love, and to the origin of its vigor or potency.

"When we debated the finer points regarding the origin of conjugial love, in order to avoid obscurities in our arguments we drew distinctions between a spiritual, a natural, and a carnal love between the sexes. By a spiritual love between the sexes we mean truly conjugial love, because it is spiritual. By a natural love between the sexes we mean polygamous love, because it is natural. And by a merely carnal love between the sexes we mean licentious love, because it is merely carnal.

"When we looked with our powers of judgment into truly conjugial love, we saw clearly that this love is possible only between one male and one female, and that it is from creation heavenly, most interior, and the soul and parent of all good loves, having been inspired into the first parents and capable of being inspired into Christians. It is also so conjunctive that by it two minds can become one mind, and two persons like one person, which is what is meant by their becoming one flesh.

"That this love was inspired from creation is apparent from these words in the book of creation:

And a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)

"That it can be inspired into Christians is apparent from these verses:

(Jesus said,) "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh." (Matthew 19:4-6)

"The subject is the origin of conjugial love.

"As for the origin of the vigor or potency of truly conjugial love, moreover, we theorize that it comes from a similarity and unanimity of minds. For when two minds are joined in marriage, their thoughts then spiritually kiss each other, and they inspire in the body their vigor or potency."

This statement was signed below with the letters Sw.