But the love of a man and a woman is the love of the
understanding and of its affection; and this love enters deeply and
effects conjunction, which is that love; but the conjunction of minds,
and not at the same time of bodies, or the endeavour towards that
conjunction alone, is spiritual love, and consequently chaste love; and
this love exists only with those who are in true conjugial love, and
thence in an eminent degree of potency; because such, from their
chastity, do not admit an influx of love from the body of any other
woman than of their own wives; and as they are in an extreme degree of
potency, they cannot do otherwise than love the sex, and at the same
time hold in aversion whatever is unchaste. Hence they are principled in
a chaste love of the sex, which, considered in itself, is interior
spiritual friendship, deriving its sweetness from an eminent degree of
potency, but still being chaste. This eminent degree of potency they
possess in consequence of a total renunciation of whoredom; and as each
loves his own wife alone, the potency is chaste. Now, since this love
with such partakes not of the flesh, but only of the spirit, therefore
it is chaste; and as the beauty of the woman, from innate inclination,
enters at the same time into the mind, therefore the love is sweet.
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