311. XV. SUCH IS THE ORDER OF CONJUGIAL LOVE WITH ITS MODES FROM ITS
FIRST HEAT TO ITS FIRST TORCH. It is said from its first heat to its
first torch, because vital heat is love, and conjugial heat or love
successively increases, and at length as it were into a flame or torch.
We have said "to its first torch," because we mean the first state after
the nuptials, when that love burns; but what its quality becomes after
this torch, in the marriage itself, has been described in the preceding
chapters; but in this part we are explaining its order from the
beginning of its career to this its first goal. That all order proceeds
from first principles to last, and that the last become the first of
some following order, also that all things of the middle order are the
last of a prior and the first of a following order, and that thus ends
proceed continually through causes into effects, may be sufficiently
confirmed and illustrated to the eye of reason from what is known and
visible in the world; but as at present we are treating only of the
order in which love proceeds from its first starting-place to its goal,
we shall pass by such confirmation and illustration, and only observe on
this subject, that such as the order of this love is from its first heat
to its first torch, such it is in general, and such is its influence in
its progression afterwards; for in this progression it unfolds itself,
according to the quality of its first heat: if this heat was chaste, its
chasteness is strengthened as it proceeds; but if it was unchaste, its
unchasteness increases as it advances, until it is deprived of all that
chasteness which, from the time of betrothing, belonged to it from
without, but not from within.
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