ve of the sex prevailed in heaven than conjugial love, and
that they had a perpetual faculty of enjoyment, they smiled at each
other, and said, "What you tell us is incredible; there cannot be such a
faculty: possibly you are amusing us with idle tales." But at that
instant a certain angel from heaven unexpectedly stood in the midst of
them, and said, "Hear me, I beseech you; I am an angel of heaven, and
have lived now a thousand years with my wife, and during that time have
been in the same flower of my age in which you here see me. This is in
consequence of the conjugial love in which I have lived with my wife;
and I can affirm, that the above faculty has been and is perpetual with
me; and because I perceive that you believe this to be impossible, I
will talk with you on the subject from a ground of rational argument
according to the light of your understanding. You do not know anything
of the primeval state of man, which you call a state of integrity. In
that state all the interiors of the mind were open even to the Lord; and
hence they were in the marriage of love and wisdom, or of good and
truth; and as the good of love and the truth of wisdom perpetually love
each other, they also perpetually desire to be united; and when the
interiors of the mind are open, the conjugial spiritual love flows down
freely with its perpetual endeavour, and presents the above faculty. The
very soul of a man (_homo_), being in the marriage of good and truth, is
not only in the perpetual endeavour of that union, but also in the
perpetual endeavour of the fructification and production of its own
likeness; and since the interiors of a man even from the soul are open
by virtue of that marriage, and the interiors continually regard as an
end the effect in ultimates that they may exist, therefore that
perpetual endeavor for fructifying and producing its like, which is the
property of the soul, becomes also of the body: and since the ultimate
of the operation of the soul in the body with two conjugial partners is
into the ultimates of love therein, and these depend on the state of the
soul, it is evident whence they derive this perpetuality. Fructification
also is perpetual, because the universal sphere of generating and
propagating the celestial things which are of love, and the spiritual
things which are of wisdom, and thence the natural things which are of
offspring, proceeds from the Lord, and fills all heaven and all the
world; and that ce