low from some first cause, and that that
cause is, that from the Lord, the Creator and Conservator of the
universe, there continually proceed love, wisdom, and use, and these
three are one? Tell, if you can, in what other source they originate.

401. A similar progression from end through cause into effect belongs
also to the sphere of procreating and of protecting the things
procreated. The end in this case is the will or love of procreating; the
middle cause, by which the end is effected and into which it infuses
itself, is conjugial love; the progressive series of efficient causes is
the loving, conception, gestation of the embryo or offspring to be
procreated; and the effect is the offspring itself procreated. But
although end, cause, and effect successively advance as three things,
still in the love of procreating, and inwardly in all the causes, and in
the effect itself, they make a one. They are the efficient causes only,
which advance through times, because in nature; while the end or will,
or love, remains continually the same: for ends advance in nature
through times without time; but they cannot come forth and manifest
themselves, until the effect or use exists and becomes a subject; before
this, the love could love only the advance, but could not secure and fix
itself. That there are periods of such progressions, and that creation
is thereby preserved in the state foreseen and provided for, is well
known. But the series of the love of infants from its greatest to its
least, thus to the boundary in which it subsists or ceases, is
retrograde; since it is according to the decrease of innocence in the
subject, and also on account of the periods.

402. XIII. THE LOVE OF INFANTS DESCENDS, AND DOES NOT ASCEND. That it
descends from generation to generation, or from sons and daughters to
grandsons and granddaughters, and does not ascend from these to fathers
and mothers of families, is well known. The cause of its increase in
descent is the love of fructifying, or of producing uses, and in respect
to the human race, it is the love of multiplying it; but this derives
its origin solely from the Lord, who, in the multiplication of the human
race, regards the conservation of creation, and as the ultimate end
thereof, the angelic heaven, which is solely from the human race; and
since the angelic heaven is the end of ends, and thence the love of
loves with the Lord, therefore there is implanted in the souls of men,
not o