never yet found the common love of the sex chaste, except with those who from true conjugial love are in continual potency, and these are in the highest heavens. We have also been permitted to perceive the influx of this love into the affections of our hearts, and have been made sensible that it surpasses in sweetness every other love, except the love of two conjugial partners whose hearts are as one: but we have besought you to investigate this love, because it is new and unknown to you; and since it is essential pleasantness, we in heaven call it heavenly sweetness." They then began the investigation; and those spoke first who were unable to think chastely of marriages. They said, "What man when he beholds a beautiful and lovely virgin or wife, can so correct or purify the ideas of his thought from concupiscence, as to love the beauty and yet have no inclination to taste it, if it be allowable? Who can convert concupiscence, which is innate in every man, into such chastity, thus into somewhat not itself, and yet love? Can the love of the sex, when it enters by the eyes into the thoughts, stop at the face of a woman? Does it not descend instantly into the breast, and beyond it? The angels talk idly in saying that this love is chaste, and yet is the sweetest of all loves, and that it can only exist with husbands who are in true conjugial love, and thence in an extreme degree of potency with their wives. Do such husbands possess any peculiar power more than other men, when they see a beautiful woman, of keeping the ideas of their thought in a state of elevation, and as it were of suspending them, so that they cannot descend and proceed to what constitutes that love?" The argument was next taken up by those who were in cold and in heat; in cold towards their wives, and in heat towards the sex; and they said, "What is the chaste love of the sex? Is it not a contradiction in terms to talk of such a love? If chastity be predicated of the love of the sex, is not this destroying the very thing of which it is predicated? How can the chaste love of the sex be the sweetest of all loves, when chastity deprives it of its sweetness? You all know where the sweetness of that love resides; when therefore the idea connected therewith is banished from the mind, where and whence is the sweetness?" At that instant certain spirits interrupted them, and said, "We have been in company with the most beautiful females and have had no lust; therefore we know what the chaste love of the sex is." But their companions, who were acquainted with their lasciviousness, replied, "You were at those times in a state of loathing towards the sex, arising from impotence; and this is not the chaste love of the sex, but the ultimate of unchaste love." On hearing what had been said, the angels were indignant and requested those who stood on the right, or to the south, to deliver their sentiments. They said, "There is a love of one man to another, and also