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Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #444b

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444b. 1 FORNICATION

By fornication we mean the lust of an adolescent youth or young man, experienced before marriage with a fallen woman. However, lust experienced with a woman not fallen, that is, with a virgin or with someone else's wife, is not fornication; but with a virgin it is debauchery, and with someone else's wife, adultery.

How these latter two differ from fornication cannot be seen by any rational person unless he clearly sees love for the opposite sex in its degrees and diversities, placing its chaste forms on one side and its unchaste forms on the other, and dividing each side into classes and types so as to distinguish between them. Otherwise the difference between what is more chaste and what is less chaste, and between what is more unchaste and what is less unchaste, cannot appear in anyone's idea of them; and without these distinctions, every means of comparison is lost, and at the same time any clarity of sight in matters of judgment. The intellect is then enveloped in such darkness that it does not know how to distinguish fornication from adultery, and still less the milder forms of fornication from its more serious ones, likewise the milder forms of adultery from its more serious ones. Thus it mixes evils together, and out of diverse evils makes one sauce, and out of diverse goods, one paste.

Therefore, in order that love for the opposite sex may be known in its distinctions on the side in which it inclines and progresses to licentious love that is altogether opposed to conjugial love, it is expedient that we examine its first step, which is fornication. This we will do according to the following outline:

1. Fornication is the product of a love for the opposite sex.

2. This love arises when the adolescent youth begins to think and act in accordance with his own intellect, and the sound of his voice begins to become manly.

3. Fornication is the mark of a natural person.

4. Fornication is lust, but not the lust of adultery.

5. In some men a love for the opposite sex cannot, without harmful effects, be totally restrained from going out into fornication.

6. Therefore in populous cities brothels are tolerated.

7. A lust to fornicate is light in the measure that it looks to conjugial love and prefers it.

8. A lust to fornicate is serious in the measure that it looks to adultery.

9. A lust to fornicate is more serious as it verges toward a lust for variety and toward a lust to deflower.

10. The atmosphere of a lust to fornicate, as it is in its beginning, is intermediate between the atmosphere of licentious love and the atmosphere of conjugial love, and forms the point of equilibrium.

11. Care must be exercised to prevent conjugial love from being lost as a result of excessive and unrestrained fornications.

12. For the conjugial union of one man with one wife is the precious jewel of human life and the repository of Christian religion.

13. In men who are not yet able for various reasons to enter into marriage, and because of their salaciousness cannot contain their lusts, this conjugial ideal may be preserved if their promiscuous love for the opposite sex becomes restricted to a single courtesan.

14. Resorting to a courtesan is preferable to promiscuous lust, provided that the arrangement is not made with more than one, or with a virgin or untouched woman, or with a married woman, and that it is kept separate from conjugial love.

Explanation of these statements now follows.

Footnotes:

1. [NCBS: Swedenborg repeated section 444 by accident. The third Latin edition numbered it 444i., as an abbreviation for "iterated". Other translators have called it 444r, for repeated. We've opted for 444b., for this online version.]

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

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