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MR. WHITE. 1297
•
such subjects, without provoking the censure of the sickly virtuous,
and the hypocritically pure. Religious people too generally treat
the dire sexual evils which infest and corrupt society with silence
and aversion ; passing them by as the priest and the Levite did the
wounded traveller. When the spirit of Jesus more fully actuates the
church, and the love of the neighbour prompts to heal the world’s
evils by all efficient means, then, we have no doubt, Swedenborg on
Scortatory Love will be taken into counsel" (p. 111).
As Mr. White on so many points connected with Swedenborg has
contradicted the declarations which he made respecting him in 1856,
we need not be at all surprised that in 1867 he also became one
of the "sickly virtuous and hypocritically pure" who "censured"
Swedenborg on Scortatory Love, and "subjected him to gross
calumny."
Before exposing the "gross calumny" to which he "subjects"
Swedenborg on this subject, it will be first of all necessary to state
the general grounds which Swedenborg occupies in this matter. He
says: "Every human being is born corporeal, and is made more and
more interiorly natural, and in proportion as he loves intelligence
he becomes rational, and, finally, if he loves wisdom, he becomes
spiritual. Now as a man advances from the state of mere knowledge
in childhood into intelligence, and from intelligence into wisdom, so
also his mind changes its form; for it is opened more and more,
and conjoins itself more intimately with heaven, and by heaven with
the Lord ; hence he becomes more enamoured of truth, and more
studious of the good of life. If now he stands still on the threshold
of this progression to wisdom, the form of his mind remains merely
natural ; and this receives the influx of the universal sphere of the
marriage of good and truth in the same manner in which it is
received by the inferior subjects of the animal kingdom, which are
called beasts and birds ; and as these are merely natural, the man
in such a case becomes like them, and thereby loves the sex just as
they do. But the more intelligent and wise man becomes, the more
he becomes internal and spiritual, and the more the form of his
mind becomes perfected ; and this interior or spiritual form receives
conjugial love; for man then perceives and feels in this love a spiri
tual delight, which is interiorly full of blessedness ; and from this a
natural delight which derives the whole of its soul, of its life, and
of its essence from the former" (C. L. 94, 95).
The relation between "conjugial love" and the "love of the sex"
Swedenborg describes thus, "Conjugial love with man is in the love
of the sex as a gem in its matrix" (Ibid., no. 97). And further,
"Love truly conjugial which is discussed here is quite different from
82
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