g during prolification. Moreover, what is
conjugial love but heat, which becomes virtue or potency, if the heat
supplied from the sun be added to it?" To this decision was subscribed
the letter H, the initial of the kingdom from which they were.

105. After this he put his hand into the urn a SECOND TIME, and took out
a paper from which he read as follows: "We, natives of the same country,
in our lodge have agreed that the origin of conjugial love is the same
with the origin of marriages, which were sanctioned by laws in order to
restrain man's innate concupiscences prompting him to adultery, which
ruins the soul, defiles the reason, pollutes the morals, and infects the
body with disease: for adultery is not human but bestial, not rational
but brutish, and thus not in any respect Christian but barbarous: with a
view to the condemnation of such adultery, marriages originated, and at
the same time conjugial love. The case is the same with the virtue or
potency of this love; for it depends on chastity, which consists in
abstaining from the rovings of whoredom: the reason is, because virtue
or potency, with him who loves his married partner alone, is confined to
one, and is thus collected and as it were concentrated; and then it
becomes refined like a quintessence from which all defilement is
separated, which would otherwise be dispersed and cast away in every
direction. One of us five, who is a priest, has also added
predestination as a cause of that virtue or potency, saying, 'Are not
marriages predestinated? and this being the case, are not the progeny
thence issuing and the means conducive thereto, predestinated also?' He
insisted on adding this cause because he had sworn to it." To this
decision was subscribed the letter B. On hearing it, a certain spirit
observed with a smile, "How fair an apology is predestination for
weakness or impotence!"

106. Presently he drew from the urn a THIRD PAPER, from which he read as
follows: "We, natives of the same country, in our department have
deliberated concerning the causes of the origin of conjugial love, and
have seen this to be the principal, that it is the same with the origin
of marriage, because conjugial love had no existence before marriage;
and the ground of its existence is, that when any one is desperately in
love with a virgin, he desires in heart and soul to possess her as being
lovely above all things; and as soon as she betroths herself to him he
regards her as a