10756. They went on to say that they can perceive whether anything constituting real marriage exists among those of their nation who are naked; and it was demonstrated that they perceive it from a spiritual idea regarding marriage. That idea, which was conveyed to me, was one in which a likeness of the interior things [in two people] is produced by the joining together of truth and good, thus of faith and charity; and from that joining together as it descends into the body conjugial love springs. For everything belonging to the mind is manifested in some natural form in the body. Thus it is manifested in the form of conjugial love when two people love each other on an interior level and when each is also filled by that love with the desire to will and think as the other does, and so to be together with and joined to the other on the level of interior things belonging to the mind. Consequently spiritual affection belonging to their minds becomes natural affection in the body, clothing itself in the feelings that accompany conjugial love. They also said that nothing whatever of real marriage exists where one man has a number of wives.
