Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 9.djvu/34

 Every love follows a man after death, because it is the esse of his life; and the reigning love which is the head of the rest, remains with him to eternity, and together with it the subordinate loves. They remain, because love is properly of man's spirit, and of the body from the spirit; and man after death becomes a spirit, and thus carries his love with him. And as love is the esse of man's life, it is evident that as the man's life was in the world, such his lot becomes after death.

As to what concerns the love of the sex, it is the universal of all loves, being implanted in man's very soul from creation, from which is the essence of the whole man; and this for the sake of the propagation of the human race. This love chiefly remains, because after death a man is a man, and a woman a woman, and because there is nothing in the soul, mind and body, which is not masculine in the male and feminine in the female; and these two are so created that they earnestly desire conjunction, yea, that they may become one. This is the love of the sex which precedes conjugial love. Now as a conjunctive inclination is inscribed on each and everything of the male and the female, it follows that this inclination cannot be obliterated and even die with the body.

The love of the sex remains such as it was interiorly in the world, because with every man there is an internal and an external, which two are also called the internal and external man; and hence there is internal