and acknowledge the love of the other, so that when they meet they may unite of themselves?  Who can love what is not love?  Is not conjugial love alone mutual and reciprocal?  If it be not reciprocal, does it not rebound and become nothing?” On hearing this, I asked the two angels from what society of heaven they were?  They said, “We are from the heaven of innocence; we came infants into this heavenly world, and were educated under the Lord’s auspices; and when I became a young man, and my wife, who is here with me, marriageable, we were betrothed and entered into a contract, and were joined under the first favorable impressions; and as we were unacquainted with any other love than what is truly nuptial and conjugial, therefore, when we were made acquainted with the ideas of your thought concerning a strange love directly opposed to our love, we could not at all comprehend it; and we have descended in order to ask you, why you meditate on things that cannot be understood?  Tell us, therefore, how a love, which not only is not from creation, but is also contrary to creation, could possibly exist?  We regard things opposite to creation as objects of no value.”  As they said this, I rejoiced in heart that I was permitted to converse with angels of such innocence, as to be entirely ignorant of the nature and meaning of adultery:  wherefore I was free to converse with them, and I instructed them as follows:  “Do you not know, that there exist both good and evil, and that good is from creation, but not evil; and still that evil viewed in itself is not nothing, although it is nothing of good?  From creation there exists good, and also good in the greatest degree and in the least; and when this least becomes nothing, there rises up on the other side evil:  wherefore there is no relation or progression of good to evil, but a relation and progression of good to a greater and less good, and of evil to a greater and less evil; for in all things there are opposites.  And since good and evil are opposites, there is an intermediate, and in it an equilibrium, in which evil acts against good; but as it does not prevail, it stops in a conatus.  Every man is educated in this equilibrium, which, because it is between good and evil, or, what is the same, between heaven and hell, is a spiritual equilibrium, which, with those who are in it, produces a state of freedom.  From this equilibrium, the Lord draws all to himself; and if a man freely follows, he leads him out of evil into good, and thereby into heaven.  The case is the same with love, especially with conjugial love and adultery:  the latter love is evil, but the former good.  Every man that hears the voice of the Lord, and freely follows, is introduced by the Lord into conjugial love and all its delights and satisfactions; but he that does not hear and follow, introduces himself into adulterous love, first into its delights, afterwards into what is undelightful, and lastly into what is unsatisfactory.”