320. III. THAT IN THE CASE OF THOSE WITH WHOM THERE HAD BEEN NO LOVE TRULY CONJUGIAL, THERE IS NOTHING TO PREVENT AND HINDER THEM FROM AGAIN CONTRACTING MATRIMONY. In the case of those with whom there had been no conjugial love, there is no spiritual or internal bond but only a natural or external; and if an internal bond does not hold the external bond in its order and tenor, the latter does not endure, any more than a bundle with the fastening removed, which falls apart according to its weight or the wind. The reason is because the natural takes its origin from the spiritual, and in its existence is nothing else than a mass gathered together from things spiritual. If then the natural is separated from the spiritual which produced and, as it were, begot it, it is no longer held together inwardly but only outwardly, and this by the spiritual which surrounds and binds it in general but does not colligate it in every single part and hold it colligated. Hence it is that the natural separated from the spiritual does not effect any conjunction of minds with two married partners, nor consequently of wills, but only a conjunction of certain external affections which cohere with the senses of the body. [2] That in the case of such partners, there is nothing to prevent and hinder them from again contracting matrimony, is because they did not have the essentials of marriage and hence there are none within them after separation by death. Therefore they are then in entire freedom to tie their sensual affections, if a widower with any woman who is pleasing and lawful to him, and if a widow with any man in like manner. They themselves think of marriage only naturally and from its conveniences in respect to various external necessities and utilities [which, having been lost] by death, can be restored by another person in place of the former; and perhaps, if their interior thoughts were perceived, as they are in the spiritual world, there might not be found in them any distinction between conjugial conjunctions and extra-conjugial copulations. [3] For such persons, it is lawful to marry again and again, and this for the reason mentioned above; for after death, merely natural conjunctions are dissolved and fall apart of themselves, because at death external affections follow the body and are buried with it, those alone remaining which are coherent with the internal affections. But it should be known that marriages which are inwardly conjunctive can hardly be entered into on earth, for there the choice of internal similitudes cannot be provided by the Lord as it is in the heavens, the choice being limited in many ways, as, for instance, to those who are equals in station and condition, in the country, city, and village of one's residence; and there, for the most part, it is external things that bind them together, and not internal, for the latter do not come out until some time after marriage, and they become known only when they present themselves in externals.
