1079. It seems to me an error to suppose that the terrestrial marriage can be a secondary object with God, when the important part which it performs is taken into view.
1080. Incapacity to maintain a family often renders it impossible for those who would marry to come together, and worldly motives induce marriages, even when disgust or indifference may exist on the part of one, if not on that of both the parties.
1081. It seems, moreover, even where marriage actually results from the passion of love, that it is more or less the consequence of a species of hallucination, through which lovers deck an object with all that they would wish to exist in the way of merit, and feel toward them an affection proportionate to their own capacity to love, rather than of the degree of power in the object, reasonably to excite such intense partiality. It is thus that the love of the mother to the child she believes to be her own, will be powerful in proportion to her own capacity for maternal love, rather than of the child to excite love; since though it be a monster, and not really her own child, but fraudulently substituted therefor, it will cause no diminution of her maternal devotion.
1082. It is the impression on the mind that determines the object to which the passion is directed; the character of the being actuated by the passion, which determines its strength.
1083. But where to all those qualifications which would create friendship between persons of the same sex, the peculiar emotions which take place between those of different sexes are superadded, those who come together in this world under the hymeneal tie, may find it something more than a mere civil contract, and not terminated by death. Moreover, independently of the original passion, there arises an affection which is justly distinguished as conjugal, and which differs from the other in this highly important particular, that it is founded on a thorough reciprocal knowledge, instead of that ignorance which too often accompanies attachments produced by the arrows of the blind god, as Cupid is sometimes designated with figurative consistency.
1084. Having always supposed that independently of the emotions peculiar to the sexes, there could only be friendship between a man and woman like that which would exist between a brother and sister, I am at a loss to understand what it can be which, in the spiritual state of existence, can induce indissoluble marriage.
1085. On submitting the suggestions comprised in the preceding statement to the spirit to whom I owe much information, herein quoted, and to the spirit of a most intimate male friend, by both it was alleged that peculiar emotions were attendant on sexual affection in the spheres, as well as on earth, so far as consistent with the absence of that which exists in common with brutes.