ANGELIC WISDOM

CONCERNING

THE DIVINE LOVE.

PART I.

1. LOVE IS THE LIFE OF MAN. A person is aware that love exists, but does not understand its nature. They know it exists from how the word is used in common speech, such as when it is said, "Such a person loves me," "the king loves his subjects and subjects love their king," "the husband loves his wife and the mother her children," and the reverse original: "vice versa". It is also used when it is said that this or that person loves their country, their fellow citizens, or their neighbor; and similarly when it is said of things apart from people that we love this or that thing. Nevertheless, although the word "love" is so commonly used, hardly anyone knows what love actually is. While meditating on it, because one cannot form a clear mental concept of it, he says either that it is nothing real, or that it is merely something that flows in through sight, hearing, touch, and conversation, and thereby affects him. He is completely unaware that love is his very life—not only the general life of his whole body and all his thoughts, but also the life of every specific detail within them. A wise person may perceive this from the following questions: If you remove the affection original: "affection"; in this context, the specific feeling or outward expression that springs from a person's underlying love that comes from love, can you think about anything? Can you do anything? As the affection belonging to love grows cold, do not thought, speech, and action also grow cold? And as it is warmed, are they not also warmed? A wise person perceives this not from a theoretical knowledge that love is the life of man, but from the actual experience of this fact.

2. No one knows what the life of a human being is unless they know it is love. If this is not known, one person may believe that human life consists only in feeling and acting, and another that it consists in thinking; however, thought is actually the first effect of life, and sensation and action are the second. It is said that thought is the first effect of life, but thought exists in different degrees—inner and more