68.
(vi) All joys and all delights, from first to last, have been conferred on this love.
Whatever pleasures a person feels are the products of his love. By their means love shows itself, or rather,
comes into existence and life. It is well known that pleasures become more intense as love does, and also the more closely the affections of the moment concern the dominant love. Now since conjugial love
is the foundation of all good loves, and since it is imprinted on the smallest details of a person, as shown before, it follows that its pleasures exceed those of all other loves, and the degree to
which it is present and joins itself with them makes those loves yield pleasure. For it enlarges the inmost levels of the mind and those of the body at the same time, as the delightful current of its
stream flows through and opens them up.
[2] The reason why all pleasures, from first to last, are conferred on that love is that its purpose so far excels that of the others. Its purpose is the propagation
of the human race, and so of the heaven of angels. Since this purpose was the ultimate aim of creation, it follows that every kind of blessedness, bliss, pleasure, charm and gratification that
the Lord the Creator could ever confer on a person are concentrated on this love of his. It is obvious that pleasures result from purpose and affect a person in proportion to his love of the purpose,
from considering the pleasures of the five senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Each of these has its own pleasures, which vary depending upon the specific purposes they serve. What then
should the pleasure of conjugial love lack, the purpose of which is something which embraces all other purposes?
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