375.  Everyone knows that a married pair who love each other are interiorly united, and that the essential of marriage is the union of dispositions and minds.  And from this it can be seen that such as their essential dispositions or minds are, such is their union and such their love for each other.  The mind is formed solely out of truths and goods, for all things in the universe have relation to good and truth and to their conjunction; consequently such as the truths and goods are out of which the minds are formed, exactly such is the union of minds; and consequently the most perfect union is the union of minds that are formed out of genuine truths and goods.  Let it be known that no two things mutually love each other more than truth and good do; and therefore it is from that love that true marriage love descends.{1} Falsity and evil also love each other, but this love is afterwards changed into hell.

{Footnote 1} All things in the universe, both in heaven and in the world, have relation to good and truth (n. 2452, 3166, 4390, 4409, 5232, 7256, 10122).  And to the conjunction of these (n. 10555).  Between good and truth there is marriage (n. 1904, 2173, 2508).  Good loves truth, and from love longs for truth and for the conjunction of truth with itself, and from this they are in a perpetual endeavor to be conjoined (n. 9206, 9207, 9495).  The life of truth is from good (n. 1589, 1997, 2572, 4070, 4096, 4097, 4736, 4757, 4884, 5147, 9667).  Truth is the form of good (n. 3049, 3180, 4574, 9154).  Truth is to good as water is to bread (n. 4976).

376.  From what has now been said about the origin of marriage love one may conclude who are in that love and who are not; namely, that those are in marriage love who are in Divine good from Divine truths; and that marriage love is genuine just to the extent that the truths are genuine with which the good is conjoined.  And as all the good that is conjoined with truths is from the Lord, it follows that no one can be in true marriage love unless he acknowledges the Lord and His Divine; for without that acknowledgment the Lord cannot flow in and be conjoined with the truths that are in man.

377.  Evidently, then, those that are in falsities, and especially those that are in falsities from evil, are not in marriage love.  Moreover, those that are in evil and in falsities therefrom have the interiors of their minds closed up; and in such, therefore, there can be no source of marriage love; but below those interiors, in the external or natural man separated from the internal, there can be a conjunction of falsity and evil, which is called infernal marriage.  I have been permitted to see what this marriage is between those that are in the falsities of evil, which is called infernal marriage.  Such converse together, and are united by a lustful desire, but inwardly they burn with a deadly hatred towards each other, too intense to be described.