Here, the incomparable C. Lewis examines human love in four forms: affection, the most basic, general, and emotive; friendship, the most rare, least jealous, and, in being freely chosen, perhaps the most profound; Eros, passionate love that can run counter to happiness and poses real danger; charity, the greatest, most spiritual, and least selfish. Proper love is a risk, but to bar oneself from it—to deny love—is a damning choice.
Love is a need and a gift; love brings joy and laughter. Sign up or Log in to rate this book and submit a review. John B Jul 29, When I first tried to write this book I thought that his maxim would provide me with a very plain highroad through the whole subject.
I thought I should be able to say that human loves deserved to be called loves at all just in so far as they resembled that Love which is God.
The first distinction I made was therefore between what I called Gift-love and Need-love. There was no doubt which was more like Love Himself. Divine Love is Gift-love. The Father gives all He is and has to the Son.
The Son gives Himself back to the Father, and gives Himself to the world, and for the world to the Father, and thus gives the world in Himself back to the Father too. It asks only to be let alone. It becomes In any mind which has a pennyworth of imagination it produces a good attitude towards foreigners. How can I love my what militant only to protect it loves. Frenchmen bacon and eggs the them have where home it. I mean popular imagination; the a particular attitude to to that past as great deeds of it lives in our an- Remember Marathon.
Remember Waterloo. Shakespeare spoke. This feeling has not quite such good credentials as the sheer love of home.
The actual history of every country The and even shameful doings. As snap and be converted into disillusioned cynicism, or may be maintained by a voluntary shutting of the eyes.
But who can con- knowledge increases demn what clearly it may makes many people, at many im- portant moments, behave so much better than they could have done without its help? I think it is possible to be strengthened by the image of the past without being either deceived or puffed up. The image becomes dangerous in the prewhich cise degree to serious it is and systematic mistaken, or substituted, for historical study. The stories when they are handed on and accepted as stories. I do not mean by this that they should be handed on as mere fictions some of them are are best But the emphasis should be on the tale such, on the picture which fires the imagination, after all true as.
Let it for a serious analysis worse of imperial policy, the better. I had a book full of land Story. That a justification I was a child still, When coloured pictures called Our Ishas always seemed to me to title strike exactly the right note.
The book did not look at all like a text-book either. What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that but not likely to if it lasts pernicious educated adult, tion of the is young last is long in an the perfectly serious indoctrinaknowably false or biased history in the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact.
With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the we can belief surely it is very bad biology literally "inherit" a tradition. And that these al- most inevitably lead on to a third thing that is some- times called patriotism. This third thing is not a sentiment but a belief: a firm, even prosaic belief that our own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and still is markedly superior to all others.
I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was aren't we voicing this sort of patriotism, "But, told that every people thinks the bravest and world? It On can however produce asses that kick lunatic fringe shade off into that popular Ra- it may cialism which Christianity and bite.
This brings us to the fourth ingredient. If our nation is really so much better than others it may be held to have either the duties or the rights of a superior being towards them. In the nineteenth century the English became very conscious of such duties: the "white man's burden. We did do them some good. But our habit of talking as if England's motives for acquiring an empire or any youngster's motives for seeking a job in the Indian Civil Service had been mainly altruistic nauseated the world.
And yet this best. To them, some foreigners the rights not the were so bad that one had the right to exterminate them. Others, fitted only to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the chosen people, had better be made to get on with their hewing and drawing. Dogs, know your am from suggesting that the on the same level. But both are fatal. If there were no broken treaties with Redskins, no extermination of the Tasmanians, no gas-chambers and no Belsen, no Amritsar, Black and Tans or Apartheid, the pompos- both would be roaring farce.
Chesterton denies demoniac form unconsciously ity of as the perfect expicked on two lines from Kipling who knew wonderample. It was unfair to Kipling, fully, for so homeless a can mean. But the to sum up If the thing. But she Love never spoke dren only that way. It "if they're is ain't! She gratifies she ceased to be such? And this is a phenomenon which will meet us again. When the natural loves become lawless they do not merely do harm to other loves; they themselves cease to be the loves they were be loves at all.
Patriotism has, then, reject it entirely place. Those who would do not seem to have considered what will certainly step its to into has already begun to step or yet, perhaps forever, For a long time nations will live in danger. Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to pre- pare for their defence.
Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for "their country" they that they are spending must be made to them for justice, or feel civilisa- or humanity. This is a step down, not up. Patriotic sentiment did not of course need to disregard ethics.
Good men needed to be convinced that their tion, country's cause was just; but it was still as such. I may without selfrighteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretend- ing that blacked his eye purely on moral grounds I wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in quesI become insufferable.
The pretence when England's cause is just we are on as some neutral Don Quixote might England's side tion was mine that be for that reason alone, nonsense draws evil after is it. If equally spurious. And our country's cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A transcendence false veiy much The could itself is given to things which are of this world. The hero's death was not to be a sentiment. And delightfully the same sentiment which could be so serious in a rear- guard action could also in peacetime take itself as lightly as all happy loves often do.
It could laugh at itself. Our older patriotic songs cannot be sung without a twinkle in the eye; later ones sound more like hymns. This terrible subject would require a book to itself. Here Heavenly Society will it is also be enough to say that the an earthly society. Our merely natural patriotism towards the latter can very easily borrow the transcendent claims of the former and use them to actions.
If ever the write is written it book which sum of human cruelty am I must be the Christendom of Christendom's to the most abominable justify the full disowned much of our We have shouted the name confession by specific contribution and treachery. Why service of Moloch. But It may be that will fit in better in the next. Whether animals are in fact sub-personal or not, they are never loved as if they were.
The fact or the illusion of personality is always present, so that love for them instance of that Affection which is is really an the subject of the following chapter.
Let me add at once that I do not on that account give it a lower value. Nothing worse or better for being shared with the beasts. When we usually most mean that he call hu- him "brutal" we cruelties impossible to real brutes; they're not clever enough.
The Greeks and the g tion. I shall here call it simply Affec- Greek Lexicon defines storge as "affection, is especially of parents to offspring"; but also of off- spring to parents. And that, I have no doubt, original form of the thing as well as the central is the mean- ing of the word. The importance of this image is that presents us it The Need at the very outset with a certain paradox.
She gives birth, gives suck, gives protection. On the other hand, she must give birth or She must give suck or suffer. That way, her Affection too is a Need-love. There is the paradox. It is a die. Need-love but what but it it needs needs to be needed. It We shall a Gift-love is have to return to more in our this point.
But even in animal Affection extends far and own, beyond the relation of mother life, still and young. This warm comfortableness, this satisfac- tion in being together, takes in all sorts of objects.
It is indeed the least discriminating of loves. There are women for whom we can predict few wooers and men who are likely to have few friends. They have nothing But almost anyone can become an object of Affection; the ugly, the stupid, even the exasperating.
There need be no apparent fitness between those it unites. I have seen it felt for an imbecile not whom only by his parents but by his brothers. It ignores even the barriers of species. Gilbert WMte claims it between a horse and a hen.
In Tristram Shandy "my and Uncle Toby are so father" from being united by any community of interests or ideas that they cannot converse for ten minutes without cross-purposes; but we are made to feel their far deep mutual affection. So too, though probably without the author's conscious intention, in The Wind in the Willows; the quaternion of Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad suggests the amazing heterogeneity possible between those who are bound by Affection.
But Affection has be its own criteria. Its objects have We can sometimes point to the very day and hour when we fell in love or began a new friendship. I doubt if we ever catch Affection begin- to ning. To become aware of it is to become aware that has already been going on for some time. The use of "old" or vieux as a term of Affection is significant.
The child will love a crusty old gardener who has hardly ever taken any notice of it and shrink from the visitor who is making every attempt to win its regard. Affection, as I have said, no is the humblest love. It gives People can be proud of being "in even love," or of friendship.
Affection is modest I had remarked furtive and shame-faced. Once when itself on the airs. But I bet no dog would ever confess it to the other dogs. Now Affechomely face. So have many of those stay at tion has a very whom we feel it. What I have called Appreciative love is no basic element in Affection. Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and It fits frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move.
It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine. Affection almost slinks or seeps through our lives. I must Affection as at it is once correct myself. I am talking of when it exists apart from the other loves. It often does so exist; often not. To make a friend is not the same as become affectionate. But when your friend has become an old friend, all those things about him whict to had originally nothing to come familiar do with the friendship be- and dear with familiarity.
As for erotic can imagine nothing more disagreeable than to experience it for more than a very short time withlove, I out this homespun clothing of affection. That would be a most uneasy condition, either too angelic or too animal or each by turn; never quite great enough or enough for man. There is indeed a peculiar charm, both in friendship and in Eros, about those little moments when Appreciative love lies, curled up asleep, and the mere ease and of the relationship as it were, ordinariness free as solitude, yet neither is alone wraps us round.
No need to talk. No need to make love. No needs at all except perhaps to stir the fire. In modern England friendship no longer uses it, but Affection and Eros do. It be- longs so fully to both that we cannot now tell which borrowed it from the other or whether there were bor- rowing at To be all.
Yes; but not all kisses between lovers are both these loves tend ems to use a "little and it lovers' kisses. Professor Lorenz has told us that when jackdaws are amorous this is their calls "consist chiefly of infantile adult by jackdaws Solomon's Ring, same excuse.
One of the most remarkable by-products of Affection has not yet been mentioned. I have said that not primarily an Appreciative love. It is not discriminating.
It can "rub along" with the most un- is promising people. Yet oddly enough this very fact means that it can in the end make appreciations pos- but for it, might never have existed. That why friends and lovers feel that they were "made is one another. If Affection grows out of this often does not of course their eyes begin to open. The moment when it, that though he is not a very good man "in his own one of liberation.
It does not feel like that; we first meaning man" he is only tolerant and indulgent. But really we have crossed a frontier. That "in his own way" may feel means that crasies, that we are getting beyond our own idiosynwe are learning to appreciate goodness or intelligence in themselves, not merely goodness or intelligence flavoured and served to suit our own palate. You might as well say I prove yourself in the outer world. The answer is the same in "You chose those books.
You chose Of course they suit you. In The humanity whom one my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us to appreciate, the people first to notice, then who "happen Thank God, for us? And now we Affection, I are drawing near the point of danger. Affection can love the unattractive: God and His saints love the unlovable. Affection is opens our eyes to goodness we could not have seen, or should not have appreciated without it.
So does humble not simply one of the natural loves but Love Himself working in our human hearts and Affection is we dwelled exclusively on these we might be led on to believe that this sanctity. If resemblances is the law. Were the Victorian novelists right after all? Is love of this sort really enough?
Are the fulfilling when "domestic affections," development, the The answer to in their best and fullest same thing these all as the Christian life?
I do not mean simply that those novelists sometimes wrote as if they had never heard the text about "hating" wife and mother and one's own life also. That of course is true.
The rivaky between all natural and the love of God loves dare not forget. How many of these "happy homes" really exist? Worse still; are all the unhappy ones unhappy be- For the moment our business cause Affection is absent? I believe not. Nearly all characteristics of this love are ambivalent. They present, work for ill follow life. They are Symptomatic of this, odious because of their falsity.
They represent as a ready-made recipe for bliss and even for goodness what is in fact only an opportunity. There is no hint we have to do anything: only let Affection pour over us like a warm shower-bath and all, it is implied, will be well. I begin with the Need our craving for the Affection of others.
Now there is a clear reason love-cravings, easily I why this craving, of all becomes the most unreasonable. Yes; egregious Mr. Similarly, at the beginning of King Lear the hero is shown as a very unlovable old man devoured with a ravenous appetite am for Affection. I driven to literary examples because you, the reader, and I do not live in the same neighbourhood; if we did, there would unfortunately be no difficulty about replacing them with ex- amples from real life.
The thing happens every day. We all know that we must do something, if not to merit, at least to attract, erotic And we love or friendsMp. But Affection be provided, "laid-on," it.
Much has been "built-in. Because we are a social species familiar association provides a milieu in wMch, if all goes well, Affection and grow strong without demanding any very sMning qualities in its objects. If it is given us it will not necessarily be given us on our merits; we will arise may get it with very ception of the truth far beyond their little many deserts From a perare loved with Affection dim trouble.
There we have is I, if, on a man by having no no question of I, without desert, far higher plane, we merit has a right to merit, am entitled to rights in either case. What not "a right to expect" but a "reasonable expectation" of being loved by our intimates if we, and is not be. But we be intolerable. If we are, "na- more or they, are We may work less against us. For the very same condi- which make Affection possible also make possible a peculiarly naturally tions of intimacy and no less incurable distaste; a hatred as immemorial, constant, unemphatic, almost at times unconscious, as the corresponding form of love.
Siegfried, in the opera, could not remember a time before every shuffle, mutter, and fidget of his dwarfish foster-father had be- come odious. We never catch this kind any more than Affection, at the moment of hatred, of its be- ginning.
It was always there before. Notice that old a term of wearied loathing as well as of endearment: "at his old tricks," "in his old way," "the same is old thing. In so far as Affection, Lear is is lacking in Need-love he is it.
Unless, in his own way, he loved he would not so desperately desire their The most unlovable parent or child may be half -crazy with his daughters love. If loved their The becomes situation people are already unlovable a con- demand on tinual else's. They seal up the very fountain for which they are thirsty. If ever, at some favoured moment, any germ of Affection for them stirs in us, their demand for more and still more petri- us again. And of course such people always desire the same proof of our love; we are to join their to hear and share side, their grievance against someone else.
If my boy really loved me he would see how fies Ms selfish father is And he like. That cheery old reprobate only meant, "If want you to attract the girls you must be attractive," but his maxim has a wider application. The amorist was wiser in his generation than Mr. Pontifex and King Lear. Sometimes one sees a woman's girlhood, youth and long years of her maturity up to the verge of old age and perhaps supporting, a maternal vampire who can never be and obeyed enough.
The sacrifice caressed all spent in tending, obeying, caressing, but there are two opinions about that may be beautiful; the old woman who exacts it is not. The "built-in" or unmerited character of Affection thus invites a hideous misinterpretation. We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris- ing generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.
Who meals has not been the embarrassed guest at family where the father or mother treated their grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered to any other young people, would simply have terminated the acquaintance?
Dogmatic assertions on matters which the children understand and their elders don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, young take seriously sometimes of their religion insulting references to their friends, all provide an easy answer to the question ridicule of things the "Why Why do home? A chap can't be always all, on Ms best behaviour. If a man can't be himself in that his own house, where can he? Of course we don't want Company Manners at home.
We're a happy family. We can say anything to one another here. No one minds. We Once again Affection all understand. But old clothes are one thing; to wear the same shirt till it stank would be another.
There are proper clothes for a garden party; but the clothes for home must be proper own way. Similarly there is a distinction between public and domestic courtesy. The root principle of both is the same: "that no one too, in their different give any kind of preference to himself. There are "rules" of good manners. The more intimate the occasion, the less the formalisation; but not therefore the less need of courtesy.
At home a ritual public kind. Hence the old proverb "come live with iar me and manners you'll first know me. Those who leave their manners behind them when they come home from the dance or the sherry icantly odious phrase! They were "We can say anything to one another. You may bosom when she has inadvertently drunk own. You may roar down as "Pig! You can say You may "Shut up. I want to read. He then uses them spitefully in obedience to his resentments; or obedience to his egoism; or at best stupidly, lacking the art.
And aH the tame he may have a clear conscience. He knows that Affection ruthlessly in takes liberties. He concludes he is and he is Therefore he liberties. Resent anything will say that the defect of love is on your He is hurt. He has been misunderstood. He then sometimes avenges himself by side. So we are not to his be We intimate? I are behave to had hoped like mere but no matter. Precisely what suits the one may be a breach of the other.
To it be free and easy when you are presented to some eminent stranger is bad manners; to practice formal and ceremonial in private places" and is bad manners. There is home at courtesies "public faces always intended to be is a delicious illustration of good domestic manners in Tristram Shandy. At a singularly unsuitable moment Uncle Toby has really been holding forth on tion. My Father at once repents.
There is an apol- ogy, a total reconciliation. Uncle Toby, to show how complete is Ms forgiveness, to show that he is not on his dignity, resumes the lecture on fortification. But we have not yet touched on jealousy. I suppose no one now believes that jealousy is especially anyone does, the behaviour of children, employees, and domestic animals ought soon to undeceive him. Every kind of connected with erotic love.
If almost every kind of association, is liable to The jealousy of Affection is closely connected with love, it. So also with is the total, or relative, unimportance for Affection of what I call Appreciative love.
Change is a threat to Affection. They same trees, been pirates or spacemen together, taken is up and abandoned stamp-collecting at the same moment. Then a dreadful thing happens. One of them ahead discovers poetry or science or serious or music perhaps undergoes a religious conversion. The other behind. I doubt whether infidelity of a wife or husband raises a more miserable sense of desertion or a fiercer jealousy than this can sometimes do.
It is not yet jealousy of the new friends whom That will self of this come; the deserter will soon be making. The new interest is "all siEy nonsense," contexts. Presently the books will be hidden, the scientific specimens he's destroyed, the radio forcibly switched off the classical programmes. For Affection is the most instinctive, in that sense the most animal, of the loves; fierce. It snarls is its jeal- and bares its proportionately teeth like a dog whose food has been snatched away.
And why would it not? Something or someone has ousy snatched away from the child I am picturing his long food, his second self. His world is in ruins. This thought, simply the innate and, as which one has gone were, it interested hatred of darkness for light. It is the reaction to a desertion, even to robbery. Someone or something has stolen "our" boy or girl.
He who was one of Us has become one of Them. What right had anybody to do it? He is ours. But once change has thus begun, who knows where it will end? And we all so happy and comfortable before and doing no harm to no one! Sometimes a curious double jealousy is felt, or rather two inconsistent jealousies which chase each other round in the sufferer's mind.
How the deserter has really entered a new world which the rest of us never suspected? But, if so, how un- were anything in if fair!
Why was it never opened to us? Whatever the desertef s they can always claim that they have been through it themselves and come out the other end. It cannot be there and then refuted, for it is a statement about the future. It stings, yet Better still, all, it be may so indulgently said is hard to resent. Best of finally turn their fault if it out to have been true. It won't doesn't. Affection wounded when one member was of the family bitterly fell from the homely ethos into something worse gambling, drink, keeping an opera girl.
Unfortunately it is al- most equally possible to break your mother's heart by rising above the homely ethos. The conservative tenacity of Affection works both ways. It can be a domestic counterpart to that nationally suicidal type of education which keeps back the promising child and dunces might be "hurt" if it were undemocratically moved into a higher class than because the idlers themselves.
All these perversions of Affection are mainly connected with Affection as a Need-love. Fidget, months ago. The drawn look has gone from her husband's face; he begins to be able to laugh. The younger whom boy, embittered, peevish quite human. The home except little I had always thought an turns out to be creature, who was elder, when he was in bed, hardly ever at is nearly always now and has begun to reorganise the garden.
The girl, who was always supposed to be "delicate" there though I never found out what exactly the trouble was , now has the riding lessons which were once out of the question, dances all night, and plays any amount of tennis. Even the dog who was never allowed out except on a lead is now a well-known member of the Lamp-post Club in their road. Fidget very often said that she lived for her family. And it was not untrue. Everyone bourhood knew said; it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and always a hot meal at night even in midsummer.
They implored her not to provide this. They protested almost with tears in their eyes and with truth that they liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was She always sat up to "welcome" you home if you were out late at night; two or three in the morning, it made no odds; you would living for her family.
Which meant of course that you couldn't with, any decency go out very often. She was always making things too; being in her own estimation I'm no judge myself an excellent amateur dressmaker and a great knitter.
And of course, you were a heartless brute, you had to wear things. The Vicar tells me that, since her death, unless the the contributions of that family alone to "sales of work" outweigh those of all his other parishioners put together. And then her care for their health! She bore the whole burden of that daughter's "delicacy" The Doctor an old friend, and it was not bedone on National Health was never allowed to alone. After the briefest examination of her, he was taken into another room by the mother.
The girl was to have no worries, no responsibility for her caresses, special own foods, health. For Mrs. Fidget, as she so often said, would "work her fingers to the bone" for her family. They being decent people do it. Nor could couldn't stop her. They had quite sit still to help. Indeed they they and watch her were always hav- ing to help.
That is, they did things for her to help her to do things for them which they didn't want done. As for the dear dog, it was to her, she said, "Just like one of the children. The Vicar hope she is. Let us says Mrs. Fidget What's quite certain is that her family are. It is easy to see how this state is, so to liability to in the maternal instinct. This, as speak, congenital we saw, is a Gift-love, but one that needs to give; But the proper aim of to put the recipient in a state where he no therefore needs to be needed.
It must work towards its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when ing. But the instinct, simply in its own nature, we can say "They need has no power to the good of it can its fulfil this law. The instinct desires the object, but not simply; only itself give. A much higher love good a love which good of the object as such, from whatever must step in and help or source that good comes tame the instinct before it can make the abdication.
It will do this all the more ruthlessly because it thinks in one sense truly that it is a Gift-love and therefore regards itself as "unselfish.
All those other Affections which, whether by derivation from parental instinct or by similarity of function, need to be needed may fall into the same pit. The Affection of patron for protege is one. In Jane Austen's novel, intends that Harriet Smith should have a Emma but only the sort of happy life which herself has planned for her. My own profes- happy life; Emma that of a university teacher sion If dangerous. I am old enough to remember the sad No university boasted a more or devoted teacher.
Naturally, and delighthim after the tutorial fully, they continued to visit had ended went round to his house of an evening and had famous discussions. But the curious relation thing is that this never lasted. After that he would always be engaged. They were banished from him forever. This was because, at their last meeting, they had differed serted their independence They had asfrom the master rebelled. Faced with that very independence which he had laboured to produce and which it was his duty to if produce Wotan had he could, Dr.
Quartz could not bear it. Quartz was an unhappy man. This terrible need to be needed often finds let in is tells us very out- that someone little until we know pampering an animal. Lewis Free Download pages Author C. Lewis Submitted by: Jane Kivik. Read Online Download. Hot The Four Loves by C. Lewis by C. Great book, The Four Loves pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone.
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