The Four Loves

Chapter II

The lowest - without which the highest does not stand

The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define.

Where Need-love is left unaided we can hardly expect it not to "die on us" once the need is no more. That is why the world rings with the complaints of mothers whose grown-up children neglect them and of forsaken mistresses whose lovers' love was pure need - which they have satisfied. Our Need-love for God is in a different position because our need of Him can never end either in this world or in any other. But our awareness of it can, and then the Need-love dies too.

Nothing about us except our neediness is, in this life, permanent.

If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exactly the lessons you have already decided to learn; this is only another way of saying that nature does not teach. ... in them each (the images of nature) man can clothe his own belief. We must learn our theology or philosophy elsewhere (not surprisingly, we often learn them from theologians and philosophers). hahahahaha! Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word "glory a meaning for me.

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 must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, or civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up. ... a false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.

Large parts of "the World" will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch.