C. S. LEWIS
THE FOUR
LOVES
That our affections kill us not, nor dye,
DONNE
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com
First published in Great Britain by
Geoffrey Bles 1960
Copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd 1960
Cover design and illustration by Kimberly Glyder
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Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007332304
Version: 2015-12-19
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
1 INTRODUCTION
2 LIKINGS AND LOVES FOR THE SUB-HUMAN
3 AFFECTION
4 FRIENDSHIP
5 EROS
6 CHARITY
About the Author
Also in this Series:
About the Publisher
1 INTRODUCTION
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.
And what, on the other hand, can be less like anything we believe of Gods life than Need-love? He lacks nothing, but our Need-love, as Plato saw, is the son of Poverty. It is the accurate reflection in consciousness of our actual nature. We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.
I was looking forward to writing some fairly easy panegyrics on the first sort of love and disparagements of the second. And much of what I was going to say still seems to me to be true. I still think that if all we mean by our love is a craving to be loved, we are in a very deplorable state. But I would not now say (with my master, MacDonald) that if we mean only this craving we are mistaking for love something that is not love at all. I cannot now deny the name love to Need-love. Every time I have tried to think the thing out along those lines I have ended in puzzles and contradictions. The reality is more complicated than I supposed.
First of all, we do violence to most languages, including our own, if we do not call Need-love love. Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience. If you begin by flouting it, it has a way of avenging itself later on. We had better not follow Humpty Dumpty in making words mean whatever we please.
Secondly, we must be cautious about calling Need-love mere selfishness. Mere is always a dangerous word. No doubt Need-love, like all our impulses, can be selfishly indulged. A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow for company. Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless. Where Need-love is felt there may be reasons for denying or totally mortifying it; but not to feel it is in general the mark of the cold egoist. Since we do in reality need one another (it is not good for man to be alone), then the failure of this need to appear as Need-love in consciousness in other words, the illusory feeling that it is good for us to be alone is a bad spiritual symptom; just as lack of appetite is a bad medical symptom because men do really need food.
But thirdly, we come to something far more important. Every Christian would agree that a mans spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But mans love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing for it ought to be growing awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose. I do not say that man can never bring to God anything at all but sheer Need-love. Exalted souls may tell us of a reach beyond that. But they would also, I think, be the first to tell us that those heights would cease to be true Graces, would become Neo-Platonic or finally diabolical illusions, the moment a man dared to think that he could live on them and henceforth drop out the element of need. The highest, says the Imitation, does not stand without the lowest. It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast Im no beggar. I love you disinterestedly. Those who come nearest to a Gift-love for God will next moment, even at the very same moment, be beating their breasts with the publican and laying their indigence before the only real Giver. And God will have it so. He addresses our Need-love: Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden, or, in the Old Testament, Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.