Love
Dion Fortune
“If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Rudyard Kipling
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools …”
Two thousand years ago in Galilee the Gospel of Love was given to the world, and since that day it has ever appealed to the best and noblest impulses that are in human hearts and called them forth to action. Slowly as the world moves, nevertheless it has moved; and the Law of Compassion is leavening human life. So far have we come, in fact, that there is need to re-assess our values, for the word love has become a shibboleth – a password devoid of significance in the minds of those who utter it. It is not enough to cry ‘Love, Love’, we must know what love means, what it does, and how it does it, otherwise we may stray so far through misunderstanding that our love becomes changed and bears
the fruits, not of the spirit, but of human folly.
I very well remember two things being said upon different occasions which made a great impression upon me at the time, because they set me thinking. The first of these I heard when I was quite young, and I had the opportunity of watching its issue in practice. “Love is all. Love must prevail and conquer in the end.” I watched that doctrine of self-sacrificing love sincerely lived over a number of years, and it did not prevail. The sacrifices were thrown away and the love met no reward.
Is the gospel of love untrue? No, it is not; but in this, as in so many other matters, people lose their sense of proportion. Love is not all. No one single factor ever can be all. We live in a manifold world, created and sustained by a triune God. There will always be three factors in every problem, and it is in the right – balancing and proportion of these factors that the solution lies.
The problem was wrongly stated. It was as if my friend had said that there was only one line essential to a triangle – the basal line; and that if we only sufficiently lengthened the basal line we must inevitably produce a perfect triangle. A triangle consists of three lines in a certain definite relationship to each other, and not one of these is necessarily the basal line; moreover, there are three possible types of triangle.
Or again, if three elements are necessary to a certain chemical process, it is useless to increase the proportion of one in order to make up for the absence of another. In a world where pastry is made with flour, water, and fat, it is useless to bake large quantities of pure water in the hope of producing a pie.
So it was with my poor friend. To the solution of her problem she brought one factor only – pure love, and love alone could not solve that problem. It needed wisdom and it needed strength; and if she had had the strength to grip her nettle, she would never have found herself faced with the problems in which love without wisdom involved her. A mulish tenacity of love is no substitute for wisdom.
Again I asked myself, – Why is she loving so pertinaciously? An onlooker would say that she would do far better to reckon she had made a bad bargain and cut her loss, but there are none so blind as those who won’t see. It seemed to me that she was loving because she had an emotional nature and wanted an outlet. Those she loved were, according to custom, her property in love, and the fact that the divergence of temperament was so wide that mutual sympathy and understanding were impossible, did not affect her concept of her rights. Custom and convention dictated that she and they should love each other, and she simply asserted her rights. I asked myself – Is this what the beloved disciple meant when he wrote, “My little children, I would that you should love one another?” Or is it not rather sublimated sensuality and the spirit of the dog in the manger.
The other incident to which I referred throws light op another aspect of the love problem. I once set out upon a crusading enterprise to right certain grave abuses, and one of those upon whom I counted for assistance stipulated as the price of her support that “No one must be hurt. We cannot succeed unless we are loving.”
And I again asked myself – Is this a possible basis on which to conduct life? Are we required always so. to act that “no one is ever hurt”? Are vested interests endowed with Divine right? Is no one ever to be forcibly dislodged from a position which they have taken up?
If these two people were right in their concept of the Law of Love, and their attitude is very far from exceptional, there is something very wrong with the world as God made it, where love so obviously is not enough. “By their fruits ye shall know them”. What were the fruits of these two good women’s love? There were no fruits. Their lives could be described by only one word – ineffectual.
Now these are hard sayings, but if we are to arrive at any right understanding of things, we must break up shibboleths and get at the truth. It is not because I wish to see the gospel of love abrogated that I draw attention to these things, but because I want to see it rehabilitated. It is because of such extravagances as these that it has come into disrepute with people who think for themselves and do not accept shibboleths at face value. We have only to look around us to see that love is not enough. Browning speaks of the loving woman –
“With her gentle, vain endeavour,
And goodness unrepaid as ever”
The novels of Dickens invariably draw their pathos from the bitter experiences of gentle and loving natures who are only saved from their inevitable fate by the mercy of the novelist in the last chapter. It is only by getting away from the false, the sentimental concept of love that we shall ever be able to arrive at the true concept, a concept which will work in this world of men, women, and natural forces.
Pure love is like pure gold, it is too soft for any of the uses of life. It must have an alloy of wisdom and courage, and without these it is of no practical use whatsoever and defeats its own ends.
We have examples of these two types of love- the pure and the alloyed, in the two women who David Copperfield married – Dora, the dearly loved child-wife, and Agnes, the woman who finally brought him happiness. Although Dora’s nature was compounded of undiluted love, she made a very unsatisfactory wife.
Equally it is a false concept that love should never give pain. Love would never give unnecessary pain, but there are many occasions in life in which a lesser pain must be inflicted in order to save a greater pain. Is there anything more cruel than to let a child grow up undisciplined and untrained, and then throw it defenceless upon life to meet the harsh treatment the world metes out to such a nature? Who does the child the greatest kindness, the parent who indulges it, or the parent who disciplines it and insists that the burdens of life shall be shouldered, enforcing the insistence with a slipper if need be? Who is the most humane, the man who gives a merciful death to an animal he cannot keep, or the one who turns it adrift to die by inches? How often is love made an excuse for shirking a painful duty?
Who sheds the most happiness around them, the loving, or the honest? It is not the custom to laud honesty, but is there a higher ideal than the cheerful and adequate fulfilling of all one’s obligations? How often in life is it necessary to follow behind the loving person, unwinding the tangles which his unthinking kind-heartedness has made, and compensating Peter, who has been robbed in order to bestow charity upon Paul?
Love is essential to the right conduct of life, but love is very far from being the whole of life.
Love is essential to the right conduct of life, but love is very far from being the whole of life. It is the people whose emotions are stronger than their judgement who try to convince us and themselves that if only they love enough, all will come right. It is the people who lack the necessary courage to take a situation in hand who cling to the doctrine that love is the universal solvent.
Love is only too often made an excuse for postponing the inevitable day of reckoning which comes when justice is outraged, even if the victim voluntarily foregoes his redress. But come it will, in due course, bearing compound interest on the delay. Love will not solve the problem then. It is a clear head and a strong hand that are needed when that day comes. There is only one possible basis of life, and that is justice, and love cannot weigh the scales against it indefinitely.
Love is the lubricant of life, and without love the machinery of life will overheat from friction, and ‘seize up’; but love is no substitute for the other qualities which go to the making of the complete whole of human existence, and while recognising the power of love, we must also recognise its limitations.