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Love

Love 1400 579 SIL_NE_Admin

Love

Dion Fortune

Rudyard Kipling

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.

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.

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