LOVE IDEALS

R. H. Crowther

Christian and Greek

THE SYMPOSIUM, from which

ONE has recently published

a series of four extracts, explains as clearly as can be found anywhere the Socratic conception of love. Briefly, love was represented as that activity of character which seeks the good, and also for that environment of beauty in which the good may be creatively expressed. There was no attempt to evade the fact that this love, in human experience involves greater or lesser degrees of sexual desire-greater in those who seek only in the physical world for expressions of good and beauty, lesser in those who seek goodness and beauty as principals of a universal nature. Also, since love is love of what one does not yet possess, the Socratic concept plainly includes in love a principle of spiritual acquisition, possession, and growth.

This growth was to be achieved, first, through appreciation of all particular examples of the good and the beautiful in life; next, through the mental effort of generalizing from a diversity of examples, and of reaching an inner awareness of good and beauty as universal qualities, inhering in every evidence of creation and growth; lastly, by the desire to conform one's own life and character to the qualities thus inwardly perceived.

The sense of oneness-in-diversity, of universal qualities common to all of creation which may be discovered through the study of their manifold expressions, is implied in much of Greek philosophical thought. Socrates

himself appeared to consider love as a mode or activity of consciousness quite indispensable in human attachments as, in fact, the sole means by which physical forms of affection could be justified and transcended, and growth in the specific human virtues attained.

In Greek philosophy, ideas of monotheism and of the unity of creation are more suggested than openly asserted or clearly developed. Perhaps this is because Greek thought was a product more of reason than of inspiration, and therefore was never quite secure in those truths which must be sensed 'first through the heart, rather than by the mind. The Christ teaching, on the other hand, is first and foremost a teaching of convictions, in respect to which reason can supply nothing more than rational support for intuitive certainties, for basic perceptions and revelations which must be self-evident in order to be evident at all. In place of the supreme diety of Socrates, unseen and worshipped from afar, we are shown God, the immanent and indwelling Spirit, the Light, "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Here, the many attributes of perfected human character are not represented in terms of reasoned contrasts and definitions, but as a priori qualities of thought, attitude, or conduct, each to be understood in a direct, underived way. These qualities refer, variously, to relationships between the individual and the indwelling Father, or between two or

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more individuals, or else they refer to the qualifications of character which enable the servant of God to do God's will for him or for her.

The Aramaic term translated "love" occurs quite frequently in the public teachings of Jesus, and is the sole verb of the two Great Commandments (see Matt. 22:37-40), One cannot doubt, therefore, the unrivalled importance of the love-principle in the teachings of the Master. Interpreting the Great Commandments broadly, love is seen first as the means of active unity between the conscious individual and the indwelling spirit, and therefore the means for "growth in God." Next, love is seen as love of oneself-inGod, with the injunction that one is to love one's neighbor (both equally and in the same manner) as oneself. That this love includes a knowing, understanding approach to all of life's phenomena seems clearly implied in the entire Gospel context. That it also leads to knowledge of the unity of life is assured through the wholly unitary and spiritual conception of the Creator. Whereas in Greek thought, one was to love the good (or what seems to be good) because it somehow led one in the direction of God, in the teaching of the Christ one is to love God as the sole means of discerning what goodness is. There is a radical dissimilarity here, one which exposes weakness of all philosophical methods which fail to build around the religious center.

It would be difficult to suppose Jesus to have been unaware of the sensual inclinations in human life, as elements distinct from, but often associated with the conscious loveprinciple. His teaching very plainly is, however, that it is the absence of love which is the real blight upon the human spirit, not the presence of

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sensuality-that, of these two distinct aspects of the creative impulse which coexist in human nature, it is love which embraces the conscious, knowing elements, and which is therefore the disciplining and even the sublimating factor. In this respect, the Christian and Greek ideals, so profoundly at variance in other respects, seem to run a parallel course.

Love. in the Christ-ethic, is a wholly unifying and constructive power in which anything alien is unreal, without basic support, doomed to extinction, and therefore beneath serious attention. When Socrdtes was accused by persons far smaller than he in intellectual and moral stature, he felt it necessary to justify himself in what is reported to have been a lengthy, dignified, and deeply touching effort at selfappraisal. Under similar circumstances, Jesus kept a regal silence, and a total aloofness from the ways and designs of the adversary. We should not need to question which of these two showed a perfect expression of the principle of love.