Love, the Law of Life

Creation is effort. It is the effort that waits not for the ebullient urge from within, but spontaneously seeks for expression. 3

Love is effort. Even physical love requires effort. Physical love is expressed when ants and bees fly in the air. The one who loves must needs strive. The love of a husband toward his wife is his expression of himself to his wife: his love reaches out to her. As it is said, ‘‘Not that we loved God,-but that he first loved us,’”’ so God’s creation is made complete in me. The love inspired merely by the beauty of a woman. is not genuine love. Love is a creation which rises a degree higher; it is the lover expressing his personality to his beloved. Jesus said, ‘‘As I love you, so ye must love one another.’’ Love is active; it has initiative; / - it is creative. Unless we advance to creative love, we/ fail to know what true love is.

Here emerges forgiveness of sin. Forgiving love is God’s creation; and when God’s creative power which formed heaven and earth comes into me, there is born in my heart the love that forgives the sinner.

This, then, is the origin of the new love. It was for this end that Jesus gave his new commandment.

The love which Christianity teaches has been criticized as something soft and weak. Nietzsche says, “Christianity demands that we love sinners. That takes its start from a love for sin. Failing to respect superior persons, and saving the inferior, which ought rather to be rejected and excluded—this must, after all, be regarded as unwarranted meddling. If that is what you call love, then it is a flabby, decadent love. Such love is an obstacle to human development.”

Are criticisms such as this really pertinent? On the one hand there are those who array the facts of the struggle for existence and uphold the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, while on the other hand there are those who, like Jesus, maintain the necessity for sacrifice, even for the sake of enemies. Which is really right, love for others or love for self; struggle for existence or mutual aid? Modern youth is standing at the fork of the road, doubting.”

Jesus did not deny the fact of struggle for existence. This is clearly shown by his declaration, “For he who has, to him shall more be given, while as for him who has not, from him shall be taken even what he thinks he has.’”! But Jesus, while recognizing the fact of the struggle for existence, did not simply pass over it in silence. Rather, he pointed out that for the sake of those who had nothing and were likely to lose even the little they had, for their sake it was necessary for some to make sacrifices. But if Jesus on the one hand recognized the fact of struggle for existence and on the other hand taught that it was necessary for the strong to sacrifice themselves for the weak, was he not self-contradictory? And, further, what is the connection between these two aspects of the problem?

One evening a student came to me with this argument: “‘When I think about the struggle for existence and then about the matter of food, I feel that it is entirely wrong for men to kill and eat animals, or even to eat plants. I agree with the principle of mercy in Buddhism which absolutely forbids the killing of a single living creature. So I am trying to escape from appetite. But here you are teaching daily that God is merciful. I ask, how can a man who believes that God is merciful indulge in meat eating?’”’ Thus we find young men in serious doubt. To teach that God is love and at the same time insist upon the fact of struggle for existence, is undoubtedly a philosophical inconsistency. As a matter of fact, however, Jesus himself had no philosophy of love. Yet is it not quite as much a matter of fact that love requires no phi- losophy? Love is rather actual practice, and therein is its strength. Jesus loved men without formulating any theory of love.

In modern times the study of love has made advances. Schopenhauer in his The World as Will and Idea endeavored to account philosophically for the strength of physical love. He says that what we perceive, either consciously or unconsciously, as physical love is after all the actual will of the unconscious universe awakening within the ego called man. I am aware of love in my heart which, though seemingly my own love, is not so in fact, but is the unconscious Universal Will causing me to love. It is to this that physical love owes its power. If it were my own passion merely, I could by sheer will power throw it off and free myself from it completely; but the fact that in spite of my effort to get free from it, I am unable to do so, shows that after all it is due to a Universal Will which controls me. The Universal Will, goading me on, causes an irresistible passion to surge within me. Thus is begotten the blindness of physical love. Schopenhauer in this fashion probed deeply into the metaphysical.

Schopenhauer’s contention that love for another is not the self loving, but rather the Universal Will causing one to love, agrees completely with John’s affirmation that ‘Love lies in this, not in our love for him but in his love for us... and love for him is complete in us.’! It cannot be maintained that we have discovered a special instinct of love. Love is the upsurge of a certain power from the depths of our being. Even in the sphere of action motivated by love, we must recognize that there is this Power above us which awakens within us physical and psychic love.

Furthermore, even in instances of love above the physical, in which we enter deeply into the life of conscience and love those who have no relation to us, we may imagine that this feeling is originated within us; but this.is by no means the case: it is the love for others that is inherent in the very system of the cosmos, which with its tremendously urgent call leads us on to love. As an illustration take the evolution of mother

When Darwin insisted that the struggle for existence alone controlled the cosmos, there was one scholar, Henry Drummond, who opposed him. Drummond, like Darwin, was a naturalist who made explorations in Hast Africa and discovered that the evolution of animals does not necessarily follow solely upon the struggle for existence, but that besides this there is the factor of protecting love which operates unconsciously. Drummond believed that in the evolution of motherhood, the longer the period of expression of mother love the more highly the species developed, and finally entered the class of the so-called higher animals. Studying the termites, Drummond found that the females of one species remained in their nests for ten years and gave their whole strength to the rearing of young, finally dying for their sakes. They lived thus solely in order to sacrifice themselves. With human motherhood the same holds true. Mothers endure the pain of pregnancy and childbirth, and then for a further period of about twenty years give their unceasing care to their children. It is recognized that among the higher animals the greater the sacrifices made by the mothers, the higher the stage of the animal’s development.

It is the view of Kropotkin that in this connection careful thinking is required. As briefly stated in Chapter I, he does not deny the struggle for existence; rather he says that just because this struggle exists, there is a need for love. But Kropotkin’s “love” is no more than an unconscious, instinctive mutual aid. He says that no animal evolves which does not show an instinctive mutual aid cultivated among its social instincts; and not only so, but in the very struggle for existence, where the spirit of mutual aid is lacking, superior individuals are not developable. The prog-.

ress of man from the lower forms and of primitive man to the man of the present has inevitably been along the path of mutual aid. However, Kropotkin’s “mutual aid’”’ is the help necessary for struggle with enemies. As for the ‘‘love”’ of Drummond, he was content with saying that blind mother love was necessary for evolutionary progress. But in these two forms we have not yet arrived at genuine love. For to have true love, there must be the hope of being able to love even one’s enemy. This is what the love of Jesus is.

The love of Jesus, to be sure, may not admit of a scientific explanation. With the development of the science of biology there have been discovered in the structures of organisms various extremely delicate devices, among which are some that science cannot yet fully account for. We cannot overlook the fact that in physiological life there are, in addition to the factor of struggle for existence, the principles of unconscious love and protection. For instance, anyone who has madeastudy of embryology will recall the fact of the great suffering experienced by the reproductive cells on account of the germs in process of birth (zona radiata).

The struggle for existence must not be stressed unduly. Schopenhauer says, as I have already remarked, that in the cosmic will the preparation for physical love has been made, and for the preservation of life there has been prepared an immeasurable love and protection. The more one investigates, the more one discovers this preparation for deep love and exquisite care. To cite a simple illustration, in studying _ the course of development of the placenta of mammals one finds that no individual consciously develops a placenta. The kangaroo is fetiferous, but has no placenta. From the wild boar, the cat, or the rat, up to the higher animals resembling man the evolution of the placenta becomes correspondingly higher; but the animal itself is not conscious of the fact. When we learn how great a degree of love and care are thus bestowed upon a practically unconscious part, we can affirm definitely that beyond the struggle for existence there exists the factor of love.

There is not only this protecting love, but also an enormous number of sacrifices constantly being made. For example, for the preservation of one ovum issuing from the reproductive organ an almost countless number of cells are sacrificed. The thoughtful man finds in the fact of such sacrifices a great inspiration.

» Love is confined in hidden places; the hand of lov moves in invisible realms; and it is this love that protects, cherishes, and tenderly rears the young. Thus discovering the marvelous fact of an elaborate cosmic design, we cannot but feel that there exists a Being in the universe great beyond our power to imagine. Whether this Being should be called God or not I ~.do not know. Schopenhauer denied conscious will, but we in attempting to deny it discover in the cosmos the existence of a wonderful design. We cannot but be grateful when we consider that even for the sake of humble, dumb animals such profound endeavors and sacrifices have been made. ‘There lies buried in the cosmos a love which does not rise to the level of human consciousness, like the root buried underneath the stem. The love which we know as the love of humanity is only a small fraction of the totality of love. May it not be that the love which Jesus enjoined when he said “‘ Love your enemies”’ and ‘‘ Love sinners,”’ is love springing up from the roots long buried as profound cosmic will?

If this be true, then in what unnoticed part has been rooted this love which would embrace both sinner and enemy? Love makes the flowers bloom on the earth, and love was born in response to the great cosmic will. Only with such a vast background was it possible for love to awaken in men’s hearts. In just the same fashion must we reach toward the thought that love for one’s enemies has a direct relation to some great impulse from an unseen part of the cosmos. If so, wherein is the relation to be found? This question demands our study.

According to Jesus, loving enemies and sinners is not to be separated from the love of God. In Matthew 5:48 Jesus says unhesitatingly, “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”” That is to say, all love for enemies and for sinners is love which proceeds forth from God. Just as physical love awakens as it courses through the deep arteries of life, so the cosmic will in its unsearchable progress issues in the love that says, ‘‘Love the sinner.”’ The love of Christ is neither physical nor psychic: it is love on a higher plane. We must mount up from physical and psychic love to this third type of love.

The term physical love signifies the relation of parent and child and the relations of blood, of tribe, and of race. In the exigencies of the struggle for existence these relations, as we know, at times merge into one. Physical love has some of the elements of psychic love, but fundamentally it stands rather upon biological affinity. Loyalty and patriotism also, where they are limited to the sphere of a single race, must be assigned to the realm of physical love. Loving one’s own brothers and loving the group which supplies one with the necessities of life, whether the group be called a labor union or a socialistic organization, are also physical love. Love of these kinds cannot be regarded as highly developed love. It is love on a low plane, as is most of the love of modern times.

In such relations as those between the leaders and protegés in the story-tellers’ books of chivalry, their manly, chivalrous spirit appears on first inspection to be that of noble love; but when we analyze it, we find it to be an extremely childish physical love. In Bushido, too, the examples of love are of the same variety. Just because the retainer received his lord’s pension (of rice) to eat, that is, had his living assured, he loved his lord. Is this not, then, mere physical love? Furthermore, when the samuraz molested the townspeople, and strong men among the latter resisted the samurai chivalrously, their love also was physical. The so-called sacrificial spirit among gamblers is in the same sense only physical love. Thinking in this fashion, we are compelled to say that modern socialistic ethics, too, is all within the sphere of physical love. a

For if the formation of the group is due to economic pressure and men join for the purpose of securing their food, then such socialistic movements are nothing more than physical mutual aid.