Love, the Law of Life

The new creation of personality includes also the potential children of the union. We have heard the saying, ‘Children are the links which bind parents ~~ together,” but only when we actually have children born to us do we realize poignantly that the love of husband and wife is something above sexual desire. In my own experience, before our children were born I knew well that the love of husband and wife is sacred; yet after the birth of our children I realized this more keenly, and I came to consider that to the fact of the superiority of love over sexual desire must be further added the personalities of the children. I think that the stronger my love for my children becomes, the more I must love the mother of my children. It is no mere question of sexual desire. There is here a truly mysterious design; and as I view the unfolding of the new order, I am amazed at its grandeur. ‘The love revealed through marriage is a triune existence, not a twofold one; it is truly the creation of a new order rooted in love.

There are men who frequently praise their wives extravagantly, love their children, and appear to be satisfied. Yet they become infatuated with some strange woman, and abruptly abandon wife and children. JI am unable to understand the feelings of such men. They are utter bankrupts in personality; they have no unity of self. Their love is consequently bankrupt. In cases of the separation of couples who have children, I do not necessarily oppose the divorce; but I maintain that for one to abandon the wife or husband with whom one has been satisfied, whom one has loved, is a disgrace against oneself. How is it possible for one who disgraces oneself to have a sacred affection? Such a one lies to oneself. Of course, I do not mean to include here those who have been compelled to be parties to a match, or who have been coerced into marriage. Yet even in cases of marriage by coercion, where in the married life love has grown up between the two and a fusion of personalities has been achieved, if on the appearance of a third person one of them pretends that the marriage was not based upon a real romantic love and tears to pieces the love that has developed, disregards the children and deserts the home, then I count that one also to have disgraced himself. In a case where the marriage did not at first _ depend on love, but love afterward developed, and finally grew cold, I cannot necessarily approve of such a passion. I will say rather that the love was deficient in moral discipline.

How marvelous it is that men and women who do not possess beauty of features do have various other points of excellence. If love depended upon mere beauty, there would be but few in the world who could attain to sacred love. There are but few really handsome people in the world. If it be granted, however, that love is a new order which creates personalities, then beauty must be one of the elements. Yet there are many other elements which may be regarded as superior to beauty, whence arises the difficulty we experience in discovering perfect love unions. In many. unions each recognizes defects in his or her own life. But where these defects are mutually forgiven and love for each other prevails, there may be discerned the functioning of God’s powerful efforts. One perfect individual choosing another perfect one could not be called love; but in the effort of the imperfect to rise toward perfection inheres the creative spirit of love.

Marriages are contracted by truly imperfect characters; but where in spite of these imperfections, through love and respect, each is patient with the other and makes concessions, forming thus an unbreakable bond between them, there is, clearly, an indefinable atmosphere of creation. I would that every marriage might have God’s recuperative power to work upon it. We must petition God to sustain our wedded lives, these unions of imperfect personalities. There can be no attainment of sacred love, nor can the perfecting of home life be hoped for, without religious faith. In the times when love is quick to cool, we feel keenly the need of religious discipline. God alone can bring love to its fulfilment. Relying, then, upon true religious faith, we must develop our love to full perfection.

I have asserted that the dawning of love was a comparatively recent event in human history. Just as the maiden of sixteen awakens to love, and the mischievous, snuffling shop boy one day suddenly finds he has fallen in love, so humanity in its adolescence experienced a new awakening. To egoistic, wilful humanity it was a marvelous discovery. The youth coming for the first time to the consciousness of being in love feels a sense of embarrassment, though afterward, in retrospect, the affair seems of small moment. So, humanity, when made conscious of the ethic of love by Jesus, experienced this poignant consciousness of shame.

But impudent, rude youths are frequently insolent in their attitude toward love. So, in the view of individualistic humanity the concept of sacrificial love which Jesus brought to its consciousness very likely appeared to be utterly degenerate behavior. Even today it is so regarded by certain thinkers. But to have entered into the consciousness of love was, for humanity, an event of profound significance. As I frequently repeat, physical love resembles the unwinding of the mainspring which has been previously wound up. It was so for mankind when the emergence of the consciousness of love took place, when men began to realize that a new social order was to be built up through love, even though the final goal was but dimly envisioned. Just as physical love is charged with the mission of perpetuating the race, so the sacrificial love which was first presented to humanity’s consciousness by Jesus may be regarded as ~ the inner link necessary for binding together all humankind.

There are some people to whom sacrificial love seems the acme of stupidity, just as there are certain people who regard physical love as degeneracy of the flesh. Even though sacrificial love may not be conscious of an absolute end, it nevertheless takes a great step toward the attainment of such consciousness. |

Ethical thinkers have tothe present day laughed at the ethic of love. They have considered love only in its social aspects, and not as personal love with inclusive teleology. To them love has meant only altruism, which to their way of thinking is something meaningless to the modern man, charged as he is with the responsibility of self-realization. Thus Mr. Takero Arishima, the novelist, appears to harbor the vague idea current among these modernists when he uses ironically the expression, ‘‘ Love robs unregrettingly.” For — they place self-satisfaction first, then self-realization, and concentrating all their powers upon self, they appear to regard their procedure as highly triumphant. Whence the vogue of the ethical theory of humani- tarianism which abandons the supernatural, eliminates altruism, and concentrates every energy upon the ego. Whether they call their theory “hedonism,” “perfectionism,” or “evolutionism,” they all mean simply “nerfecting the individual’; and they expound their theories as if they were utterly unaware of the perfecting of anything more than the individual.

Even the great Tolstoy, who appears to have had a relatively thorough understanding of the individual, was quite ignorant of anything beyond the unitary man. From the latter part of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, occurred the phenomenal rise of individualism. The development of the consciousness of the ego proceeded even to extremes, a development which blinded men to the fact that study could be made of powers that issue from, but are higher than, the individual. Men became almost incapable of comprehending the nature of a society formed by the grouping of two or more individuals. In Christianity, too, this influence operated, and in the latter part of the eighteenth century and through the nineteenth, Christianity was the most individualistic religion that it was possible to find. It possessed this consciousness of the ego so thoroughly that it became quite unable to reflect upon such problems as the supra-egoistic elements of self-consciousness as opposed to objectivity.

Tolstoy violently attacked the theory of the Social Organism. “There is no more dreadful superstition,”

he declared, “than the doctrine of the Social Organism. We do not want to injure the dignity of the ego by using - such a term.”

Tolstoy’s complaint against the doctrine was indeed to the point, but with nothing further than Tolstoy’s individualism it is impossible to understand either the physiological organism of parent and child or the doctrine which we hold today of the psychical organism of the social instincts. Naturally, I would not form judgments regarding a society formed of two or more individuals merely on the basis of numbers. On this basis merely, the civilization of Central Africa is superior to that of Denmark or Holland. What I do wish to say is, that society is greater than the total number of indi- - viduals composing it. It is, in this respect, quite comparable to the augmentation of electrical energy, which is directly proportional to the square of the diameter of the generator. And I wish further to repeat that a society of one thousand persons is not merely ten times larger than a society of one hundred persons. According to circumstances, it may have an abilitya thousand, or even ten thousand, times as great. Furthermore, a society which practices division of labor, as for example that proposed by Adam Smith, may be altered qualitatively. Witness the difference that exists between an agricultural and an industrial civilization.

I would not maintain the doctrine of the social organism to be true physiologically, but I do contend that it is true psychologically. Among the unicellular organisms each body is a single cell, and no society is formed. Only when compound cells are developed is division of labor possible. Then, differentiation of sex begins, and social functions begin to be operative. Hence, with Tolstoy’s doctrine of individualism alone, it is impossible to arrive at really fundamental ideas of the nature of love.

Love is something deeper than Tolstoy’s idea of a feeling originated by separate individuals. Love transcends the individual. It is the social will which works through individuals. More broadly, it is the cosmic will which penetrates human personalities. That is to say, love is God. ‘‘He who has not love knows not God, for God is love,” as St. John declared,! explains this fundamental truth.

Love is the social cohesive force: it has the power to bind society together from within. That is, love is not humanly originated, but may be regardedasthedynam- ~ ic and explosive force experienced within the re-created spirit. Hence, in the ethics of love we think not merely of social morality, but we discover the inner power of God, perennially creative; and we discern the form of Godlike perfection, transcending that of so-called per-.. fectionism, entering into our inner nature.

But some ethical theorists advocate human perfectionism, some humanistic hedonism, and others materialistic utilitarianism. There are theories without end. I contend, however, that the perfectionism thought out by men is after all only a human perfection, something priced at humanity’s current quotation; and that when a certain degree of perfection is not to be expected, perfectionism cannot come into existence. Therefore, between the perfectionism which makes man the standard and utilitarianism there is no distinguishable difference.

Regardless of the specific ethical theory we select, whether the perfectionism of Green, or the ethics of American pragmatism which takes a stand opposed to the former, or the utilitarian ethics which clamors for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the hedonism of Walter Pater, which makes pleasure the foundation of life—so long as humanity is made the norm of the system—I do not hesitate to declare that, in content, each system shows practical similarity to the others.

If perfection according to the human standard is actually realized, there may result a certain kind of pleasure; but singularly enough, human beings do not strongly desire a perfection which entails for them any unpleasantness. It is evident from this fact alone that perfection after the human standard cannot be a remarkable perfection after all.

In regard to political theories also, the situation is similar. One party preaches socialism, while another advocates nationalism. If, however, the theories fail to build upon the belief in a Life above that of humanity—the superhuman Absolute, the God over mankind—that is, so long as humanity is the standard, _ there are no great fundamental differences between the theories, however much they may vary superficially. Immanuel Kant says, ‘In the ethical life the idea of God inevitably enters into men’s minds,” and efforts to set up ethical systems apart from God, insulated from the way of life which works within the spirit, are vast mistakes. Socialism, for example, viewed from certain angles may appear surpassingly fine, but considered from the point of view of class struggle alone, it becomes an exceedingly curious system. Kautsky’s Socialistic Ethics, for example, deals first with the problem of existence. Karl Marx says: “Man in the first place lives on an economic basis, hence we must first give attention to this point. Since economics is the basis of education, religion, thought systems, art, science, all government, and all law, the present erroneous capitalistic order must be overthrown before a true social order can be realized. In the matter of religion also, the beliefs of the moneyed class as viewed from the economic standpoint, differ from the beliefs of the proletariat.”! I myself feel the last fact very keenly. But the further point put forth in the socialistic ethics, namely, that since all is struggle, violence must be brought to bear against the capitalists; that the proletariat must subdue the moneyed class—this contention leaves us with a serious problem. Socialists apparently believe that the solutions of all problems may be reached by appeal to violence; but their theories take for their basis only one side of man’s life, or, in other words, are built upon the actual conditions of the society of the present, and are in consequence merely superficial conceptions. Failing, then, to penetrate to the foundations of life, they contain grave errors.