{Love Of and For [continued]}[19th September 1988]

[Redbook5:356][19880919:1722b]{Love Of and For [continued]}[19th September 1988]

19880919.1722

[continued]

This* gives the lie to the old cynicism which I think I remember being taught at [my secondary-level school], and which was implied in part of the Jurisprudence course at Cambridge, that we only help others for the benefits which will be returned to us, whether by them helping us in turn, or by the satisfaction we obtain merely from knowing that we are helping others. This socio-ethical view fails to take account of the pure Quality of Love of the Spirit, which, working always against Separation, forgetting the Self, concentrates all that it is on the other, and just does it.

*[See last previous entry]

**[There are other, perhaps complementary, ways of countering the ‘old cynicism’: for example, that the satisfaction is the result of the action, not its cause, in the sense that the action can happen without the satisfaction but not the other way round, so any anticipation of the sense of satisfaction is simply a part of that result in any particular instance, but does not account for such actions generally; and that only conscious calculation justifies the ‘old cynicism’, so that any action which is primarily justified by Love may be permitted a lower-level awareness of the satisfaction to be gained from the action, without impugning the motives for the action. After all, Love itself is pleasing, even if often difficult to feel and to put into effect. (& see final fn to next entry.) <20190304>]

[continues]

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