The Four Loves: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Since higher loves can’t exist without lower ones, it’s a good idea to begin with “mere likings.” Since “liking” something means to take pleasure in it, it also makes sense to begin with pleasure. Pleasures have generally been divided into two classes: those that need to be preceded by desire (like thirst precedes the pleasure of a drink of water) and those that need no preparation (like the sudden scent of flowers on a walk). These two categories can be called Need-pleasures and Pleasures of Appreciation.

Need-pleasures resemble Need-loves in some ways. But while people tend to look down on Need-loves, the opposite might be true here—people think Need-pleasures are natural, while Appreciative Pleasures are luxuries that tend toward excess. But Lewis’s aim (for now) is not to make moral evaluations, but to describe and distinguish.

The two kinds of pleasure foreshadow characteristics of our loves. After drinking a glass of water, a thirsty person might say, “I wanted that.” Someone enjoying the scent of flowers, in contrast, would say something like, “How lovely the smell is.” The former is about the person satisfying the need; the latter is about the thing being enjoyed.

Once a Need-pleasure is satisfied, it abruptly loses its appeal (like water to a person whose thirst is quenched). In contrast, pleasures of appreciation are enjoyed for their own sake, almost as if they deserved to be enjoyed—like a good wine to a connoisseur, or the flowers mentioned earlier. There’s a parallel between Need-pleasures and Need-loves, in that the love doesn’t last longer than the need (though, of course, some needs are permanent). Empty-nesters and neglected lovers know this well. Technically, human beings’ need for God never diminishes, but their awareness of it can.

It’s harder to explain what Appreciative pleasure corresponds to. This type of pleasure is where our experience of beauty comes from. Such pleasure has a “disinterested” element—that is, we deem beautiful things “very good,” in a God-like way, and we want them to exist even if we won’t be alive to enjoy them.

Besides Need and Gift, there’s a third element to love that’s foreshadowed by Appreciative pleasures: love can be offered to other people, not just to things. Appreciative Love is content to gaze at and delight in the beloved. These three elements of love mix together, with only Need-love ever existing alone (and only briefly).

Two special forms of love require discussion. Some people have a strong love of nature, especially the spirit or mood of a landscape. This kind of love, much praised in the 19th century by poets like Wordsworth, is disparaged today. And indeed, it’s not quite right to say that nature teaches anything, as the old poets claimed. But for a Christian, nature’s “created glory” can, in a certain, indirect way, reflect the uncreated glory of God—though only to a certain point, or else it risks becoming a nature religion. Nature itself can’t satisfy the desires she stirs or answer the theological questions she raises.

Those who love nature in this restrained way seem to be able to hold onto that love. In contrast, those who regard nature as a religion in itself find that they lose it—it becomes “demonic” instead. Those who sit in a garden while saying their prayers might walk away overwhelmed by nature’s beauty; but those who go there seeking its beauty will walk away empty.

Another special form of love is love of one’s country. Nowadays, it’s common to observe that patriotism can become demonic. In fact, some suspect it’s never anything else—but if this were true, we’d have to throw out “half the high poetry” in existence. There’s no need here to write an essay on international relations; instead, Lewis wants to draw out what’s innocent about this form of love. Though ordinary citizens don’t act on an international scale, it’s good for them to keep an eye on the health of their patriotism because their patriotism can influence rulers’ goodness or wickedness.

Patriotism is “ambivalent” because it’s a blend of many different things. One of these is the love of home—for a place, its way of life, its culture, its dialect. Such love is a first step beyond “family selfishness.” That is, those who don’t love their fellow-villagers aren’t likely to have progressed far toward loving humanity in the abstract. Natural affections can train the “spiritual muscles,” which might later be used for higher loves.

This kind of patriotism isn’t aggressive; it just wants to be left alone, and it only fights to protect what it loves. It even promotes kindness toward foreigners, because when you love your own home, it’s easy to understand that others love theirs. And it doesn’t seek to make other people’s homes just like ours—home wouldn’t be home unless it were different from other places.

A second element of patriotism is a certain attitude towards a country’s past—particularly the popular imagination of that past (for instance, “Remember Waterloo”). This past imposes an obligation to uphold a certain standard; it also assures us that as our ancestors’ offspring, there’s hope that we’ll succeed. The problem with this attitude is that heroic stories of the past are often biased, exaggerated, or otherwise historically unreliable. Thus, a patriotism based on the past can easily be debunked in the present, leading to cynicism or stubborn resistance instead.

Lewis thinks it’s possible to draw strength from the past without taking a false view of it. Stories of the past should not be mistaken for serious historical study or justifications for today’s imperial policy. They should be valued as stories that strengthen a person’s will, rather like sagas. When they’re mistaken for factual history, they can lead to a third thing that sometimes gets called patriotism.

That third thing is the matter-of-fact belief that one’s nation is genuinely superior to all others; on its fringe, this belief can be further distorted into “Racialism,” which is against both Christianity and science. A fourth element was strongly manifested in 19th-century England through what’s been called the “white man’s burden.” England saw itself as the self-appointed guardian of what they called “natives.” And yet this so-called duty, with its thinly veiled altruism, is the better sort of superiority. The worse kind stresses the rights of so-called “superiors” over those they see as inferiors, which leads to exploitation and even murder.

So, patriotism is a complex phenomenon. People who reject it entirely disregard the fact that something must fill that vacuum; no one will fight to defend their country otherwise. Vague appeals to justice and humanity probably won’t work. It’s understandable to defend one’s house by force against a burglar, but it’s ridiculous to claim that you gave the burglar a black eye on purely moral grounds. It’s similar if one claims to be neutral and to only support England’s side when England’s cause is just. If someone sees their country’s cause as “the cause of God,” then opposition can’t be tolerated—worldly concerns take on a “false transcendence.”

The value of the older patriotic sentiment is that it knew it was a sentiment. That is, “wars could be heroic without pretending to be Holy Wars.” This kind of love for country could take itself seriously in battle and lightheartedly the rest of the time.

The elements of patriotism just discussed, with their accompanying criticisms, can apply to love for other things, like schools, families, or classes—even churches or factions within churches. When natural love like patriotism borrows the church’s transcendent claims, horrible actions can result. Much of “the World” will refuse to listen to Christendom until it repudiates these aspects of its past.