Let us take some instances of such two-fold manifestations of identical motives and virtues, according as these motives and virtues operate in simple co-ordination, or within a compound and organic system. In the scholar’s life, Greek and Latin and Hebrew may be acquired, each simply for its own sake and each alongside of the other; or they can be acquired, from the immediate motive indeed of knowing each in its own specific nature as thoroughly as possible, yet with the ultimate, ever more and more conscious and all-penetrating, motive of thus acquiring means and materials for the science of language, or for the study of philosophy, or for research into early phases of the Jewish-Christian religion. In the family life, a man, woman, or child can live for himself or herself, and then for his or her other immediate relatives, each taken as separate alongside of the other, or he or she may get more and more dominated by the conception and claims of the family as an organic whole, and may end by working largely, even with respect to himself, as but for so many constituents of that larger organism in which alone each part can attain its fullest significance. And especially a young mother can live for her own health and joys, and then, alongside of these, for those of her child, or she can get to the point of sustaining her own physical health and her mental hopes and will to live as so many means and conditions for feeding and fostering the claimful body and soul of her child.
So again, in the creatively artistic life, we can have a Dante writing prose and poetry and painting a picture, and a Rafael painting pictures and writing sonnets; or we can have Wagner bringing all his activities of scholar, poet, painter, musician, stage-manager,—each retaining, and indeed indefinitely increasing, its specific character and capabilities,—to contribute, by endless mutual stimulation and interaction, to something other and greater than any one of them individually or even than the simple addition of them all,—to a great Music-Drama and multiform yet intensely unified image of life itself. And an organist can draw out, as he plays, the Vox Humana stop, and then another and another limitedly efficacious organ-stop, whilst each new-comer takes the place of its predecessor or a place beside it; or he can draw out the Grand Jeu stop, which sets all the other stops to work in endless interaction, with itself permeating and organizing the whole. We thus, in these and countless other cases, and in every variety of degree within each case, get two kinds of variety, what we may call the simple and the compound diversification. And everywhere we can find that the richest variety not only can co-exist with, but that it requires and is required by, indeed that it is a necessary constituent and occasion of, the deepest and most delicate unity.[168]
(3) And finally, as to a State of Pure Love. Only here do we reach the class of questions to which the condemnations of Fénelon really apply.
We shall do well to begin by bearing in mind the very ancient, practically unbroken, very orthodox Christian discrimination of faithful souls,—sometimes into the two classes of Mercenaries (or Slaves) and Friends or Children, the latter of whom the great Clement of Alexandria, who died about A.D. 215, called “Gnostics,” “Gnosis” being his term for perfection (this scheme is the one to which Catherine’s life and teaching conform); or into the three classes of Servants (Slaves); Mercenaries; and Friends (or Children), as is already worked out with full explicitness by Saints Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa, who died in the years 379, 389, and 395 (?) respectively. Now Clement places the Mercenary on the left of the Sanctuary, but the “Gnostic” on the right; and, whilst declaring that the former “are those who, by means of renouncing things perishable, hope to receive the goods of incorruption in exchange,” he demands of the “Gnostic” that “he approach the saving word neither from the fear of punishment, nor from the motive of reward, but simply because He is good.”[169] And St. Basil, echoed in this by his two contemporaries, teaches that, “We obey God and avoid vices, from the fear of punishment, and in that case we take on the resemblance of Slaves. Or we keep the precepts, because of the utility that we derive from the recompense, thus resembling Mercenaries. Or finally, from love of Him who has given us the law, we obey with joy at having been judged worthy of serving so great and good a God, and thus we imitate the affection of Children towards their parents.”[170] And, in the case of all these Fathers, it is clear that, not only single acts, but whole states of soul and life are meant.
But the increased fineness in the analysis of interior experiences and dispositions has since then required, and the Church formulations have most wisely demanded, that these three classes be not so sharply distinguished as to make any one soul seem exclusively and unchangeably to pertain to any one of them; and, still more, that these three divisions be taken to represent, even where and whilst they are most completely realized, only the predominant character of the majority of the acts constituting the respective state of soul. For it is clear that not only is there, and can there be, no such thing, on earth at least, as a state composed of one unrepeated act; but there is no such thing as a condition of soul made up solely of acts of “simple” Pure Love, or even of supernatural acts of all sorts commanded throughout by Charity, or indeed solely of supernatural acts, both simple and commanded. The “One-act” state is a chimera; the state of “simple” acts of Pure Love alone would, if possible, involve the neglect of numberless other virtues and duties; and the last two states indeed highly desirable, but it would be fanaticism to think we could completely attain to them here below.
Yet there is nothing in any Church-censure to prevent, and there is much in the teaching and life of countless saints to invite, our holding the possibility, hence the working ideal and standard, for even here below, of a state in which two kinds of acts, which are still good in their degree, would be in a considerable minority: acts of merely natural, unspiritualized hope, fear, desire, etc.; and acts of supernatural hope, fear, desire, etc., in so far as not commanded by Charity. For even in this state not fully deliberate venial sins would occasionally be committed, far more would a certain number of acts of an unspiritualized, unsupernatural kind occur. And the necessary variety among the supernatural acts would in nowise be impaired,—it would indeed be greatly stimulated, by Pure Love being now, for the most part, the ultimate motive of their exercise.
Sylvius, in his highly authoritative commentary on St. Thomas, puts the matter admirably: “We may not love God in view of reward in suchwise as to make eternal life the true and ultimate end of our love, or to love God because of it, so that without the reward we would not love Him … We must love God with reference to the eternal reward in suchwise that we put forth indeed both love and good works in view of such beatitude,—in so far as the latter is the end proposed to these works by God Himself; yet that we subordinate this our beatitude to the love of God as the true and ultimate end,” so that “if we had no beatitude to expect at all, we should nevertheless still love Him and execute good works for His own sake alone. In this manner we shall first love God above all things and for His own sake; and we shall next keep the eternal reward before us, for the sake of God and of His honour.”[171] A man in these dispositions would still hope, and desire, and fear, and regret, and strive for, and aspire to conditions, things, persons both of earth and of the beyond, both for himself and for others, both for time and for eternity: but all this, for the most part, from the ultimate motive, penetrating, deepening, unifying all the other motives,—of the love of Love, Christ, Spirit, God.
Any hesitation to accept the reality or possibility of such a state cannot, then, be based upon such acceptance involving any kind of Quietism, but simply on the admittedly great elevation of such a condition. Yet this latter objection seems to be sufficiently met if we continuously insist that even such a state neither exempts souls from the commission of (more or less deliberate) venial sin; nor is ever entirely equable; nor is incapable of being completely lost; nor, as we have just contended, is ever without more or less numerous acts of an unsupernaturalized kind, and still less without acts of the supernatural virtues other than Love and unprompted by Love.
And all fear of fanaticism will be finally removed by a further most necessary and grandly enlarging insistence upon the Mercenaries and even the Servants having passing moments, and producing varyingly numerous single acts of, Pure Love and of the other supernatural virtues prompted by Pure Love. All souls in a state of Grace throughout God’s wide wide world,—every constituent, however slight and recent, of the great soul of the Church throughout every sex, age, race, clime, and external organization, would thus have some touches, some at least incidental beginnings of Pure Love, and of the other supernatural virtues prompted by Pure Love. All souls would thus, in proportion to their degree of grace and of fidelity, have some of those touches; and the progress of all would consist in the degree to which that variety of acts would become informed and commanded by the supreme motive of all motives, Pure and Perfect Love.[172]