Two Loves

The Very Rev. Martin Cyril D'Arcy, S.J., has greying, curly hair and burning eyes. He is a philosopher, an esthete, and one of the most important Roman Catholic churchmen in England. As Provincial of the Society of Jesus in England, Father D'Arcy is administrative head of approximately 800 Jesuits.

Even before he became the Jesuit Provincial (in 1945), sharp-featured Father D'Arcy had an unusually widespread influence. As Master of Oxford's Roman Catholic Campion Hall (for more than a decade), he turned its three-story building into a religious museum of valuable paintings, rare books, tokens. His urbane charm and cultivated mind have influenced a quarter-century's crop of Oxonians and helped bring many a British highbrow into his broadbrowed church.

In spite of all his chores, 58-year-old Father D'Arcy has found time to complete what he considers his most important book, The Mind and Heart of Love (Holt; $3.50), just published in the U.S.

Romantic readers who anticipate a cozy, escapist time-killer are in for a shock: The Mind and Heart of Love is prickly with erudition. But laymen who tackle it will find it a rewarding exercise.

D'Arcy's explanation of how he happened to get into his subject: "I took for granted when I was young that in love was to be found all that was most excellent, and as I had the good fortune to be brought up in the belief that a God, who was infinitely loving, existed, I had . . . the easiest and happiest way of approaching the subject. But soon problems began to multiply, fascinating problems which will occupy thinkers, as well as lovers, to the end of time. . . ."

Lion & Unicorn. Philosopher D'Arcy is mainly concerned with the twofold aspect of love--eros (love in its selfish, passionate forms) and agape (the selfless Christian love for one's neighbor, which Paul called "charity"). Most philosophical speculation on the subject has posed these two as ancient enemies. They have sometimes been symbolized by the Lion (eros) and the Unicorn (agape) which "went fighting round the town."

The conflict is unnecessary, says Father D'Arcy. After ranging from Aristotle to Jung, he echoes the traditional Catholic synthesis between Greek and biblical elements, concluding that Christian love must be both selfish and selfless:

"Selfishness is only a vice if it means an undue regard for self; unselfishness is only a virtue if it is countered by self-respect. The two loves, therefore, so far from, being opposites, appear to require the presence of each other. . . .

"We are bound to accept some self-love as legitimate, to admit some place for Greek and any other kind of true thinking. Agape will be God's love, which takes the initiative and gives the power to men to be 'the sons of God.' On the one side, then, there will be man with a passion which seeks for deliverance from himself and simultaneously a just regard for himself and his own perfection; and on the other, God who respects man's integrity while lifting him up into a new relation of love with Himself. With such a correction of both views the violent dissimilarities vanish."

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