87. Love is cosmic
87. LOVE IS COSMIC
What did Dante mean when he spoke of the love that “moves the sun and all the stars” in the last line in his Divine Comedy? Didn’t he know it was gravity? In #86, above, St. Augustine said that love was a kind of gravity; is gravity also a kind of love?
Love . . . differs according to the difference of appetites. . . . (1) natural things seek what is suitable for them according to their nature, by reason of an apprehension which is not in them but in the Author of their nature. . . . (2) And there is another appetite arising from an apprehension in the subject of the appetite but from necessity and not from free will. Such is, in irrational animals, the sensitive appetite, which, however, in man has a certain share of liberty in so far as it obeys reason. (3) Again, there is another appetite following freely from an apprehension (by the reason) in the (person who is the) subject of the appetite. And this is the rational or intellectual appetite, which is called the will (I-II,26,1).
We are not freaks. We fit into the universe. We are the keystone of the arch, the last piece of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle, the top creature on the cosmic totem pole. Everything else is a little like us, in a hierarchy of varying degrees—degrees of quality, not just quantity, since the rest of the universe is composed of different species, and species differ in quality, not just quantity. All human beings are a little like God, in a hierarchy of varying degrees of quantity, since we are all one species, and members of a species differ in quantity (quantity of humanity), not in quality. None of us are really apes, even though we try to act like them.
Everything in this hierarchy moves by love.
(1) Physical gravity is a physical form of love. That little rock is falling because it’s in love with the big rock called the earth. Electromagnetism is also a physical form of love. That little electron, with its negative charge, is in love with the positive charge on the proton that it’s orbiting around, like a man circling around a woman, or a hunter circling around a deer. Of course rocks and electrons don’t know what they’re doing; they don’t know anything at all. But God knew what He was doing when He designed them. Infinite Love created many finite versions of love.
(2) Vegetative growth is another kind of love. That sunflower is growing because it’s in love with its own maturity and perfection; and its roots are in love with water, so they’re growing toward the water, and its leaves are in love with the sunlight (for photosynthesis), so they’re growing toward the sunny side (heliotropism). It too knows nothing, yet it acts from within (as nonliving things don’t), so it looks more as if it “knew” where the sunlight or water was.
(3) Animals do know something. Even an invisible microorganism knows where its food is, and where its enemy is, and therefore moves in one direction rather than another. Higher animals know in ways that more and more approximate human knowing.
(4) But only man knows consciously and rationally, and only man’s loves can be conscious and rational and responsible through free will. We have in us all four kinds of love. Nothing else does. We are the summit and perfection of all the universe’s loves.