I felt very sophisticated on account of this education. However, I had no warmth from it, not lasting warmth, and it seemed my loneliness was worse than guilt, worse than the feeling of being damned. Indeed it seemed to replace that old feeling. I feared it, being utterly along. As I sat there looking up at the tiny margin of black Heaven, at the few stars that drifted over the roofs of the houses, I sensed how utterly terrible it would be to lose both my Master and my guilt simultaneously, to be cast out where nothing bothered to love me or damn me, to be lost and tumbling through the World with only those humans for companions, those boys and girls, the English lord with his dagger, even my beloved Bianca. Anxiety is generated by a repressed hostility and it in turn again generates hostility, in other words, anxiety and hostility are inextricably interwoven, one is able to recognize the self-deception in the neurotic’s thinking and the reasons for one’s failures. Without knowing it the neurotic person is in the dilemma of being incapable of loving and yet being in great need of love from others. We stumble here over one of those questions that seem so simple and are nevertheless so difficult to answer: what is love, or what do we mean by it in our culture? #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

One may sometimes hear an offhand definition of love as the capacity to give and take affection. Although this contains some truth, it is much too sweeping to be helpful in clarifying the difficulties with which we are concerned. Most of us can be affectionate at times, but it is a quality that may go with a thorough incapacity for love. The important consideration is the attitude from which affection radiates: is it an expression of a basic beneficial attitude toward others, or is it, for example, born of a fear that one will lose the other, or of a wish to get the other person under one’s thumb? In other words, we cannot take any manifest attitudes as criteria. Although it is very difficult to say what is love, we can say definitely what is not love, or what elements are alien to it. One may be thoroughly fond of a person, and yet at times between such circumscribed reactions of wrath or withdrawal and the attitude of a neurotic, who is constantly on guard against others, feels that any interest they take in third persons is a neglect of oneself, and interprets any demand as an imposition or any criticism as a humiliation. This is not love. So, too, it is not incompatible with love to offer constructive criticism of certain qualities or attitudes, in order, if possible, to help correct them; but it is not love to make, as the neurotic often does, an intolerant demand for perfection, a demand which implies a hostile “woe unto you if you are not perfect!” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

We also consider it incompatible with our idea of love when we find a person using another only as a means for some purpose, that is, only or mainly because one fulfills certain needs. This is clearly the situation when the other person is wanted only for gratification of pleasures of the flesh, or in marriage, only for prestige. However, here too this issue is very easily blurred, especially if the needs concerned are of a psychic nature. A person may deceive oneself into believing that one loves another even if, for example, the other is needed only for the blind admiration that one gives. In such cases, however, the other person is likely to be dropped suddenly or even may be turned against, as soon as one begins to be critical, thereby failing in the function of admiration, for which one was loved. In discussing the contrast between what is and what is not love we must be watchful, however, not to lean over backward. Though love is incompatible with use of the loved one for some gratification, this does not mean that love must be completely and exclusively altruistic and sacrificing. Nor does that feeling alone deserve the name of love which does not demand anything for the self. Person who express any such convictions betray their own unwillingness to give affection rather than a thoroughly worked out conviction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Of course we want something from the person we are fond of—we want gratification, loyalty, help; we may even want a sacrifice, if necessary. (Jesus Christ is the most renewed blood sacrifice.) And it is in general an indication of mental health to be able to express such wishes or even fight for them. The difference between love and the neurotic need for affection is possessed in the fact that in love the feeling of affection is primary, whereas in the cases of the neurotic the primary feeling is the need for reassurance, and the illusion of love is only secondary. Of course there are still all sorts of intermediate conditions. If a person needs another’s affection for the sake of reassurance against anxiety, the issue will usually be completely blurred in one’s conscious mind, because in general one does not know that one is fully of anxiety and that one therefore reaches out desperately for any kind of affection for the sake of reassurance. All that one feels is that here is a person who one likes or trusts, or with whom one feels infatuated. However, what one feels as spontaneous love may be nothing but a response of gratitude for some kindness shown one or a response of hope or affection aroused by some person or situation. The person who explicitly or implicitly arouses in one expectations of this kind will automatically be invested with importance, and one’s feeling will manifest itself in the illusion of love. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Such expectations may be aroused by the simple fact that one is treated kindly by a person who is powerful and influential, or by one who merely gives the impression of standing more securely on one’s feet. They may be aroused by erotic or advances in pleasures of the flesh, although these may have nothing to do with love. They may feed on existing ties of some sort, which implicitly contain a promise of help or emotional support: family, friends, physician. Many such relations are carried on under the camouflage of love, that is, under a subjective conviction of attachment, when actually the love is only the person’s clinging to others to satisfy one’s own needs. That this is no reliable feeling of genuine affection is revealed in the ready revulsion that appears when any wishes are not fulfilled. One of the factors essential to our idea of love—reliability and steadiness of feeling—is absent in these cases. A final characteristic of the incapacity for love has already been implied, but I wish to give it special emphasis: disregard of the other’s personality, peculiarities, limitations, needs, wishes, development. This disregard is in part a result of the anxiety which prompts the neurotic to cling to the other person. One who is drowning and clings to a swimmer does not usually consider the other’s willingness or capacity to carry one along. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The disregard is also partly an expression of the basic hostility toward people, the most common contents of which are contempt and envy. It may be covered up by desperate efforts to be considerate, or even sacrificing, but usually these efforts cannot prevent the emerging of certain unwonted reactions. A wife may be subjectively convinced, for example, of her deep devotion to her husband, and yet be resentful, complaining or depressed when the husband devoted his time to his work, his interests or his friends. An over-protective mother may be convinced that she does everything for the sake of the child’s needs for independent development. The neurotic person whose protective device is a drive for affection is hardly ever aware of one’s incapacity for love. Most such persons will mistake their need of others for a disposition toward love, whether for individuals or for humankind in general. There is a pressing reason for maintaining and defending such an illusion. Giving it up would mean uncovering the dilemma of feeling at once basically hostile toward people and nevertheless wanting their affection. One cannot despise a person, distrust one, wish to destroy one’s happiness or independence, and at the same time crave one’s affection, help or support. In order to achieve both ends, which in reality are incompatible, one has to keep the hostile disposition strictly removed from awareness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The illusion of love, in other words, while it is the result of an understandable confusion between genuine fondness and need, has the definite function of making the pursuit of affection possible. There is still another basic difficulty which the neurotic encounters in satisfying one’s hunger for affection. Though one may succeed, at least temporarily, in getting the affection one wants, one is unable really to accept it. One should expect one to welcome any affection offered to one, as eagerly as a thirsty person takes to water. In fact, that does happen, but only temporarily. Every physician knows the effect of kindness and consideration. All physical and psychic troubles may suddenly vanish, even though nothing is being done but giving the patient hospital care and having one thoroughly examined. A situation neurosis, even through it be a severe one, may disappear altogether when the person feels loved. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a famous example of this kind. Even in character neuroses such attention, whether it is love, interest or medical care, may be sufficient to release anxiety and thereby improve the condition. Any kind of affection may give one a superficial reassurance, or even a feeling of happiness, but deep down it either meets with disbelief or stirs up distrust and fear. One does not believe in it, because one is firmly convinced that no one can possibly love one. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

And this feeling of being unlovable is often a conscious conviction, unshakable by any factual experiences to the contrary. It can, indeed, be taken so much for granted that it never consciously bothers the person, but even when it is inarticulate it is just as unshakable a conviction as if it had always been conscious. Also, it can be concealed by a “do not care” attitude, usually dictated by pride, and then it is likely to create difficulty in digging it out. The conviction of being unlovable is closely akin to the incapacity for love; it is, in fact, a conscious reflection of that incapacity. A person who can be genuinely found of others will have no doubts that other can be fond of one. If the anxiety is really deep, any affection offered meets with distrust, and it will immediately be assumed that it is offered from ulterior motives. In psychoanalysis, for example, such patients feel that the analyst wants to help them only for the sake of one’s own ambition, or that one makes appreciative or encouraging remarks only for therapeutical reasons. One patient of mine considered it a beneficial humiliation that I offered to see her during the weekend, at a time when she was emotionally upset. Affection shown demonstratively is easily felt as a taunt. If an attractive young lady openly shows affection toward a neurotic man he may take it as teasing, or even as a deliberate provocation, since it is beyond his imagination that the girl might be truly fond of him. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Affection ordered to such a person not only may meet with distrust but may arouse absolute anxiety. It is as if giving in to an affection meant being caught in a spider’s web, or as if believing in an affection meant being taken off one’s guard while living among cannibals. A neurotic person may have a feeling of terror when one approaches the realization that some genuine fondness is being offered to one. Furthermore, evidence of affection may arouse a fear of dependency. Emotional dependency, as we shall see shortly, is a real danger for anyone who cannot live without the affection of others, and anything faintly resembling it may evoke a desperate struggle against it. Such a person must at all cost avoid any kind of absolute emotional response of one’s own, because such a response immediately conjures up the danger of dependency. In order to avoid this one must blindfold oneself against the awareness that others are kind or helpful, somehow managing to discard every evidence of affection and insisting, in one’s own feelings, that the others are unkind, uninterested or even malevolent. The situation created in this way is similar to that of a person who is starving for food yet does not dare to take any for fear that it might be poisoned. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

In short, then, for a person who is driven by one’s basic anxiety and consequently, as a means of protection, reaches out for affection, the chances of getting this so much desired affection are anything but favorable. The very situation that creates the need interferes with its gratification. Unconscious ideas of the patient are more often than not the conscious theories of therapist. In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing. However, now, it will be said, these are all childish human cases, and have nothing to do with great cosmical matters, like the question of religious faith. Let us then pass on to that. Religious differ so much in their accidents that in discussing the religious question we must make it very generic and broad. What then do we now mean by the religious hypothesis? Science says things are; morality says somethings are better than other things; and religion says essentially two things. First, she says that the best things are the more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the Universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. Perfection is eternal, and that is a good way of putting this first affirmation of religion, an affirmation which obviously cannot yet be verified scientifically at all. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

The second affirmation of religion is that if we believe her first affirmation to be true, even now we are better off. Now, let us consider what the logical elements of this situation are in case the religious hypothesis in both its branches be really true. (Of course, we must admit that possibility at the outset. If we are to discuss the question at all, it must involve a living option. If for any of you religion be a hypothesis that cannot, by any living possibility be true, then you need go no farther. I speak to the saving remnant’ alone). So proceeding, we see, first, that religion offers itself as a momentous option. We are supposed to gain, even now, by our belief, and to lose by our non-belief, a certain vital good. Secondly, religion is a forced option, so far as that good goes. We cannot escape the issues by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that was if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we absolutely chose to disbelieve. It is as if a being should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married someone else? #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error,–that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his take as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field. To preach scepticism to us as a duty until sufficient evidence for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in the presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law. And by what forsooth, is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse obedience to the scientist’s command to imitate one’s kind of option, in a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk. If religion be true and the evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher upon  my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side,–that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the World religiously might be prophetic and right. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

All this is on the supposition that it really may be prophetic and right, and that, even to us who are discussing the matter, religion is a live hypothesis which may be true. Now, to most of us religion comes in a still further way that makes a veto on our active faith even more illogical. The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the Universe is represented in our religions as having personal form. The Universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou, if we are religious; and any relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible here. For instance, although in one sense we are passive portions of the Universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we were small active centres on our own account. We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way. To take a trivial illustration: just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one’s word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn,–so here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly or not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making the gods’ acquaintance. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

 This feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that there are gods (although not to do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life) we are doing that Universe the deepest service we can, seems part of the living essence of the religious hypothesis. If the hypothesis were true in all  its parts, including this one, then pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making willing advances, would be an absurdity; and some participation of our sympathetic nature would be logically required. I therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth seeking, or willfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule. That for me is the long and short of the formal logic of the situation, no matter what kinds of truth might materially be. I confess I do not see how this logic can be escaped. However, sad experience makes me fear that some of you may still shrink from radically saying with me, in abstracto, that we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is lived enough to temp our will. I suspect, however, this if this is so, it is because you have got away from the abstract logical point of view altogether, and are thinking (perhaps without realizing it) of some particular religious hypothesis which for you is dead. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The freedom to believe what we will you apply to the case of some patent superstition; and the faith you think of is the faith defined by the schoolboy when he said, “Faith is when you believe something that you know ain’t true.” I can only repeat that this is misapprehension. In concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to one who has them to consider. When I look at the religious question as it really puts itself to concrete beings, and when I think of all the possibilities which both practically and theoretically it involves, then this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, and courage, and wait—acting of course meanwhile more or less as if religion were not true—till doomsdays, or till such time as our intellect and senses working together may have raked in evidence enough,–this command, I say, seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave. Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse. If we had an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it exclusively, in no waiting for its releasing word. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

However, if we are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of ideal fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell. Indeed we may wait if we will,–I hope you do not think that I am denying that,–but if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we believed. In either case we act, taking our life in our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the others, nor should we brandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another’s mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have the spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism’s glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things. What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the World? These are questions with which all mist deal as it seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must deal with them. In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark. If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

If a being chooses to turn one’s back altogether on God and the future, no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that one is mistake. If a being thinks otherwise and acts as one thinks, I do not see that anyone can prove that one is mistaken. Each must act as one thinks best; and if one is wrong, so much the worse for one. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? Be strong and of good courage. Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. If death ends all, we cannot meet death better. One has chosen a path to which one has been led both by instinct and by experience. As one tries to follow it, one will meet with all kinds of difficulties but one should not turn back. Because the interrelation of outward karma to inner character is so close, one should understand that these difficulties are linked up with one’s inner state, and that one begins to solve them by removing the imperfection of that inner state. One must understand that, although this goal is not easy to obtain, one must refuse to give up hope. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The path is right by itself, and in allying oneself with it, one is allying oneself with what is, after all, the greatest force in the World. One will know that this is the day of one’s spiritual rebirth, that struggle is to be replaced henceforth by serenity, that self-reproach is to yield to self-assurance, and that life in appearance is transformed into life in reality. At last one has emerged from confusion and floundering and bewilderment. At last one is able to experience the blessed satisfaction, the joyous serenity of an integrated attitude wholly based on the highest truth. The capacities which have been incubating slowly and explosively during all the years of one’s quest will erupt suddenly into consciousness at the same moment that the higher self takes possession of one. What was formerly an occasional glimpse will not become a permanent sight. The intermittent intuition of a guardian presence will now become the constantly established experience of it. The divine presence has now become to one an immediate and intimate one. Its reality and vitality are no longer matters for argument or dispute, but matters of settled experience. I am a being; and beings are created after the image of God, and I am called by his Holy Spirit to teach these things unto this people, that they may be brought to a knowledge of that which is just and true; and a portion of that Spirit dwelleth in me, which giveth me knowledge, and also power according to my faith and desires which are in God,” reports Alma 18.34-35. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18