Boethius, The Consolation 2.31

“Through Love

the Universe with constancy makes changes all without discord.

Earth's elements, though contrary, abide in treaty bound.

Phoebus in his golden car leads up the glowing day;

his sister rules the night that Hesperus brought.

The greedy sea confines its waves in bounds,

lest the earth's borders be changed by its beating on them.

All these are firmly bound by Love,

which rules both earth and sea,

and has its empire in the heavens too.

If Love should slacken this its hold,

 all mutual love would change to war,

and these would strive to undo the scheme

that now their glorious movements

carry out with trust and with accord.

By Love are peoples too kept bound together,

by a treaty that they may not break.

Love binds with pure affection the sacred tie of wedlock,

 and speaks its bidding to all trusty friends.

 O happy race of mortals,

 if your hearts are ruled as is the universe, by Love!”

—from Book 2, Poem 8

They say that love is the law, that love makes the world go around, and that all you need is love. What a powerful word, and also a word so often misunderstood, manipulated, and abused.

Lady Philosophy, I would suggest, is here not merely speaking about affection, or the passion of longing, or the satisfaction that comes from any sort of possession. Love here is not just a feeling, but a force that runs far deeper.

It ties and binds all things together, because love is the movement of all things toward what is good, and the peace within all things when they rest in their completion and fulfillment. It is the total expression of all aspects of Nature, ordered to their proper purpose and end. It is the balance and harmony of action.

I thought I knew what love was when I desired to make something my own, to have control over it, to tame it for my gratification. It may have been a thing, or a state of affairs, or a person, but it was always about how something else pointed back to me.

But love, like wisdom, points beyond itself. It gives of itself, and asks nothing beyond the gift of giving. It adds no terms or conditions. It seeks after what is good for its own sake, and for the sake of nothing else.

When a plant grows, or an animal rears its young, or the heavens turn, they don’t demand any payment for simply following their nature. How odd that a man, made to know and love by his own conscious choice, will so often require more than that. What will I get from it? Where is my profit margin? What have you done for me lately? He forgets that it rests in the doing, not in what is done.

The cynical side of me might complain that I have heard the words “I love you” so very often, and they have so often meant nothing at all. The love will seem to pass away as the utility seems to pass away.

My complaint, however, isn’t about love at all; it is about the twisting and distorting of love. Don’t blame the message for the failure of the messenger, and don’t blame the truth when others turn it into lies. When others fail in love, I should be all the more committed to loving.

Do I feel lost? Everything in Nature tells me how to love. The world is completely charged with it. Scientists will speak of the way things move one another, each according to its own place within the order of the whole, and that, dare I say, is the work of love under a different name.

All things come to be themselves, only when they strive for what they are meant to be. How I was born came from love. How I live is measured by my love. That I must die will only make sense from the fullness of love.

All action, of any sort, is what Aristotle called the “natural appetite” of all being to perfect its being, and thereby to be part of the perfection of all things. Yes, love makes the world go around. 

Written in 9/2015