ATTRACTION WHICH AWAKENS LOVE
We say that the eye sees, the ear hears, the tongue speaks, the reason discusses, the memory remembers, and the will loves. Yet, we know well that it is the human person, properly speaking, that does this variety of activities through different spiritual faculties and various bodily organs. Hence, it is also the human person who seeks and takes delight in the good. He does it through the affective faculty called the will. It has this great attraction towards good which is the source and origin of love.
Those who thought that likeness is the only attraction which causes love have not found the real reason. Who does not know that the most sensible old men tenderly and dearly love little children and they are loved by them. Their love is mutual. Wise men love the ignorant provided they are willing to learn, and patients their doctors. We can take an example of love from insensitive things: what likeness can attract iron to a magnet? Has not a magnet greater likeness to another magnet or to another stone than to iron which is entirely of a different kind? Some, in order to reduce all attraction to likeness, affirm that iron attracts iron and magnet attracts magnet. Even so they are unable to give the reason why magnet attracts iron more powerfully and iron does not even attract iron. But please, what is the similarity between lime and water, or between water and sponge? Nevertheless, lime and sponge absorb water with unparalleled eagerness and show an insensitive and extraordinary love. It is the same as regards human love. For, sometimes it is stronger between persons of opposite qualities than between those who are very similar.
The attraction which gives rise to love does not always consist in likeness. Instead, it is in the proportion, relationship or harmony between the lover and the thing loved. Thus it is not likeness which makes a doctor lovable to the patient but the harmony, the need of the one for the sufficiency of the other, as one stands in need of help which the other can give. Similarly, the doctor loves the patient and the wise man his disciple because they can practise their skill on them. Old people love children not at all due to any fellow feeling. The reason is that the great simplicity, weakness and tenderness of the children enhances and makes the prudence and confidence of the old appear better. This dissimilarity is acceptable. On the otherhand, little children love old men because they see the old taking delight in them, and occupying themselves with them. Through some mysterious feeling children recognize that they need their guidance. The harmony of music is produced by discordance. In this, dissimilar voices blend themselves to form all together into a single fusion of proportion. Similarly, the dissimilarity of precious stones and of flowers forms a pleasant mingling of brilliance and variety. Thus love does not always arise from similarity or liking but from suitability and proportionality. It consists in this, that through the union of one thing with another, they can mutually receive some perfection and become better. The head does not resemble the body, nor the hand the arm. Nevertheless, these limbs have such great correlation that through their mutual union they perfect themselves excellently. Hence if each of these limbs had a separate soul, they would have among themselves perfect mutual love. It is not due to any likeness because they have no uniformity, but due to the complementarity they have for their mutual perfection. In like manner, the gloomy and the cheerful, the bitter and the gentle, sometimes love one another for the mutual impression they receive from one another by means of which their temperaments are mutually regulated.
When this mutual complementarity is joined with similarity, without doubt the love it produces is much stronger. For similarity is the true image of unity. When two similar things unite themselves for the same purpose because they are complementary, it appears to be unity rather than combination.
The attraction which the lover feels to the thing loved is the first source of love. This attraction consists in complementarity. It is nothing else than the mutual relationship which makes a thing fit for union in order to communicate between them some perfection. This will become easier to understand as we make progress in our discussion.