This is an illustration of C.S Lewis’ talk about the first of the four loves – ‘Storge’ or ‘Affection’. Notes below…

Originally ‘The Four Loves’ series was recorded by Lewis in London in 1957, prepared as 10 talks to air on the ‘Protestant Hour’ on American radio. I believe the first two talks addressed ‘Storge’. The second talk begins at 11:00, if you need smaller, bite-sized pieces. You can find my transcript of this talk here, as it is not available on the web for some reason: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8lk…

You can purchase Lewis’ original radio broadcasts here: https://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Loves…

This was later turned into a larger book with more detail (with quite different examples), which you can find here: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Loves-C-S…

(1:55) “When we blame a man for being ‘a mere animal’, we mean not that he displays animal characteristics (we all do), but that he displays these, and only these, on occasions where the specifically human was demanded. When we call a man ‘brutal’ we usually mean that he commits cruelties impossible to most real brutes; they’re not clever enough” (‘The Four Loves’, Chapter 3).

(9:20) Lewis: “In the nineteenth century some people thought that monogamous family life would automatically make them holy and happy; the savage anti-domestic literature of modern times – the Samuel Butlers, the Gosses, the Shaws – delivered the answer…The ‘debunkers’ may have been wrong about principles and may have forgotten the maxim abusus non tollit usum [the abuse of something does not abolish its use]: but in both cases they were pretty right about matters of fact [i.e. as to how domestic affections can become depraved]” (Lewis essay, ‘The Sermon and the Lunch’).

(9:25) Anthony Trollope wrote the Chronicles of Barsetshire of which ‘Framley Parsonage’ (1861) deals with ambition, and ‘Doctor Thorne’ (1858) with snobbery. Another book by Trollope, ‘The Way We Live Now’ (1875), deals with gambling. William Makepeace Thackeray wrote ‘Vanity Fair’ (1847-8). George Elliot (a.k.a. Mary Anne Evans) wrote seven novels, including ‘Adam Bede’ (1859), ‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1860), ‘Silas Marner’ (1861), and ‘Middlemarch’ (1871–72), most of which are set in provincial England.

(10:58) ‘Every one of Storge’s characteristics is ambivalent’, which means they can be turned to either evil or good.

(11:09) The larger quote from Butler is here. Pontifex: “He [his son, Ernest] is not fond of me, I’m sure he is not. He ought to be after all the trouble I have taken with him, but he is ungrateful and selfish. It is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be fond of his own father. If he was fond of me I should be fond of him, but I cannot like a son who, I am sure, dislikes me. He shrinks out of my way whenever he sees me coming near him. He will not stay five minutes in the same room with me if he can help it. He is deceitful. He would not want to hide himself away so much if he were not deceitful”.

“I wish he was not so fond of music, it will interfere with his Latin and Greek. I will stop it as much as I can. Why, when he was translating Livy [the ancient author of ‘The History of Rome and the Roman People’] the other day, he slipped out Handel’s name in mistake for Hannibal’s, and his mother tells me he knows half the tunes in the ‘Messiah’ by heart. What should a boy of his age know about the ‘Messiah’? If I had shown half as many dangerous tendencies when I was a boy, my father would have apprenticed me to a greengrocer, of that I’m very sure,” etc., etc.”

“At other times, when not quite well, Pontifex would have his sons in for the fun of shaking his will at them. He would in his imagination cut them all out one after another and leave his money to found almshouses, till at last he was obliged to put them back, so that he might have the pleasure of cutting them out again the next time he was in a passion” (Samuel Butler, ‘The Way of All Flesh’).

(11:35) As a child Ernest was very late in being able to sound a hard “c” or “k,” and, instead of saying “Come,” he said “Tum”, and for this error he was beaten by his bad tempered father.

(13:14) ‘Trenchantly’ means vigorously, energetically or cuttingly.

(23:14) Lewis: “Imagine three men who go to war. One has the ordinary natural fear of danger that any man has and he subdues it by moral effort and becomes a brave man. Let us suppose that the other two have, as a result of things in their sub-consciousness, exaggerated, irrational fears, which no amount of moral effort can do anything about. Now suppose that a psychoanalyst comes along and cures these two: that is, he puts them both back in the position of the first man. Well it is just then that the psychoanalytical problem is over and the moral problem begins…” (‘Mere Christianity’, Book 3, ‘Morality and Psychoanalysis’).

This is an illustration of C.S Lewis’ talk about the second of the four loves – ‘Philia’ or ‘Friendship’. Notes below…

Originally ‘The Four Loves’ series was recorded by Lewis in London in 1957, prepared as 10 talks to air on the ‘Protestant Hour’ on American radio. I believe ‘Philia’ was split into three talks. The second part begins at 7:01 and the third at 18:30 if you need smaller, bite-sized segments.

You can find my transcript of this talk here, as it is not available on the web for some reason: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9Mm…

You can purchase Lewis’ original radio broadcasts here: https://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Loves…

These talks were later turned into a larger book with more detail (with quite different examples), which you can find here: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Loves-C-S…

(1:14) “[Ancient romantic couples such as] Tristan and Isolde, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, have innumerable counterparts in modern literature: [Ancient friendships such as] David and Jonathan, Pylades and Orestes, Roland and Oliver, Amis and Amile, have not. To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.”

(2:21) “Your [friendship] love was…greater than the love of women [i.e., Eros]”. Friendship love from Jonathan in David’s life had been of a better quality here than the Eros love from his wife, Michal, Jonathan’s sister.

(4:37) Dr Johnson was probably the most distinguished man of letters in English history and Boswell wrote his biography, which is claimed as “the greatest biography written in the English language”. Lewis described this relationship as a “pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple”.

(21:29) Genesis 4.9 “Am I my brother’s keeper?” See also Exodus 23.5 – “If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it”. But note God’s exception to this kind of help in 2 Chronicles 19.2.

(22:34) “This [Friendship] love (essentially) ignores not only our physical bodies, but that whole embodiment which consists of our family, job, past and connections. At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague or subordinate. Not among our Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”

(23:56) ‘Immune from the internal corruptions of Storge’ – that is, Friendship is almost free from Affection’s need to be needed.

(24:20) “…We must notice that Friendship is very rarely the image under which Scripture represents the love between God and Man. It is not entirely neglected; but far more often, seeking a symbol for the highest love of all, Scripture ignores this seemingly almost angelic relation and plunges into the depth of what is most natural and instinctive…Friendship is even, if you like, angelic. But man needs to be triply protected by humility if he is to eat the bread of angels without risk. Perhaps we may now hazard a guess why Scripture uses Friendship so rarely as an image of the highest love. It is already, in actual fact, too spiritual to be a good symbol of Spiritual things.” (‘The Four Loves’, Friendship).

(29:01) From ‘Aucassin and Nicolette’ (c. 1200): “For to Hell go the fair clerks [intellectuals] and the fair knights who are slain in the [jousting] tourney and the great wars, and the stout archer and the gallant nobles. With them will I go. And there go the fair and courteous ladies, who have lovers, two or three, together with their wedded lords. And there pass the gold and the silver, the ermine [mink] and all rich furs, harpers and minstrels, and the happy of the world. With these will I go, so only that I have Nicolette, my very sweet friend, by my side.”

(29:05) “Now a man must be very good or…very bad, not to feel in himself a response to that gesture”; ”The real black, diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you. Of course, it is very right, and often our duty, not to care what people think of us, if we do so for the right reason; namely, because we care so incomparably more what God thinks. But the Proud man has a different reason for not caring…” (Mere Christianity, ‘The Great Sin’).