{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 150}
Love is a matter of feeling, not of will or volition, and I cannot
love because I will to do so, still less because I ought (I cannot
be necessitated to love); hence there is no such thing as a duty to
love. Benevolence, however (amor benevolentiae), as a mode of
action, may be subject to a law of duty. Disinterested benevolence
is often called (though very improperly) love; even where the
happiness of the other is not concerned, but the complete and free
surrender of all one's own ends to the ends of another (even a
superhuman) being, love is spoken of as being also our duty. But all
duty is necessitation or constraint, although it may be
self-constraint according to a law. But what is done from constraint
is not done from love.
It is a duty to do good to other men according to our power, whether
we love them or not, and this duty loses nothing of its weight,
although we must make the sad remark that our species, alas! is not
such as to be found particularly worthy of love when we know it more
closely. Hatred of men, however, is always hateful: even though
without any active hostility it consists only in complete aversion
from mankind (the solitary misanthropy). For benevolence still remains
a duty even towards the manhater, whom one cannot love, but to whom we
can show kindness.
To hate vice in men is neither duty nor against duty, but a mere
feeling of horror of vice, the will having no influence on the feeling
nor the feeling on the will. Beneficence is a duty. He who often
practises this, and sees his beneficent purpose succeed, comes at last
really to love him whom he has benefited. When, therefore, it is said:
"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," this does not mean,
"Thou shalt first of all love, and by means of this love (in the
next place) do him good"; but: "Do good to thy neighbour, and this
beneficence will produce in thee the love of men (as a settled habit
of inclination to beneficence)."
The love of complacency (amor complacentiae,) would therefore
alone be direct. This is a pleasure immediately connected with the
idea of the existence of an object, and to have a duty to this, that
is, to be necessitated to find pleasure in a thing, is a
contradiction.
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 155}