Whether to Be Loved Is More Proper to Charity Than to Love?
Objection 1: It would seem that it is more proper to charity to be
loved than to love. For the better charity is to be found in those
who are themselves better. But those who are better should be more
loved. Therefore to be loved is more proper to charity.
Obj. 2: Further, that which is to be found in more subjects seems to
be more in keeping with nature, and, for that reason, better. Now, as
the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 8), "many would rather be loved
than love, and lovers of flattery always abound." Therefore it is
better to be loved than to love, and consequently it is more in
keeping with charity.
Obj. 3: Further, "the cause of anything being such is yet more so."
Now men love because they are loved, for Augustine says (De Catech.
Rud. iv) that "nothing incites another more to love you than that you
love him first." Therefore charity consists in being loved rather
than in loving.
_On the contrary,_ The Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 8) that
friendship consists in loving rather than in being loved. Now charity
is a kind of friendship. Therefore it consists in loving rather than
in being loved.
_I answer that,_ To love belongs to charity as charity. For, since
charity is a virtue, by its very essence it has an inclination to its
proper act. Now to be loved is not the act of the charity of the
person loved; for this act is to love: and to be loved is competent
to him as coming under the common notion of good, in so far as
another tends towards his good by an act of charity. Hence it is
clear that to love is more proper to charity than to be loved: for
that which befits a thing by reason of itself and its essence is more
competent to it than that which is befitting to it by reason of
something else. This can be exemplified in two ways. First, in the
fact that friends are more commended for loving than for being loved,
indeed, if they be loved and yet love not, they are blamed. Secondly,
because a mother, whose love is the greatest, seeks rather to love
than to be loved: for "some women," as the Philosopher observes
(Ethic. viii, 8) "entrust their children to a nurse; they do love
them indeed, yet seek not to be loved in return, if they happen not
to be loved."
Reply Obj. 1: A better man, through being better, is more lovable;
but through having more perfect charity, loves more. He loves more,
however, in proportion to the person he loves. For a better man does
not love that which is beneath him less than it ought to be loved:
whereas he who is less good fails to love one who is better, as much
as he ought to be loved.
Reply Obj. 2: As the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 8), "men wish to
be loved in as much as they wish to be honored." For just as honor is
bestowed on a man in order to bear witness to the good which is in
him, so by being loved a man is shown to have some good, since good
alone is lovable. Accordingly men seek to be loved and to be honored,
for the sake of something else, viz. to make known the good which is
in the person loved. On the other hand, those who have charity seek
to love for the sake of loving, as though this were itself the good
of charity, even as the act of any virtue is that virtue's good.
Hence it is more proper to charity to wish to love than to wish to be
loved.
Reply Obj. 3: Some love on account of being loved, not so that to be
loved is the end of their loving, but because it is a kind of way
leading a man to love.
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