26 APRIL 1935, Page 26

Love and Morality New Treasure. By the Earl of Lytton.

(Allen and Ctiwin. 5s.) WHEN Jewish Christians were .urging upon his converts the necessity of accepting the moral discipline of the Mosaic law, St. Paul reminded them that love is the fulfilling of the law. If his converts could only grasp' the meaning of love, rules and regulations would become superfluous. The apostle might have anticipated St. Augustine's " love and do what you please." Educators and moralists have always been afraid to trust this maxim, but the theories of Freud have empha- siied the dangers of negative repressive morality and inci- dentally have laid bare the need of a positive controlling faith. Psycho-analysis itself requires to be linked with a psychology of love.

This much-needed psychology of love is expounded by Lord Lytton in this little book. His exposition is based on the teaching and practice of Homer Lane. Lord Lytton repUdiates the doctrine of original sin and proclaims the divinity of human nature. He exalts the spontaneous and instinctive above the rational. Creative love is the only true guide and standard to hunian condriet, and love can dispense with moral laws and precepts. It is not enough to love the sinner while hating the sia.' 'We must love the sin, understand it sympathetically and find some good creative impulse in it which can be redireged into happier channels. Not so long ago Bernaid ShaW,was urging us to seek salvation by going back to -tOtliuselah. Lord Lytton rilSo " by backward steps would nicive," but he would continue the

retreat *past the antediluvian patriarch into the Garden of Eden. Like George Fox-he would-fain return to the state that Adam was in before he fell. And the moralists cannot help, .for it was through seeking the knowledge of good and evil that man came to grief. It us give up talking of good and evil, right and wrung, and let us surrender insistence upon the word " ought." The believers and the lovers, with some help from the psycho-analysts, will restore to us our lost innocence.

The case is persuasively presented, and yet one suspects that it is overstated. Lord Lytton is confident that he is giving us the true meaning of Christ's teaching, and his re- interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount contains much that is illuminating, yet on. occasion we have only to complete his citations from the gospels to throw his argument into confusion. For although Jesus set a high value on the spon- taneous in word and deed, and although His emphasis was always on the positive and constructive and not on the nega- tive and repressive, the affirmation of the essential goodness Of human nature and of the trustworthiness of our instincts can hardly be regarded as the sum of His Gospel.

If Lord Lytton were merely repudiating moralism, his argument would be irresistible. But he opposes love not simply to moralism but to morality. We may distinguish morality from moralism by defining the first as a sense of duty and the second as a strong sense of other people's duties. Love has little or no use for moralism, but can it dispense with morality as Lord ,Lytton seems to insist ? Yes, it can and must in the last resort, if St. Augustine and St. Paul are right. And immediately faith in love should free men from any morbid anxiety about their moral selves, from being always on their guard morally. Yet I gather that the Freudian school no longer regards. the interior moral censor as a secon- dary social product. The Censor is as deeply rooted in us as the instincts it seeks to repress. Psycho-analytic theory has advanced since Homer Lane. The guide-posts of morality re neither so misleading • nor so rthneectsary as we Were tempted to believe. For most of us love is not yet an unerring light, nor is joy its own security. But Lord Lytton sets our thoughts in the right direction, towards the realization of the

liberty of the Christian man. H. G. WOOD.