[00:00.43]Passage 87. Motherly and Fatherly Love

[00:06.33]Motherly love by its very nature is unconditional.

[00:13.22]Mother loves the newborn infant because it is her child,

[00:17.16]not because the child has fulfilled any specific condition,

[00:20.88]or lived up to any specific expectation.

[00:23.84]Unconditional love corresponds in one of the deepest longings,

[00:29.31]not only of the child, but of every human being;

[00:32.81]on the other hand, to be loved because of one’s merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt;

[00:41.23]maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me,

[00:45.50]maybe this or that—there is always a fear that love could disappear.

[00:51.74]Furthermore,“deserved” love easily leaves a bitter feeling that one is not loved for oneself,

[01:01.26]that one is loved only because one pleases,

[01:04.76]that one is, in the last analysis, not loved at all but used.

[01:11.10]No wonder that we all cling to the longing for motherly love,

[01:15.69]as children and also as adults.

[01:18.43]The relationship to father is quite different.

[01:24.56]Mother is the home we come from, she is nature, soil, the ocean;

[01:30.14]father does not represent any such natural home.

[01:34.30]He has little connection with the child in the first years of its life,

[01:38.23]and his importance for the child in this early period cannot be compared with that of mother.

[01:44.58]But while father does not represent the natural world,

[01:49.07]he represents the other pole of human existence;

[01:52.90]the world of thought,of man-made things, of law and order, of discipline, of travel and adventure.

[02:00.66]Father is the one who teaches the child, who shows him the road into the world.

[02:06.58]Fatherly love is conditional love.

[02:10.08]Its principle is “I love you because you fulfill my expectations,

[02:15.76]because you do your duty,because you are like me.”

[02:19.92]In conditional fatherly love we find, as with unconditional motherly love,

[02:26.81]a negative and a positive aspect.

[02:30.21]The negative aspect is the very fact that fatherly love has to be deserved,

[02:36.33]that it can be lost if one does not do to what is expected.

[02:41.25]In the nature of fatherly love lies the fact that obedience becomes the main virtue,

[02:48.26]that disobedience is the main sin—and its punishment the withdrawal of fatherly love.

[02:55.48]The positive side is equally important.

[02:58.86]Since his love is conditional, I can do something to acquire it, I can work for it;

[03:05.76]his love is not outside of my control as motherly love is.