 My dear warm-wit, I have been thinking very hard about the question in your last letter, if, as I have clearly shown, all selves are being there very not are by their very nature in competition, and therefore the enemy's idea of love is a contradiction in terms. What becomes of my reiterated warning that he really loves the human vermin and really desires their freedom and continued existence. I hope, my dear boy, you have not shown my letter to anyone. Not that it matters, of course. Anyone would see that the appearance of heresy into which I have fallen is purely accidental. By the way, I hope you understand, too, that some, apparently, uncomplementary references to slobgob were purely jokular. I really have the highest respect for him, and of course, some things I said about not shielding you from the authorities were not seriously meant. You can trust me to look after your interests, but do keep everything on under lock and key. The truth is, I slip by mere carelessness into saying that the enemy really loves the humans. That, of course, is an impossibility. He is one being. They are distinct from him. Their good cannot be his. All his talk about love must be a disguise for something else. He must have some real motive for creating them and taking so much trouble about him. Taking so much trouble about them. The reason one comes to talk as if he really had this impossible love is our utter failure to find out the real motive. What does he stand to make out of them? That is the insoluble question. I do not see that. That it can do any harm to tell you that this very problem was a chief cause of our father's quarrel with the enemy. When the creation of man was first mooted, and when, even at that stage, the enemy freely confessed that he foresaw a certain episode about a cross, our father very naturally sought an interview and asked for an explanation. The enemy gave no reply except to produce the cock-and-bowl story about disinterested love which he had been circulating ever since. This our father naturally cannot accept. He implored the enemy to lay his cards on the table and gave him every opportunity. He admitted that he felt a real anxiety to know the secret. The enemy replied, quote, I wish with all my heart that you did, end quote. It was, I imagine, at this stage in the interview that our fathers discussed at such an unprovoked lack of confidence caused him to remove himself in infinite distance from the presence with a suddenness which has given rise to the ridiculous enemy story that he was forcibly thrown out of heaven. Since then we have begun to see why our oppressor was so secretive. His thrones depends on the secret. Members of his faction have frequently admitted that it, that if ever we came to understand what he means by love, the war would be over and we would re-enter heaven and there lies the great task. We know that he cannot really love. Nobody can. It doesn't make sense. If we could only find out what he is really up to, hypothesis after hypothesis has been tried and still we couldn't find out yet. We must never lose hope. More and more complicated theories, further and further collections of data, richer rewards for researchers who make progress, more and more terrible punishments for those who fail. All this pursued and accelerated to the very end of time cannot surely fail to succeed. You complain that my last letter does not make it clear whether I regard being in love as a desirable state for a human or not, but really warm wood. That is the sort of question one expects them to ask. Leave them to discuss whether love or patriotism or celibacy or candles on altars or titoalism or education are good or bad. Can't you see there is no answer? Nothing matters at all except the tendency of a given state of mind in given circumstances to move in a particular patient as a particular moment nearer to the enemy or nearer to us. Thus it would be quite a good thing to make the patient decide that quote love is good or bad. If he is an arrogant man with a contempt for the body really based on decency but mistaken by him for purity and one who takes pleasure and flouting what may most of his followers approve by all means let him decide against love instill into him an over viewing overweening eclectism and then when you have separated his sexuality from all that might humanize it weigh in on him with it in some much more brutal and cynical form if on the other hand he is an emotional gullible man fee him on minor poets and fifth fifth rate novelist and the old school until you have made him believe that love is both irresistible and somehow intrinsically meritorious this belief is not much help i grant you in producing casual unchastity but it is in incomparable recipe for prolonged noble romantic tragic adulteries ending if all goes well in murders and suicides failing that it can be used to steer the patient into a useful marriage for marriage though the enemy's invention has its uses there must be several young women in your patient's neighborhood who would render the christian life intensely difficult to him if only one would pursue persuade him to marry one of them please send me a report on this when you next write in the meantime get it quite clear in your own mind that this state of falling in love is not in itself necessary necessarily favorable either to use or or to the other side or either either to us or to the other side it is simply an occasion which we and the enemy are both trying to exploit like most of the other things which humans are excited about such as health and sickness age and youth or war and peace it is from the point of view of the spiritual life mainly raw material your affectionate uncle screwed