Three Types of Love

There are three types of love: I. Free Love, II. Natural Love and III. Vicious Love.

I. Love which is free (gratuito) is praiseworthy, because it is a virtue and has as its proper end what is primary, what is good and what is unchangeable. It is divided into A. friendship and B. desire.

A. Regarding friendship, man most purely loves God most high, God the great, God the ultimate good and end, without considering his own advantage, but rather the goodness of The One Whom he loves. Thus a man loves this good more than himself.

B. Regarding desire, man loves for the sake of the compensation which he expects.

II. Natural love is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy; it has necessity and its own advantage as its end. This too is divided into A. friendship and B. desire.

A. Regarding friendship, with natural love we love ourselves, our perfection and our preservation, and we love most those things which are most necessary to ourselves, such as loving our head more than the other parts of our body. This love is not common to us and to the animals.

B. Regarding desire, we love the supreme good because it supplies our need, since this love does not love for the thing that it loves, but rather for the need that it has of it. Consequently, with this natural delection, a man loves himself more than the supreme good.

III. Vicious love is blameworthy, because it is a sin and has enjoyment as its end. It also is divided into A. friendship and B. desire.

A. Regarding friendship, we love the creature or the pleasure for itself.

B. Regarding desire, we love the creature for ourselves.

Finally, love is also of many other types: natural for itself, pious for parents, happy for one's peers, just for friends, violent for enemies, and holy for God.

Lope de Vega, Pastores de Belén, Rialp: Madrid, 1973, 335-336.

(Plinthos translation)