“I wish he was not so fond of music, it will interfere with his Latin and Greek. He would not want to hide himself away so much if he were not deceitful”. He will not stay five minutes in the same room with me if he can help it. He shrinks out of my way whenever he sees me coming near him. If he was fond of me I should be fond of him, but I cannot like a son who, I am sure, dislikes me. It is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be fond of his own father. He ought to be after all the trouble I have taken with him, but he is ungrateful and selfish. Pontifex: “He is not fond of me, I’m sure he is not. ( 11:09) The larger quote from Butler is here. ( 10:58) ‘Every one of Storge’s characteristics is ambivalent’, which means they can be turned to either evil or good. Mary Anne Evans) wrote seven novels, including ‘Adam Bede’ (1859), ‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1860), ‘Silas Marner’ (1861), and ‘Middlemarch’ (1871–72), most of which are set in provincial England. William Makepeace Thackeray wrote ‘Vanity Fair’ (1847-8). Another book by Trollope, ‘The Way We Live Now’ (1875), deals with gambling. ( 9:25) Anthony Trollope wrote the Chronicles of Barsetshire of which ‘Framley Parsonage’ (1861) deals with ambition, and ‘Doctor Thorne’ (1858) with snobbery.

( 9:20) Lewis: “In the nineteenth century some people thought that monogamous family life would automatically make them holy and happy the savage anti-domestic literature of modern times – the Samuel Butlers, the Gosses, the Shaws – delivered the answer…The ‘debunkers’ may have been wrong about principles and may have forgotten the maxim abusus non tollit usum : but in both cases they were pretty right about matters of fact ” (Lewis essay, ‘The Sermon and the Lunch’). When we call a man ‘brutal’ we usually mean that he commits cruelties impossible to most real brutes they’re not clever enough” (‘The Four Loves’, Chapter 3). ( 1:55) “When we blame a man for being ‘a mere animal’, we mean not that he displays animal characteristics (we all do), but that he displays these, and only these, on occasions where the specifically human was demanded. This was later turned into a larger book with more detail (with quite different examples), which you can find here: … You can purchase Lewis’ original radio broadcasts here: … You can find my transcript of this talk here, as it is not available on the web for some reason: … The second talk begins at 11:00, if you need smaller, bite-sized pieces. I believe the first two talks addressed ‘Storge’.

Originally ‘The Four Loves’ series was recorded by Lewis in London in 1957, prepared as 10 talks to air on the ‘Protestant Hour’ on American radio. This is an illustration of C.S Lewis’ talk about the first of the four loves – ‘Storge’ or ‘Affection’.

Lewis four loves