On the other hand, as we face our lives and in those moments when the question arises for us whether our life has any meaning at all -- when we suddenly have what might be described as an awareness of existence and the whole question whether existence has sense arises for us, then we know perfectly well that the world is not unmysterious. For in these experiences there is a ‘feeling of the world as a limited whole’. we seem abstracted to a point outside the world and we see it without our involvement in it -- we see it as one thing. And when this happens to you (if it ever does happen), you know that ‘how the world is’ is not everything. There is something else -- there is the existence of the world -- ‘that the world is’. You suddenly see the world in a way which makes you conscious of the mystery of its existence -- of the mystery of existence itself. and a question arises which could not have arisen before while you were investigating the facts and taking the fact that there are facts for granted -- namely, the question of the meaning of this latter fact. What does it mean that a world would exist, that anything should exist, that there should be facts at all? This is not a question that further knowledge of the facts of the world would enable us to answer. It is a mystery. we can become aware of this mystery -- deeply and disturbingly. But the paradoxical thing i that you can have this experience without detriment to your confidence as a scientist. For ‘how the world is’ remains untouched -- the facts are unchanged -- and ‘how the world is’ remains completely unmysterious. In other words, what I am saying is that it both makes sense to be confident that there is no unfathomable mystery within the world and at the same time to recognize that the world itself is the profoundest mystery.
‘And the greatest of these is love.’ Why did he say that? I think he said it because love can give perceptive understanding of the meaning of the world. When I say ‘perceptive understanding’, I still of course do not mean that we can come to know the meaning, particularly if it were meant that the meaning of the world could be known as its facts re known. Its meaning is not another fact. Love’s perception of the meaning of the world is an understanding of its meaning, not a knowledge. It does not make men learned; it makes them wise...we are only problematically related to the hidden meaning of the world through hope or, which is the same thing, through faith. We are simply believing in a meaning which we do not see -- passionately wishing that there may be this meaning. But we have ‘faith, hope, love. And the greatest of these is love.’ I want to suggest that love is greatest because, although it too can only give understanding, as opposed to knowledge, of the meaning of existence, the understanding it gives is perceptive, not problematic. Here meaning, although not comprehended is somehow experienced -- it is no longer something to which we are merely problematically related through belief. It is perceptive, not a leap.
Love perceives the sense of things because it is when a thing is loved by us that we come closest to seeing it as God sees it. It is then that we see it, as it were, from Eternity, with the whole world as background to it. Where persons are concerned, what love of another gives is perception of his or her unconditional significance. To see a person as unconditionally significant is to see him as God sees him. And one of the fundamental difficulties of life is to be able to perceive the unconditional significance of another.We are naturally ego-centric, which means that we ordinarily only recognize our own unconditional significance. That is the point of saying ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’. It is love alone that can show us the unconditional significance of another. A person whom I love is somehow revealed to me. I no longer see him through the miasma of his mere relevance to my wants or mere usefulness for my plans and purposes. And when he ceases thereby to be a mere adjunct to my life, I, as it were, break through to him. I no longer see him ‘through a glass darkly’. I begin to see what it means to understand as all along, from Eternity, I have myself been understood
But it is not merely in our relations to persons that love can be perceptive of meaning. we can have love towards all living things, and towards the non-living as well. We may like or not like them, but it will be because of how they are -- what properties they have -- that we like or dislike them. We love them because they exist. And in that sense we can have love of everything that exists, love of the world, love of existence. That is the love of which I speak. It is seeing the loved thing with the whole of existence as background to it. It is seeing the miracle of the existence the thing. And this means that it is the same as seeing things sub specie aeternitatis; it is seeing things