Quantifiable love

Peter J. Leithart, March 13, 2007

In his Inquiry into the original of our ideas of Beauty and Virtue, the Irish Presbyterian moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson suggested an equation for calculating love:

"The Quantity of Love toward any person is in a compound Proportion of the apprenhended Causes of Love in him, and of the Goodness of Temper in the observer. Or L = C X G."