Chapter 26.—The Command to Love God and Our Neighbor Includes a Command to Love Ourselves.

27.  Seeing, then, that there is no need of a command that every man should love himself and his own body,—seeing, that is, that we love ourselves, and what is beneath us but connected with us, through a law of nature which has never been violated, and which is common to us with the beasts (for even the beasts love themselves and their own bodies),—it only remained necessary to lay injunctions upon us in regard to God above us, and our neighbor beside us.  “Thou shalt love,” He says, “the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”31    Matt. xxii. 37–40.  Thus the end of the commandment is love, and that twofold, the love of God and the love of our neighbor.  Now, if you take yourself in your entirety,—that is, soul and body together,—and your neighbor in his entirety, soul and body together (for man is made up of soul and body), you will find that none of the classes of things that are to be loved is overlooked in these two commandments.  For though, when the love of God comes first, and the measure of our love for Him is prescribed in such terms that it is evident all other things are to find their centre in Him, nothing seems to be said about our love for ourselves; yet when it is said, “Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself,” it at once becomes evident that our love for ourselves has not been overlooked.

CAPUT XXVI. Praeceptum de Deo et proximo, imo et de seipso diligendo datum est.

27. Ergo, quoniam praecepto non opus est ut se quisque et corpus suum diligat, id est, quoniam id quod sumus, et id quod infra nos est, ad nos tamen pertinet, inconcussa naturae lege diligimus, quae in bestias etiam promulgata est (nam et bestiae se atque corpora sua diligunt); restabat ut et de illo quod supra nos est, et de illo quod juxta nos est, praecepta sumeremus. Diliges, inquit, Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde tuo, et ex tota anima tua, et ex tota mente tua, et diliges proximum tuum tanquam teipsum. In his duobus praeceptis tota Lex pendet et Prophetae (Matth. XXII, 37-40). Finis itaque praecepti est dilectio (I Tim. I, 5), et ea gemina, id est Dei et proximi. Quod si te totum intelligas, id est animum et corpus tuum, et proximum totum, id est animum et corpus ejus (homo enim ex animo constat et corpore), nullum rerum diligendarum genus in his duobus praeceptis praetermissum est. Cum enim praecurrat dilectio Dei, ejusque dilectionis modus praescriptus appareat, ita ut caetera in illum confluant, de dilectione tua nihil dictum videtur; sed cum dictum est, Diliges proximum tuum tanquam teipsum, simul et tui abs te dilectio non praetermissa est.