THE LEAST NATURAL OF LOVES

Friendship is -- in a sense not at all derogatory to it -- the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It his least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale ... The species, biologically considered, has no need of it. The pack or her -- the community -- may even dislike and distrust it ... Affection and Eros were too obviously connected with our nerves, too obviously shared with the bruites. You could feel these tugging at your guts and fluttering in your diaphragm. But in Friendship -- in that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen -- you got away from all that. This alone, of all the loves, seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels.

C.S. LEWIS, THE FOUR LOVES