[538] But this principle of justice^a is not something which stands BESIDE love^b, or AGAINST love. Love is not something ADDED to this principle of justice, but love IS, in its STRUCTURE, this principle of justice. Let me give an example for this. I know people who have a great desire to sacrifice themselves,^c in the relationship to somebody else. They do not justice to themselves, and in not doing justice to themselves, they don't do justice to the other one either: They produce a relationship of mutual chaotic self-surrender, which Erich Fromm^d has called a symbiotic relationship, in which the one is actually exploiting the other by submissiveness in terms of lack of justice to himself and to the other one. But where there is not justice, there may be chaotic self-surrender, but chaotic self-surrender is not love. And so, we can repeat: this middle realm, which can also be called the realm of justice, is the realm in which love finds its structure. But now, where will we know about these structures? And here I answer: not by

natural law^e (we discussed that) in the sense of the Catholic authoritarian form; but we find it insofar by natural law, as it belongs to the very nature of man in his essential structure, to be a subject and object of love, and therefore of those structural elements of justice which are presupposed in every act of love. In this sense we can use, without the authoritarian element, the doctrine of the natural law. But if we don't use the authoritarian element, which the Roman Church uses, how can we know about the commands of natural law, or about the structures of justice?---which is the same. And there my answer is pragmatic, and the word wisdom is a pragmatic term. Wisdom is CONQUERED by experience. Wisdom is not given by command. This experience is personal, but it is first of all a collective experience of mankind.

So we can say: The Ten Commandments,^f for instance, are not commandments which can be applied as laws but are the result of pragmatic experiences in which the structure of love^g has come to consciousness of human beings. They are matters of wisdom^h. And therefore they are in themselves not unconditional. None of the Ten Commandments---except the first, namely the