Is Loving Your Family an Obstacle to Loving God?
A Country Home and a Fiery Debate
In 1696, a package arrived at the Essex home of Damaris Cudworth Masham (born 1658). Inside was a book by John Norris, a clergyman and philosopher. Norris had a bold claim: true love—real, pure love—belongs to God alone. Loving your friends, your family, your dog, or even a piece of cake was at best a pale shadow of real love, and at worst a distraction that pulled you away from God.
Norris was not inventing this idea from scratch. He followed the philosophy of Nicolas Malebranche, a French thinker who taught that God is the only real cause of everything, including our feelings of pleasure. According to this view, called occasionalism, when you feel joy looking at a sunset or hugging your mother, God is the direct source of that pleasure. The sunset and your mother are only “occasions” or triggers. Norris drew the conclusion that since God alone causes our happiness, God alone should receive our love.
Masham read the book and decided to fight back. She had spent years discussing philosophy with the great John Locke (1632–1704), who lived in her household. She was also the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, a Cambridge professor known for blending reason and religion. She could not accept Norris’s position because she saw a dangerous consequence: if we’re told that loving creatures is second-rate, then all the bonds of human society—family, friendship, compassion—would unravel. Morality itself would be wrecked.
So Masham wrote her own short book, A Discourse Concerning the Love of God, published anonymously in 1696. In it, she argued that we come to love God precisely through loving the world. By observing the beauty, order, and goodness around us, we reason our way to the Creator. Far from competing with love of God, love for created things is the first rung on the ladder that leads upward.
Love as a Ladder, Not a Cage
Masham denied Norris’s sharp split between love of God and love of creatures. She argued that desire is a natural part of love for the world. We see something good, we desire it, and that draws us toward the source of all goodness. Love, in her view, is a kind of “complaisance”—a word Locke had used—meaning the pleasure we take in something’s happiness or existence. When you feel warm toward a friend, you’re not stealing affection away from God; you’re learning what love feels like so you can direct it upward.
She also grounded morality in human happiness and reason. Like Locke and the Cambridge Platonists, she believed that the goal of ethics is to achieve the greatest happiness, but this isn’t just chasing pleasure like a kid chasing candy. Reason plays the role of a guide, showing us which pleasures truly make our lives better and which ones lead us into trouble. Virtue, for Masham, requires the right attitude of mind—freely choosing the good because you understand it, not because you’re forced.
This is where her argument against Norris hits hardest. Norris’s occasionalism made morality seem almost pointless. If God directly causes all pleasure, and we should only love God, why bother being kind to your neighbor? Masham insisted that practical morality—actually doing good in daily life—is not an optional extra; it’s the heart of religion. She pointed out that Christian ethics is full of commands to love your neighbor, feed the hungry, and care for the sick. You can’t do that if you believe your neighbor’s happiness is just a shadow.
Thus, Masham’s love is not a cage that locks you away from the world; it’s a ladder that starts with earthly affections and climbs to the divine.
Superstition vs. Reason: A Middle Path
Masham’s second book, Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (1705), broadened her defense of reason in religion. She found herself caught between two opponents: on one side, Deists who thought reason alone was enough and that revelation—like the Bible—was unnecessary; on the other, people who followed religious rituals without thinking, which she called superstition. Superstition, she warned, led to bigotry and even atheism, because if you’re told to believe things that make no sense, you might eventually reject all belief.
She argued that God gave us reason, so using it in religion cannot be wrong. A religion that ignores reason cannot possibly come from a reasonable God. But she also insisted that revelation and faith matter deeply—we can’t figure out everything by pure reason. So she staked out a middle ground: a “reasonable Christianity” that values both thinking and trusting.
In this, she echoed Locke’s view that living a virtuous life is far more important than performing ceremonies. What matters is how you treat people, not how perfectly you follow rituals. This practical focus connected directly to liberty: free choice is the greatest gift a created being has, she wrote. Without civil and religious liberty, people cannot exercise true virtue. So if a government or a church forces beliefs on you, it damages your ability to be good.
The Mother Who Couldn’t Teach
In Occasional Thoughts, Masham turned her argument about liberty and reason into a powerful case for educating girls. In her time, most girls learned very little beyond domestic skills and perhaps French. Masham herself had not been taught Latin or Greek by her father, one of the most learned men of his day—she later taught herself Latin. She saw the damage firsthand.
She argued that mothers are the first moral teachers of their children. From the earliest age, children learn about right and wrong, kindness, and fairness from their mothers. But how could a mother teach something she herself was never taught? If a girl receives only a limited and distorted education, she cannot give her children a meaningful moral education. The result, Masham warned, was a cycle of ignorance that hurt families, religion, and society.
Notice that this feminist argument was not about abstract rights; it was rooted in her whole philosophy. Virtue depends on rational understanding. Freedom depends on knowing the good. If you keep half of humanity ignorant, you cut off the very source of moral teaching. So educating girls wasn’t a luxury—it was essential for a decent world.
Masham lived this idea, though not without struggle. After she married Sir Francis Masham, a widower with nine children, she found herself with little time for philosophy. She corresponded with brilliant minds like Leibniz, discussed her father’s ideas, and defended them against critics. Her home at Oates became a place where Locke, Isaac Newton, and other thinkers gathered. Even with a heavy domestic load, she carved out space for the life of the mind, and she demanded that other women be allowed to do the same.
Why a 300-Year-Old Debate Still Sounds Familiar
You might not use the word “occasionalism” at dinner, but the question at the heart of Masham’s debate with Norris hasn’t gone away. Can you love your friends, your hobbies, your video games, and still be devoted to something bigger—whether that’s God, justice, or the well-being of the planet? Or do those loves compete? Masham’s answer was that ordinary loves aren’t obstacles; they’re training grounds. You learn to care deeply by caring about the person in front of you.
Her other argument hits even closer to home. She saw that who gets to learn shapes who gets to lead, teach, and shape the next generation. When she argued that denying education to girls poisons the whole society, she was pointing to a truth we’re still wrestling with. Today, arguments about equal access to school, about who gets encouraged to speak up, about which stories get told—all of them trace back to the same insight: that reason, liberty, and education belong to everyone.
Damaris Masham wrote her books anonymously and never held a university post. She juggled philosophy with stepchildren and a busy household. Yet she picked up her quill and added her voice to one of the most important conversations of her time. Her legacy isn’t just a footnote about a 17th-century woman who happened to know Locke. It’s a sturdy reminder that the biggest ideas—love, freedom, reason—are shaped by those who dare to defend them, even when the world expects them to stay quiet.
Think about it
- If you were told that loving your pet too much might make you a worse person, how would you respond?
- Do you think someone who never had a good education can still teach you something important about right and wrong? Why or why not?
- Suppose a new friend says, “You should follow your heart, not your brain, when it comes to big life decisions.” Using Masham’s middle path, how might you answer?
