"Actions by which a person freely gives to other his greatest values--health, life, soul, happiness--are love actions of the highest possible intensity," the director stated. Compare these, for example, with offering your seat to someone on the subway.

The maximum extensity of one's love is, of course, to love the whole Universe(not merely mankind) while the "zero point of love extensity", Sorokin said, "is a love of oneself only."

Equally important is the duration of love since even love of the highest intensity may last for only a moment. Among the lowest degrees of this diversion is love which lasts, for example, only on weekends and is forgotten during the remainder of the week.

The purity of love is explained by Sorokin's old-fashioned definition of altruism. "Love known no bargain ... no reward. love is always for love's sake." Sorokin attacks the blind "romantic" kind of love (which he calls "a sort of a fever") as the most typical type of inadequate love.

In the Center's survey of Christian saints, a majority were discovered to have originated from wealthy families,m including royalty, while only five had begun their lives for example as fishermen.

The survey also disclosed that many saints were educated or trained at a monastery or convent and that almost a majority were "born potential saints" rather than being converted to saintliness by various catastrophies. The study's figures concluded, among other things, that the saints' altrustic nature was a major factor in an extraordinary longevity and vigorous health.

Other observation results have included a study of the Society of Brothers in Paraguay where some 650 people live strictly by the Golden Rule. Education is the perpetuating force in this society which holds all property in common.

Three types of altruists have been distinguished by the Center's research. Fortunate Altruists, like Albert Schweitzer and Benjamin Franklin, grow into altruistic creativity peacefully, Catastrophic Altruists, like St. Paul and St. Francis of Assisi, go through painful periods of conversion before assuming their new altruistic personality. The Intermediary type, of which Mahatma Gandhi is an example, includes traits of both previous types.

The clear advantage is with the Fortunate Altruist according to Director Sorokin. The perfect example is given in the life history of Serafim of Sarov: "Born in the pious family of a building contractor, Serafim early showed his religiosity by playing around a church which his mother had built..." His life ended appropriately at the age of 74 as he died quietly in the keeping position of prayer.

Included in the Center's reports are isolated examples of occasions which show the power of love against aggression and enmity. "At Pee, Siberia," Sorokin recorded, "during the famine, a young relief worker assigned to drive oxcarts over robber-ridden roads, refused a military escort. When robbers did stop him, he asked them to help him transport the food to the starving people. Instead of attacking him, they helped him."

The Center's most technical work involves a study of Yoga and its direct connection to altruism. In one report, purusha, the pure divine energy of the Yoga system is defined chiefly as Love, in addition to knowledge and existence. The Yogi, whose basic exercise involves conscious and deliberate control over breathing, participates in the universality of Love by submerging his personality elements (body, emotions, habitual process of thought, etc.) In everyday life, the Yogi learn to abide by the law of Love through certain yamas (abstinences).

To include every type of sect, cult and nationality, Sorokin is currently making plans for an International Association for the Application of Creative Altruism. Its foundation, almost an inevitability since the Center started six years ago, will merely be another step in the director's struggle toward universal recognition of love.

Sorokin, who initiated the College's department of Sociology in 1931, is content, however, even to glance at the idea of worldwide creative altruism. His early years, spent amidst the violence and destruction of revolutionary Russia where he once waited weeks in prison expecting a Bolshevik firing squad, impressed on him how necessary a formula for peace was to the world.

Today the Research director is the first to admit the Center may contribute no more than the "proverbial drop in the bucket" toward the necessary formula. "But," he insists, "since governments, big foundations, and better brains seem to be absorbed mainly in the promotion of wars and in the invention of increasingly destructive means for the examination of man, someone, somehow, and sometime had to engage in the study of the phenomena of unselfish love."

Sorokin Says:-