The one place in the corpus where Neville subordinates truth to something else, and he chooses the hardest possible case to do it with. If a murderer came through the window right now and asked me where a certain man has gone, I would tell him, knowing exactly where the man is, I would say I don't know. I would lie. I would lie to the murderer and I wouldn't tell the truth, because love is greater than truth. The reason he gives is not situational ethics but the identity doctrine: I would lie and save myself, because the man that I am saving from this murderer is myself, and I would save myself from the violence that he intended. So the lie is not an exception to the rule of love, it is an application of it, and both men in the room are the liar. It sits immediately after truth is defined as an ever-increasing illumination and immediately before the vision of infinite love, where he is asked what is the greatest thing in the world and answers love, and is embraced and incorporated - so the ranking is not an opinion but a report of what the answer was when it was asked of him.