Hate

Hate may be described as an extreme form of disaffection usually provoked by some marked interference with our activities, desires or ideals. But in less intense degree the negative feeling towards others may be provoked immediately and unmistakably by most casual evidence of voice, manner or bearing. Such immediate revulsions of feeling contrast with the instances of "instinctive sympathy" previously cited, and are as direct and uncontrollable. Even kindly disposed persons cannot help experiencing in the presence of some persons they have never seen before, a half conscious thrill of repulsion or a dislike colored with dread. A shifting gaze, a noticeably pretentious manner, a marked obsequiousness, a grating voice, a chillness of demeanor, a physical deformity, these, however little they may have to do with a person's genuine qualities, do affect our attitudes toward them. As the familiar verse has it:

I do not like you, Dr. Fell,

The reason why I cannot tell,

But this I know, and know full well,

I do not like you, Dr. Fell.

We may later revise our estimates, but the initial reaction. is made, and often remains as a subconscious qualification of our general attitude toward another. People of worldly experience learn to trust their first reactions, to "size a man up" almost intuitively, and to be surprised if their first impressions go astray.

From this merely instinctive revulsion the negative attitude may rouse to that terrible form of destructive antipathy which is "hate," as popularly understood. In between lie degrees of dislike depending partly on the strength of the initial antipathy but equally so on the degree to which others, whether persons, institutions or ideas, interfere with our activities, desires or ideals. The man who seriously obstructs our love, our pleasure, or our ambition, or who tries to do so, provokes hate, and its concomitants of jealousy, rage and pugnacity. It is not only that we dislike the mere presence of the person (in the

opposite case the mere presence of the beloved object is a joy), but we dislike it for what it portends in danger and threat to ourselves. The more serious the evil or disaster for which a person comes to stand, the more violent the hatred for him, despite his personal fascinations. The villain is not infrequently a "damned smiling villain."

The provocation of hate is complicated by the fact that it is closely associated with fear. We dislike those who threaten our happiness partly because we fear them. And we fear, as was pointed out in more detail in the discussion of that powerful human trait, the unfamiliar, the strange, the startling, the unexpected. The facility with which sensational newspapers can work up in an ignorant population a hate for foreign nations, especially those of a totally alien civilization, is made possible by the fear which these uninformed readers can feel at the dangerous possibilities of mysterious foreign hordes. The fomenting of fear is in nearly all such cases a prerequisite to the fomenting of hate. And the promotion of hate has historically been one of the frequent ingredients of international conflicts.

Like love, hate is profoundly influential in modifying our interests in persons and situation. To dislike a person moderately is, in his absence, to be indifferent to him. To dislike him intensely, in a sense, increases our interest in him, though perversely. Just as we wish the beloved person to succeed, to gain honor and reputation and wealth, so we long for and rejoice in the downfall and discomfiture of our enemies. Thus writes the Psalmist:

"Arise, O Lord, save me, my God; for thou has smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly."

"Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies that I might destroy those that hate me."

"Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies."

Hate may be directed against persons, and usually it is. But hatred may be directed against institutions and ideas as well. For many persons it will be impossible for a decade to listen to German music or the German language, so closely

have these become associated in their minds with ideas and practices which they detest. To a dogmatic Calvinist in the sixteenth century, any heretical creed, as well as its practitioners, were objects of abomination. Disappointed men may take out in a spleen and hatred of mankind their personal pique and balked desires.

Great hates may be present at the same time and in the same persons as great loves. Indeed for some persons strength in the one passion is impossible without a corresponding strength in its opposite. We cannot help hating, more or less, not only those who interfere with our own welfare, but with the welfare of those who, having become dear to us, have become, as we say, a part of our lives. Thus writes Bertrand Russell in the introduction to his treatment of some of the radical social tendencies of our own day:

Whatever bitterness or hate may be found in the movements which we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate but love that is their mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love. Though difficult it is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of outlook, and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve in the midst of a desperate conflict.33

Hate may thus be, as great religious and social reformers illustrate, invoked on the side of good as well as evil. The prophets burned with a "righteous indignation." But hate is a violent and consuming passion, and bent on destroying obstacles rather than solving problems. It consumes in hatred for individuals such energy as might more expeditiously be devoted to the improvement of the circumstances which make people do the mean or small or blind actions which arouse our wrath. The complete meekness and humility preached by Christ have not been taken literally by the natively pugnacious peoples of Europe. But as James says suggestively:

'Love your enemies! Mark you not simply those who do not happen to be your friends, but your enemies, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance meaning that we should, in so far as we can, abate our animosities, or

33 Russell: Proposed Roads to Freedom, pp. xvii-xviii.

it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it has seldom been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance, and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused. If positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings. Their lives would be morally discrete from the lives of other men, and there is no saying what the effects might be they might conceivably transform the world.34

Dislikes, disagreements, native antipathies are not to be abolished, human differences being ineradicable and human interests, even in an ideal society, being in conflict. But a keener appreciation of other viewpoints, which is possible through education, a less violent concern with one's own personal interests to the exclusion of all others, may greatly reduce the amount of hate current in the world, and free men's energies in passions more constructive in their fruits.

4 James: Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 283.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DEMAND FOR PRIVACY AND

INDIVIDUALITY

Privacy and Solitude

Although one of man's most powerful tendencies, as has already been pointed out, is his desire to be with his fellows, this desire is not unqualified. Just as men can be satiated with too much eating, and irritated by too much inactivity, so men become 'fed up' with companionship. The demand for solitude and privacy is thus fundamentally a physiological demand, like the demand for rest. "The world is too much with us', especially the human world. Companionship, even of the most desirable kind, exhausts nervous energy, and may become positively fatiguing and painful. To crave solitude is thus not a sign of man's unsociability, but a sign merely that sociability, like any other instinct, becomes annoying, if too long or strenuously indulged. Much of the neurasthenia of city life has been attributed to the continual contact with other people, and the total inability of most city dwellers to secure privacy for any considerable length of time. In some people a lifelong habit of close contact with large numbers of people makes them abnormally gregarious, so that solitude, the normal method of recuperation from companionship, becomes unbearable. Few city dwellers have not felt after a period of isolation in some remote country place the need for the social stimulus of the city. But a normal human life demands a certain proportion of solitude just as much as it demands the companionship of others.

With the spread of education and the general enhancement of the sense of personal self-hood and individuality among large numbers of people, the demand for privacy has increased. The modern reader is shocked to discover in the literature of the Elizabethan period the amazing lack of a sense of privacy