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, both an heretical creed and 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, being 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 amid a desperate contest.[1]

[Footnote 1: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, pp. xvii-xviii.]

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, 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 only that we should, in so far as we can,
abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of
certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been
taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in
ge