Like love, hate is profoundly influential in modifying our interest in persons and situations. 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.
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, 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.]