Chapter 13: Of the Other Causes of Hatred — Antipathy, Injury, Fear, and Jealousy
The first which I shall note is a secret and hidden antipathy which is in the natures of some things one against another. As vultures are killed with sweet smells, and horse-flies with ointments; the locust will die at the sight of the polypus, and the serpent will rather fly into the fire, than come near the boughs of a wild ash: some plants will not grow, nor the blood of some creatures mingle together; the feathers of the eagle will not mix with the feathers of other fowls. So Homer notes of the lion, that he fears fire, and the elephant nauseates his meat, if a mouse have touched it. A world more of particulars there are which naturalists have observed of this kind: from which natural antipathy it comes, that things which never before saw that which is contrary to them, do yet at the very first sight fly from it, as from an enemy to their nature, nor will they ever be brought by discipline to trust one another.
—[〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] Lions with men will never make faithful truce, Nor can you any way the wolf induce to love the lamb: they study with fixed hate, the one the other how to violate.
And the like kind of strange hatred we may sometimes find among men; one man's disposition so much disagreeing from another's, that though there never passed any injuries or occasions of difference between them, yet they cannot but have minds averse from one another; which the epigrammatist has wittily expressed.
Non amo te Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare; Hoc tantum possum dicere, Non amo te. I love you not, yet cannot say for what; This only I can say, I love you not.
Another cause working hatred of a thing in the minds of men, is the difficulty and conceited impossibility of obtaining it, if it be a good thing which we either do or ought to desire, which the casuists call Acedia, being a grief of the appetite looking on a difficult good, as if it were evil because difficult; from which arises a torpor and supine neglect of all the means, which might help us to it. Thus wicked and resolved sinners, conceiving happiness as unacquirable by them, do grow to the hating of it, to entertain rancorous affections against those, which persuade them to seek it, to envy and malign all such they find careful to obtain it; to proceed to licentious resolutions of rejecting all hopes of thoughts of it, and to divert their minds towards such more obvious and easy delight, as will be gotten with less labor; thus difficulty renders good things hateful; as Israel in the wilderness despised the pleasant land, because there were sons of Anak in it.
And this is one great cause of the different affections of men towards several courses of life; one man being of dull and sluggish apprehensions, hates learning: another by nature quick and of noble intellectuals wholly applies himself to it, the difficulty persuading the one to despise the goodness, and the goodness inducing the other to conquer the difficulties of it: so one man looking to the pain of a virtuous life, contemns the reward; and another looking to the reward, endures the pain. And we shall usually find it true, that either laziness, fearing disappointment, or love being disappointed and meeting with difficulties which it cannot conquer, does both beget a kind of hatred and dislike of that which did either deter them from seeking it, or deceive them when they sought it. As she, who while there was any hope, did solicit Aeneas with her tears and importunities; when he was quite gone did follow him with her imprecations.
There is no malice grows ranker than that which arises out of the corruption of love; as no darkness is more formidable, than that of an eclipse, which assaults the very vessels of light; nor any taste more unsavory than of sweet things when they are corrupted. The more natural the union, the more impossible the re-union. Things joined with glue, being broken asunder may be glued again; but if a man's arm be broken off, it can never be joined on again: so those hatreds are most incurable, which arise out of the greatest and most natural love.
[〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉]: When love of friends is turned to wrath, be sure that wrath is deep, and scarce admits a cure.
Another very usual, but most evil cause of hatred, is injury, when a man because he has done wrong, does from there resolve to hate him. Too many examples of this there are in writings both sacred and profane: Joseph's mistress first wronged him in assaulting his chastity, and then hated him and caused him to be cast into prison. Amnon first abused his sister Tamar, and then hated her worse than before he loved her. Phaedra having solicited Hippolytus her husband's son to incest; being denied, did after accuse him to his father, and procure his ruin. And Aristotle proposes it as a problem, why they, who corrupt and violate the chastity of any, do after hate them? and gives this reason of it, because they ever after look on them, as guilty of that shame and sadness, which in the sin they contracted. This cause of hatred Seneca and Tacitus have both observed as a thing usual with proud and insolent men, first to hurt then to hate.
And the reason is first, because injury is the way to make a man, who is wronged, an enemy; and the proper affection, which respects an enemy is hatred. Again, he who is wronged, if equal or above him that has done the wrong, is then feared: and Oderunt quos metuunt, it is usual to hate those whom we fear: if inferior, yet the memory and sight of him does upbraid with guilt, and affect with an unwilling and unwelcome review of the sin, whereby he was wronged; and pride scorns reproof, and loves not to be under him in guilt, whom it overtops in power: for innocence does always give a kind of superiority to the person that is wronged; besides, hatred is a kind of apology for wrong: for if a man can persuade himself to hate him whom he has injured, he will begin to believe that he deserved the injury which was offered to him; every man being naturally willing to find the first inducement to his sin, rather in another than himself.
The next cause (which I shall observe) is fear, I mean slavish fear: for as love excludes fear, so fear begets hatred; and it is ever seen: Qui terribiles sunt, timent: they that terrify others do fear them, as well knowing that they are themselves hated: for as Aristotle speaks, Nemoquem metuit, amat; no man loves him whom he fears: which is the same with that of Saint John, Love casts out fear: not a reverent, submissive, awful fear; not a cautious, vigilant and obedient fear; not a fear of admiration, nor a fear of subjection; but a fear of slavery and of rebellion, all flashes of horror, all the tossings and shipwrecks of a torn mind, all the tremblings of a tormented spirit; briefly all evil and hurtful fear. And this I believe is one principal reason of that malice and contempt of godliness, which shows itself in the lives of atheistical and desperately wicked men, which as it arises out of the corruption of nature, so is it marvelously enraged by the fearful expectation of that fiery vengeance, which their pale and guilty consciences do already preoccupy; for as their conscience dictates, that they deserve to be hated by God; so their stubbornness and malice concludes that they will hate him again; Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.
There may be a double root of this fear, outward and inward. The outward is the cruelty and oppression which we suffer from the potent, and thereupon the less avoidable malice of the person hated (as it was the speech of Caligula, Oderintdum metuant) And here in our aversion (if it observe that general rule of goodness in passions, subordination to reason and piety) is, not only allowable, but natural, while it extends itself no further than the evil which we wrongfully suffer. For I cannot but think that the spittle and scourges, the thorns and buffets, the reed and knees of those mocking and blasphemous Jews were so many drops of that full cup, which He, who knew no sin, was so deeply desirous to have pass from him.
But then next, the inward root of fear is the guilt and burden of an unclean and uncovered conscience, for pollution and weakness is naked, must needs be fearful. And therefore that inference of Adam had truth in it, I was afraid, because I was naked: for having disrobed himself of original righteousness, he was thereupon afraid of the curse and summons of an offended justice. Now from this fear may arise a double hatred; a hatred of a man's own conscience: for an evil man [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] as the philosopher speaks, is not a friend to himself, but flies and labors to run away from himself, and is never in so bad company, as when he is alone, because then he keeps company with his own conscience.
Which is the reason why some men's hatred of themselves has proceeded so far, as to make themselves the instruments of that small measure of annihilation, which they are capable of. Wherein notwithstanding they discover, how far their fury should extend against themselves if they were as omnipotent to effect, as they are ready to desire it: for he that hates a thing, would if he were able, pursue it even to not being. There is no man but has a natural hatred of toads, serpents, vipers, and the like venomous creatures. And yet that man which hates them most, if his conscience be naked and let loose to fly upon him, if that worm that never dies (unless killed with our Savior's blood) begin thoroughly to sting and gnaw him, would think himself a wise merchant, if he could exchange beings with the worst of these. The worm and viper of conscience is of all the creatures the most ugly and hateful. A wicked man, when he does distinctly know himself, does love every thing, save God, better than himself.
—Diri conscia facti Mens habet attonitos & surdo verbere cadit Occultum quatiente animo tortore slagellum. The mind being conscious of some dire offence, fills them with fears; a torturer from there shakes, and with redoubled blows does urge the unheard lashes of an hidden scourge.
Nor can I esteem this a corrupt, though it be a miserable passion; for as a bad man is to himself the worst, so is he by consequence the most hateful of all creatures.
The second hatred, which may arise from that fear which is caused by a secret guilt of mind, is of all others most corrupt and rancorous, namely a hatred of the authors or executioners of justice; of the equity and justness of whose proceedings, we are from within convinced; such as is the malice and blasphemy of malefactors against the judge, and of devils and damned men against God and his righteous judgments, which yet they cannot but acknowledge that they most worthily do endure: for it is the nature of proud and stubborn creatures (as was before observed) Odisse quos laserint, first to wrong God, and then to hate him.
Another particular cause of this passion may be a disparity of affections and desires: for notwithstanding there are many times hatred where there is similarity (as those beasts and birds commonly hate one another, which feed upon the same common meat, as the philosopher observes) and sundry men hate their own vices in others, as if they had not the trade of sin enough to themselves, except they got a monopoly, and might engross it; yet this ever proceeds from an apprehension of some ensuing inconveniences which are likely to follow therefrom, as has been formerly noted: So that in that very similarity of natures, there is a disagreement of ends, each one respecting his own private benefit.
Now the corruptions herein are to be attended according to the nature of that disparity on which the passion is grounded; which sometimes is moral, wherein it is laudable to hate the vicious courses, in which any man differs from us, or we ourselves from the right rule of life; so that the passion redound not from the quality to the person, nor break out into an endeavor of his disgrace and ruin, except it be in such a case, when our own dignity or safety, which we are bound more to regard, being assaulted, is in danger to be betrayed, unless prevented by such a speedy remedy. Sometimes this disparity may be in actions civil, and with respect to society: and then as the opposition, which hatred discovers, may be principally seen in two things; opposition of a man's hopes, and of his parts and abilities, by crossing the one, and undervaluing the other: so corruption may easily proceed from two violent and unreasonable grounds, ambition and self-love; the one pursuing its hopes, the other reflecting upon its worth. And to this particular may be reduced, that hatred, which arises out of a parity of desire, as among competitors for the same dignity, or rivals for the same love, or professors of the same art, either by reason of covetousness, or envy, or ambition, a greedy desire of their own, or a discontented sight of another's good.
Nec quenquam jam ferre potest Caservè priorem Pompeiusve, parem— Thus two great rulers do each other hate, Caesar no better brooks, Pompey no mate.
And these are very unfit affections for society, when private love of men to themselves shall devour the love which they owe to their country. More noble was the behavior of Themistocles, and Aristides, who when they were ever employed in the public service of state, left all their private enmities in the borders of their own country, and did not resume them till they returned, and became private men again.
The last cause which I shall observe of hatred may be a settled and permanent intuition of the object, a penetrating, jealous, and interpreting fancy: because by this means a redoubled search and review does generate a kind of habitual detestation; it being the nature of evil commonly to show worse at the second or third view. And that first, because the former act does work a prejudice, and thereby the after apprehension comes not naked, but with a fore-stalled resolution of finding evil therein: and next, because from a serious and fastened search into the object the faculty gains a greater acquaintance with it, and by consequence a more vehement dislike of it, the former knowledge being a master and light to the latter. But light and wandering fancies (though they may be more sudden in the apprehension of evil, and by consequence liable to an oftener anger, yet by reason of the volubility of the mind joined with an infirmity and inexercise of memory, they are for this cause the less subject to deep and rooted hatred.
To this head may be referred that hatred which arises from excessive melancholy, which makes men sullen, morose, solitary, averse from all society, and haters of the light, delighting only like the shriek-owl or the bittern in desolate places, and monuments of the dead. This is that which is called [in non-Latin alphabet], when men fancy themselves transformed into wolves and dogs, and accordingly hate all human society. Which seems to have been the distemper of [reconstructed: Nebuchadnezzar], when he was thrust out from men, and did eat grass with the beasts. Timon the Athenian was upon this ground branded with the name of [in non-Latin alphabet], the man-hater, because he kept company with no man, but only with Alcibiades, of which he gave this only account, because he thought that man was born to do a great deal of mischief. And we read even in the histories of the Church, of men so marvelously averse from all converse or correspondence with men; that they have for their whole lives long, some of sixty, others of ninety years, immured themselves in cells and silence, not affording to look on the faces of their nearest kindred, when they traveled far to visit them. So far can the opinion of the mind, actuated and furthered by the melancholy of the body, transport men even out of human disposition, which the philosopher tells us is naturally a lover of society, and therefore he says that such men are usually given to contention, the sign and the fruit of hatred.
