| Blind Venus. Beauty's Power. (Part Two.) Christopher Bernard |
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Download RTF version Read part one of this essay 5. Love Against Love The experience of hatred is altogether secondary to the experience of love: it is the experience of a withdrawal of love, just as cold is experienced as a withdrawal of warmth. And is just as bewildering. How could it happen? We feel hatred from others before we feel hatred for them - the glare that frightens us comes from apparently nowhere and seems to have no cause, except for one fact: it is preeminently human. | Sometimes we are able to make a connection between an action of ours and the hatred of another: we have done wrong, harmed someone, broken a rule. Soon, according to some, we anticipate the anger that might, as a result, come our way, plus the pain of the angry blow, and indulge in a little of the civilizing self-hatred (essential for seeing oneself in proportion to the world) called "feelings of guilt. But it goes too far to equate anger and hatred: hatred is, after all, a far more fearsome thing, involving deeper and longer lasting layers of feeling. Anger is a kind of geyser of emotion that goes off irregularly. Hatred, on the other hand, is the slow and relentless feeding of a volcano:  | |||
