“All the passions,” saith an old writer, “are such near neighbours, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets.” Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is passionless; it does not catch, it quenches fire. The misanthrope who professes to hate mankind has generally passed to that hate from too extravagant a love. And love for mankind is still, though unconsciously to himself, feeding hate by its own unextinguished embers. “The more a man loves his mistress,” says Rochefoucauld, “the nearer he is to hate her.” Possibly so, if he is jealous; but in return, the more he declares he hates her, the nearer he is to loving her again. Vehement affections do not move in parallels but in circles. As applied to them the proverb is true, “_Les extrêmes se touchent_.” A man of ardent temperament who is shocked into misanthropy by instances of ingratitude and perfidy, is liable any day to be carried back into philanthropy, should unlooked-for instances of gratitude and truth start up and take him by surprise. But if an egotist, who, inheriting but a small pittance of human affection, concentres it rigidly on himself, should deliberately school his reason into calm contempt for his species, he will retain that contempt to the last. He looks on the world of man, with its virtues and vices, much as you, O my reader, look on an ant-hill! What to you are the virtues or vices of ants? It is this kind of masked misanthropy which we encounter in our day—the misanthropy without a vizard belongs to a ruder age.