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.] 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: