On the Pleasure of Hating, by William Hazlitt

In 1826 the English writer William Hazlitt (1778-1830) wrote an essay called "On the Pleasure of Hating." Today considered one of the great British critics and essayists, his aim in this work was to explain the power of hate as an emotion, why so many people find satisfaction in hating others. Although much of the essay relates to Hazlitt's time and personal relationships, his analysis of hatred remains relevant to the present, given the upsurge of hate and cruelty across the planet. 

[Image: William Hazlitt, Self-portrait, from c. 1802]

At the outset, it is important to note that as a young man, Hazlitt was convinced of the benevolence of human nature. By the 1820s, he had rejected that belief. In the essay, Hazlitt argues that hatred is built into our nature. We need to have something to hate to maintain "our  thought and action." The human mind hankers after evil and "takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction." In contrast, pure good is boring. It lacks "variety and spirit." 

Perhaps for this reason, he continued, old friends often begin to hate one another as the years pass by. People who once delighted us begin to bore or annoy us. Hazlitt confesses that he no longer is on good terms with close friends of the past, who included many of the literary lights of the day, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. His staunch admiration for the cause of liberty created friction with friends who had become more conservative due to the French Revolution. They might (and did) blame his bad temper, but he countered that they fell out with each other as well.  

The worst effects of hating, Hazlitt argued, arise in relation to religion and politics. "The pleasure of hating," is "like a poisonous mineral." It perverts religion, turning it into anger and bigotry. Virtue becomes "a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others." It turns "the different sects, creeds, doctrines in religion" into excuses "for men to wrangle, to quarrel, to tear one another in pieces." 

Hatred "makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands." Love of country does not inspire any friendly feeling or disposition to help one's countrymen. It means only hatred for the inhabitants "of any other country we happen to be at war with for the time." Here, Hazlitt was thinking of Britain's wars against the French in particular. 

People claim to be "patriots and friends of freedom," but the world is divided into two types: tyrants and slaves who support the efforts of kings to forge "chains of despotism and superstition." The words and actions of fools and knaves are hailed as "public spiritedness."  

If humanity truly desired right to prevail, "they might have had it long ago." But "they are prone to mischief." In private life, "hypocrisy, servility, selfishness, folly, and impudence succeed." Meanwhile, "modesty shrinks from the encounter, and merit is trodden under foot." 

Hazlitt then turns to and on himself. He confesses to having witnessed and analyzed human "meanness, spite, cowardice;" to have seen people's lack of feeling and concern for others; to have observed our self-ignorance and our tendency to prefer "custom" over "excellence." 

All these failings lead to social "infamy," to disgraceful and appalling behavior. In his own case, they have led to disillusion. "I have been mistaken in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love." He asks, has all this not given him reason "to hate and despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough."

Perhaps these were the words of a bitter old man, who spent his last years in poverty. His two marriages had failed. He found it difficult to make a living due to his radical ideas and critiques of influential people. Or perhaps he had discovered an inconvenient truth about human nature, one that helps explain the failure of "the acme of Creation" to establish a world of peace and justice. 

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The American Revolution Revisited: A War Between History and Memory

The 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and War for Independence is upon us. It is destined to reach new heights of commercialism, with beer companies no doubt leading the parade. Corny commemorations and tall tales will all be a part of the celebration. 

Will there be room for calm reflection on the events of 1775-1783? Not much, I fear, especially in the Age of Trump and MAGA. In the best of times, dispassionate analysis of great events tends to be in short supply, overwhelmed and marginalized by the popular taste for hoopla. On this occasion calm analysis is likely to be obliterated by the Trumpets of MAGA. 

The revolution will be celebrated as a great victory for liberty and equality. It was, though more in the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence than anything in reality. Awkwardly, it was also a war to preserve slavery. 

In 1773, British judge Lord Mansfield declared in the Somerset Case that slavery had no basis in English law. The Somerset ruling aroused panic among some slaveholders, mostly in the southern colonies. It helped unite them with the northern colonies, where the rallying cry was the more historically palatable "no taxation without representation." Traditional narratives of the revolution have tended to emphasize Britain's attacks on colonial liberty while ignoring the colonist's denial of liberty to the enslaved.   

Alarmed slaveholders denied the right of Parliament to pass laws affecting the internal or domestic affairs of the colonies. Slavery, they argued, was a domestic issue. In 1775, on the verge of war, they accused the British of plotting slave revolts and Indian attacks as a means of subduing the rebellious colonies. In 1776, they decided that independence was necessary to prevent emancipation and loss of control over enslaved Blacks. 

In that sense the War for Independence had more in common with the Civil War than is generally acknowledged. Looked at from the perspective of the enslaved population, both were wars for liberty. Many Blacks absorbed the rhetoric of their white masters and saw the Revolutionary War as an opportunity to secure their freedom, by joining the British. 

Historians estimate that around 100,000 enslaved persons ran off to British lines between 1775 and 1783, 25,000 in South Carolina alone. They were not complacent bystanders, but active participants in the struggles that gave birth to a nation. 

History is often unpleasant, messy, and chaotic. It is seldom as simple as we would like it to be. Historical myth is the opposite: neat, generally pleasing -- at least to our prejudices -- and comfortably black and white. The myths are "alternative facts" or "fake history." Not surprisingly, myths tend to dominate if not smother actual history in the popular consciousness, the "public memory." 

By "actual history" I do not mean the "truth" but the result of painstaking historical research, writing, and interpretation. If well done, the result is our best current approximation of the truth. In that sense, history resembles science. Science is a more exact business, of course. Scientists can use repeated experiments to confirm their hypotheses. Historians do not have that luxury. They cannot repeat history. In most cases, they would not wish to. 

Historian Lewis Namier wrote that the writing of history "is not a visit of condolence." He might have added that the same is true of reading it. Learning our history is often difficult, troubling and confusing. If it never is, we are reading the wrong stuff. Some people avoid the problem by ignoring history, just as others avoid ethical problems by ignoring philosophy. Henry Ford is alleged to have said that "history is bunk." Apparently, he didn't say exactly that, but he did reject the past as dead and meaningless, not worth bothering about. 

Abraham Lincoln disagreed with Ford. In his Second Inaugural Address he declared, "My Fellow Americans, we cannot escape history." He understood that the terrible war nearing its end was the result of the country's failure to abolish slavery early in its history. Novelist William Faulkner held a similar view: "The past isn't dead. It is not even past." His characters are prisoners of their history, in this case the history of the Deep South. 

Karl Marx wrote in much the same vein in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." Marx prefaced that statement with "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." One does not have to be a Marxist to agree with that statement. Our history, like our biology, constrains us, for good or ill.

Peter McCandless, REMARKABLE CHARLESTONIANS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (Arcadia, The History Press, 2025)

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History is Messy: Memo to FOX news

History is messy. It is often unpleasant. It is seldom as simple as we would like it to be. Historical myth is the opposite: neat, generally pleasing -- at least to our prejudices --, and comfortably black and white. 

The myths are essentially "alternative facts" or "fake history." Not surprisingly, myths tend to dominate if not obliterate actual history in the popular consciousness. FOX news could not survive if this were not the case, and Donald Trump would long ago have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

By "actual history" I do not mean the "truth" but the result of painstaking historical research, writing, and interpretation. Often the result is only an approximation of the truth. In that sense, history resembles science, although science is a more exact business. 

Scientists can use repeated experiments to confirm their hypotheses. Historians do not have that tool. They cannot repeat history, and in general they would not wish to!

Historian Sir Lewis Namier wrote that the writing of history "is not a visit of condolence." He might have added that the same is true of reading it. Learning our history is often troubling and confusing. If it never is, we are reading the wrong stuff. 

Some people avoid all the trouble by ignoring history. The inventor and businessman Henry Ford is supposed to have said, "history is bunk." He didn't say exactly that, but he did reject the past as dead and meaningless, not worth thinking about. 

Abraham Lincoln would have disagreed. In his Second Inaugural Address he declared, "My Fellow Americans, we cannot escape history." He understood that the terrible war that was nearing its end was the direct result of the country's failure to abolish slavery. * 

Novelist William Faulkner held a similar view: "The past isn't dead. It is not even past." His characters are prisoners of their history, in this case the history of the Deep South. 

Karl Marx wrote in a similar vein in one of his lesser-known works, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Marx prefaced that statement with "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

You don't have to be a Marxist to agree with that viewpoint. Like it or not, our history, like our biology, constrains us. And that is not necessarily bad. It is a cliche by now, but an awareness of evils past can help us to repeat the same mistakes. True, we seem to keep repeating many of them anyway, but things could be far worse if we lacked any awareness of the past. 

People do learn lessons from history: some good, some bad, some irrelevant. The difficulty is to learn the proper lessons, the ones that will improve life on this planet -- and not just for humans. 

History often resembles a chaotic scene, like this 19th century Christmas cartoon by George Cruikshank, "At Home in the Nursery." But the party goes on and tomorrow it will have a history.

   

*Comparing Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address to that of Donald Trump in 2017 provides a good measurement of how far the Republican Party has fallen since the days of the first Republican president. 

A VERY Short History of Medicine

Fathers of Medicine and Allied Arts

Hippocrates & Co. 

Therapeutics

“Doctor, I have an earache.”

2000 BC – “Here, eat this root.”

1000 BC – “That root is heathen, say this 

prayer.”

1850 AD ­– “That prayer is superstition, drink 

this potion.”

1940 AD – “That potion is snake oil, swallow 

this pill.”

1985 AD – “That pill is ineffective, take this 

antibiotic.”

2000 AD – “That antibiotic is artificial. Here, 

eat this root.”

Quackery

Domestic Medicine

Medical Education

Robert Koch Establishes Germ Theory; Sells Chocolate

The Triumph of American Medicine