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LOVE AND HATE: Although it is an odd thing to confess, I have heard so-called men of love proclaim their hatred of hate without in the least being aware that they were still hating.

Yes, they have made it their duty to hate hatred for the sake of love because, according to them, to love hatred would be to acquiesce in it and thereby tarnish their reputation for love. They do not see, these 'preachers of love', that hating hatred is still hate, and that one cannot love without hating. They would like us to believe that they are solely men of love, but we aren't really convinced. We shy away from their doctrine of love when it outlaws hate, much as we shy away from all other crooked and one-sided doctrines. And we do not take a man seriously when he proclaims one thing and does another!

But to whom am I addressing myself if not to the natural, liberated, and honest men? Yes, it is to you natural men that I address this message, since you are not so fantastic as to believe yourselves capable of outlawing hate in the interests of your love. Neither would you deceive yourselves by imagining that a hatred of hate wasn't hate. On the contrary, you are far too honest and strict with yourselves to allow that kind of self-deception to take root in you!

But the others, the hypocrites of love, are the ones against whom you will most have to guard your integrity, if you don't wish to become victims of their love. For this love is a changeable thing, full of multifaceted appearances, and many are the times when they have grown so accustomed to regarding themselves as men of love ... that they have confounded love with hate and termed this latter 'love'.

Just watch how their love will shine in their eyes, once you begin to criticize a doctrine that excludes hate! They will certainly know how to love you then, especially when they perceive how much pleasure your criticism brings you. And if you then inform them, you loving men, that their love is often hatred in disguise, be prepared to witness a 'bonfire of love' in their eyes from which you may well have to shield yourself, so great an emotional conflagration will it engender!

But everything that flares up must eventually die down again, and their 'bonfire' is no exception. They will soon go back to loving you, once they see how incorrigibly unrepentant you are. For they won't have it said that they are mistaken, once they have convinced themselves to the contrary!

And you loving men, who are too strict to deceive yourselves on this issue, will know that they aren't really wrong in practice but only in theory. For this 'bonfire of love' in their eyes is all the evidence you could need to judge of their practical authenticity. It is only their theory which is spurious. They have set themselves a standard to which they are unable to attain (though, between ourselves, that is just as well, since, if they could attain to it, we would soon be obliged to follow suit!). But, in a majority of cases, they are really natural men in disguise, men who are secretly ashamed of their humanity and would rather hide it behind a spurious theory. They are not honest enough to be like you, because they aren't liberated enough to be that honest.

So beware then, you loving men, the 'preachers of love', whose mendacious value-judgements will not help you to understand yourselves!

And beware also the equally mendacious value-judgements of the 'preachers of hate', whose basic attitudes I do not even wish to discuss, since they are just as one-sided in their insistence upon hate as the others in insisting upon love, and neither of these types represent man as he really is!

But see to it, you loving men, that you do not forget how to hate what it is necessary to hate, in order that you may continue to love!