Note 33 — PART II BEAUTY IN EVOLUTION

A word may be said concerning the personal relationship of fear and hate. Here in self-defence the ‘other’ is not regarded as in personal relation to the person threatened, at all events in early stages of development; he is as external as a flood or a precipice. Nevertheless in fear and hate, when they have reached a high stage of development, there is a feeling of personal relation. But only in one sense can this relation be termed personal; the ‘other’ is recognised as a person, but in concentrating our attention on the things in him we fear and hate we concentrate it on his ‘otherness’—on his lack of any but an external relation to us. There is nothing reciprocal; we refuse to give or receive. It is this externality of relation that makes hate and fear so poignant and so bitter.