MISUSED CONCEPTS: It is commonly understood that words are symbols designating concepts. Our ancestors at sometime conceived the possibility of a symbol to designate the concept 'a love of mankind' and named it 'philanthropy'. They likewise conceived of an antonym to this symbol and named it 'misanthropy', or 'a hatred of mankind'. Not content with this, they then sought to justify the existence of these symbols, these concepts, by taking a bold step further and actually applying them to various individuals, to people whom, in their conceptual presumption, they somehow regarded as eligible candidates. Now in consequence of this social indiscretion, later generations gradually became aware of the existence of 'philanthropists' and 'misanthropists' without apparently realizing that the concepts behind these symbols had absolutely no foundation in reality, that it was impossible either to love or hate mankind even for a few moments, considering that 'mankind' is merely an abstraction. Thus followed the history of an outrageous misunderstanding!

Of course, one can always love or hate the odd individual here and there, one can even come to feel similar sentiments towards a few people here and there. But to actually consider such love 'a love of mankind' or such hate 'a hatred of mankind' would be more than a gross misunderstanding: it would be the height of imbecility! For, in reality, one can no more love or hate mankind than one can love or hate the fish kind, the bird kind, the animal kind, the insect kind, the vegetable kind, or any other kind. In fact, it is virtually impossible not to conclude that one can never be a philanthropist or a misanthropist under any circumstances. For even if, in taking the terms in a much wider sense, one does good (according to one's notion of what constitutes 'the good') to one section of the community, it invariably follows that one will necessarily do bad to and fall out-of-favour with another section of it, and vice versa.

Hence I can only contend that the world has never produced a single philanthropist: neither Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, St. Christopher, St. Francis, Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale, Dickens, Marx, Whitman, Gladstone, Tolstoy, Shaftsbury, Chamberlain, nor anyone else, and never will produce one; that the world has never produced a single misanthropist: neither Machiavelli, Swift, Caligula, de Sade, Bonaparte, Baudelaire, Franco, Dostoyevsky, Stalin, Lautréamont, Crowley, Nietzsche, Hitler, Mussolini, nor anyone else, and never will produce one.

Indeed, it isn't an everyday occurrence either to love or hate anyone at all, even one's closest companions. But to actually love or hate someone of whom one has absolutely no knowledge, someone who is no more familiar to one than the paintings or posters on the walls of the millions of bedrooms throughout the world, is an utter impossibility! It is something that people are unlikely to imagine possible so long as, firstly, they acknowledge the exact implications of human limitations and, secondly, they acknowledge the exact implications of the concepts they choose to symbolize through words.