“It’s necessary and natural to be repelled by things that are harmful to life. It’s a built-in natural protective mechanism. We don’t have to think it through each time because the judgment is automatic.
“We hate the smell of corpses, for example. We hate it when thieves steal what belongs to us. We hate murderers. It’s natural to hate those things, the same way it is natural for birds to hate cats and make a racket in protest whenever one roams by.”
Some of Richard’s earliest memories were of Zedd speaking in this role, passing along lessons, so he simply listened as his grandfather went on.
“Hatred of the smell of corpses make us bury or burn the dead which keeps us from getting diseases. Hatred of thieves prompts us to guard against those who would sneak in and steal the food from our children’s mouths. We hate murderers because they steal our lives. That kind of hatred breeds caution and causes us to take measures to protect ourselves. We lock doors, we carry weapons, we take a variety of measures to protect our loved ones from those who would cause them harm.
“In animals that hatred stops there. A rabbit does not hate sheep, for example. You will see rabbits and sheep eating grass side by side. Animals will protect their own territory so that they can provide for themselves and their young, but they don’t take more territory simply to possess it.
“In humans, we communicate, enabling us to pass our judgment on to others. We might say ‘I hated traveling that route because it’s so steep that I almost fell and broke my neck.’ That judgment, framed in the emotion of hate, is so basic to our nature that it is easily transferred to others.
“But in many people that capacity for hatred loses its natural, rational motive. The emotion runs wild and becomes their dominant trait. They are no longer able to appreciate the good in anything. Having lost the link to rational purpose, they react purely on the emotion. Because of the power of that emotion, their minds become set in that single direction. It becomes so all-consuming that many of those people lose even their capacity to love life. They can only hate.
“The good in life is what quenches hatred in normal people, the way a smile can calm a quarrel. But in those people who carry this flaw, their hatred burns so hot they come to hate what is good in life specifically because they don’t want to stop hating. Hatred becomes the driving purpose of their lives. They live to hate.
“That flaw twists nature in on itself. In order to preserve their state of hatred, they must attack the good, wipe away that smile, so to speak.
“That single-minded emotion of hate has been a fundamental, inherent flaw in mankind’s nature since the dawn of time. It drives people to fight, to conquer, to dominate, to destroy. Hatred has such powerful emotions attached to it that others take it up out of fear. In that way, hate spreads like a panic in a crowd.
“Expanded beyond its rational bounds, hate exists entirely in the realm of raw emotion, where it ceases to serve a useful purpose, and instead becomes a powerful corrosive that eats away at the fabric of civilization itself, at the very ability of people to interact peacefully. It spawns fights among children and among neighbors, it spawns wars, it spawns genocide and slaughter. It’s present in every great land and every tiny village. It creates bullies and tyrants. That unquenchable, passionate, rampant flaw is universal throughout mankind.
“One of the wizard’s rules, actually: There have always been those who hate, and there always will be.
“You can’t change it. You can only try to keep such people from harming you, for if they can they will. In many ways, fighting them only reinforces that emotion of hate. Even protecting yourself from them only makes them more determined to cause you harm.
“People born with that inherent, tragic defect are like an animal born without eyes. They can only perceive things through the prism of hate. Since they have in a way lost their ability to see, lost that compassionate, tolerant connection to the rest of humanity, they have in a way lost their souls.
“The half people are driven by their nature of being born without a soul, so that trait drives them to behave the way they do. It is a fundamental flaw in their nature that they cannot change. Everything they do is driven by that flaw.
“In much the same way, those driven by hate are like the half people, and in a fundamental way they, too, are alive but without a soul. Both are driven by their inherent defect to destroy life that is complete and wholesome.
“That hatred is so all-consuming in some that they would even deliberately destroy themselves if it enabled them to destroy others along with them. Hatred provides them with the justification for every sort of evil.