Let strife and rancour perish lives of gods and men, with anger that envenoms even wise and is far sweeter than slow-dripping honey, clouding hearts of men like smoke; (18, 105-10) HOMER'S ACHILLES, THE ILIAD From trunk of that tree of vengefulness and hatred, Jewish hatred-- profoundest and sublimest kind of hatred, capable of creating ideals and reversing values, like of which has never existed on earth before-- there grew something equally incomparable, a new love, profoundest and sublimest kind of love--and what other trunk could it have grown? NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY OF MORALS EARLY IN Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov a society lady whose inclinations were in many respects genuinely good comes to visit sapient Father Zossima. (1) Over course of their conversation woman proclaims that she love[s] so much that--would you believe it?--I sometimes dream of giving up all, all I have, of leaving Lise and going to become a sister of mercy. I close my eyes, I think and dream, and in such moments I feel an invincible strength in myself. No wounds ... could frighten me. I would bind them and cleanse them with my own hands. I would nurse suffering. (2) As if in part to shake society lady her high self-regard, Father Zossima tells her he heard same thing, a long time ago to be sure, a doctor. (3) The doctor confided in Zossima that, though he love[s] ... more I in general less I people in particular, that is, individually, as separate people. [4] The illustrative anecdote of doctor's dilemma is very much apropos sentimental society lady, as her daughter Lise's condition as a paralytic requires much of her attention and, one can assume, most of her love. Because Lise, particular person in society lady's direct proximity, is in one sense an ideal object of love--she is in need, and she is at hand--we must ask why her mother's impulse leads her instead to dream of mankind. In Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche contends that the slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: ressentiment of natures that are denied true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an revenge. (5) We can rightly wonder to what extent society lady's love of mankind is an imaginary revenge upon demands that her daughter places upon her, a compensation for her incapacity to undertake great deeds. Zossima's judicious rejoinder resounds loudly in a world wherein claims of citizenship foster an idealism that absolves each citizen of world of any particular loves. Rallying cries relegate crippled Lise to backstage of that theater of global significance, replace her with lepers whom we can kiss in dreams doused in of mankind. Is our suspicion that ressentiment is exclusive origin of sentimental society lady's love of mankind and citizen's humanitarian anything more than a spoiled fruit of inheritance Machiavelli, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud--those masters of suspicion--have left us? In his prescient early work Ressentiment, Max Scheler contends that Nietzsche wrongly equated Christian idea of with a completely different idea which has quite another historical and psychological origin: idea and movement of modern universal of man, 'humanitarianism,' 'love of man kind,' or more plastically, 'love toward every member of human race.' (6) Scheler makes a crucial distinction: whereas Christian demands a definite humanitarian demands contingent sacrifice, which is ultimately aimed at enhancing degree of pleasure experienced in a given society. In Ressentiment, Scheler suggests that humanitarian movement is fundamentally a ressentiment phenomenon, a fact that is evident from very fact that this socio-historical emotion is by no means based on a spontaneous and original affirmation of positive values, but on a protest, a counter-impulse (hatred, envy, revenge). …