"My philosophy not only does not lead to misanthropy, as might seem to anyone who looks at it superficially, and as many accuse it of doing, but by its nature it excludes misanthropy, by its nature it aims to cure, to extinguish that ill humor, that hatred (not systematic but nevertheless real hatred) which very many people who are not philosophers, and would not wish to be called or thought of as misanthropes, feel in their hearts nonetheless toward their fellow humans, either habitually, or in particular circumstances, by reason of the ill which, rightly or wrongly, like everyone else, they receive from other people. My philosophy makes nature guilty of everything, and by exonerating humanity altogether, it redirects the hatred, or at least the complaint, to a higher principle, the true origin of the ills of living beings, etc. etc."