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desires in their lyric confessions. The parallel between Don Quixote and
    Madame Bovary has become classic. It is always easy to recognize analogies between two
    novels of external mediation.
    Imitation in Stendhal's work at first seems less absurd since there is less of that divergence
    between the worlds of disciple and model which makes a Don Quixote or an Emma Bovary
    so grotesque. And yet the imitation is no less strict and literal in internal mediation than in
    external mediation. If this seems surprising it is not only because the imitation refers to a
    model who is "close," but also because the hero of internal mediation, far from boasting of
    his efforts to imitate, carefully hides them.
    The impulse toward the object is ultimately an impulse toward the mediator; in internal
    mediation this impulse is checked by the mediator himself since he desires, or perhaps
    possesses, the object. Fascinated by his model, the disciple inevitably sees, in the mechanical
    obstacle which
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    he puts in his way, proof of the ill will borne him. Far from declaring himself a faithful
    vassal, he thinks only of repudiating the bonds of mediation. But these bonds are stronger
    than ever, for the mediator's apparent hostility does not diminish his prestige but instead
    augments it. The subject is convinced that the model considers himself too superior to accept
    him as a disciple. The subject is torn between two opposite feelings toward his model -- the
    most submissive reverence and the most intense malice. This is the passion we call hatred .
    Only someone who prevents us from satisfying a desire which he himself has inspired in us is
    truly an object of hatred. The person who hates first hates himself for the secret admiration
    concealed by his hatred. In an effort to hide this desperate admiration from others, and from
    himself, he no longer wants to see in his mediator anything but an obstacle. The secondary
    role of the mediator thus becomes primary, concealing his original function of a model
    scrupulously imitated.
    In the quarrel which puts him in opposition to his rival, the subject reverses the logical and
    chronological order of desires in order to hide his imitation. He asserts that his own desire is
    prior to that of his rival; according to him, it is the mediator who is responsible for the rivalry.
    Everything that originates with this mediator is systematically belittled, although still secretly
    desired. Now the mediator is a shrewd and diabolical enemy; he tries to rob the subject of his
    most prized possessions; he obstinately thwarts his most legitimate ambitions.
    All the phenomena explored by Max Scheler in Ressentiment  1. a re, in our opinion, the result of internal mediation. Furthermore, the word ressentiment itself underscores the quality of
    reaction, of repercussion which characterizes the experience of the subject in this type of
    mediation. The impassioned admiration and desire to emulate stumble over the unfair
    obstacle with which the model seems to block the way of his disciple, and then these passions
    recoil on the disciple in the form of impotent hatred, thus causing the sort of psychological
    self-poisoning so well described by Scheler.
    As he indicates, ressentiment can impose its point of view on even those whom it does not
    dominate. It is ressentiment which prevents us, and sometimes prevents Scheler himself, from
    recognizing the part played by imitation in the birth of desire. For example, we do not see
    that jealousy and envy, like hatred, are scarcely more than traditional names given to internal
    mediation, names which almost always conceal their true nature from us.
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    1. The author quotes from the French translation, L'Homme du Ressentiment . There is an
    English translation by William H. Holdheim, Ressentiment ( New York: Free Press, 1960).
    The word ressentiment is used by Scheler in the original German text as the most accurate
    term for the feeling described. -