The desire that lives through imitation almost always leads to conflict, and this conflict frequently leads to violence.

Collective murder, or the single victim mechanism, has everything to do with the origin of the texts that do not represent it and cannot represent it precisely because they are based on it, because the victim mechanism is their generating principle. These texts are the myths.

The commandment that prohibits desiring the goods of one's neighbor attempts to resolve the number one problem of every human community: internal violence.

If individuals are naturally inclined to desire what their neighbors possess, or to desire what their neighbors even simply desire, this means that rivalry exists at the very heart of human social relations.

If becoming human involves, among other things, acquiring mimetic desire, it is obvious that humans could not exist in the beginning without sacrificial institutions that repress and moderate the kind of conflict that is inevitable with the working of mimetic desire.

How then should one explain the universal presence of religion, supposedly so useless, right at the heart of all human institutions? When this question is asked in a rationalist context, there is only one really logical response, that of Voltaire: religion is defined as a parasite that attaches itself from outside to useful institutions. “Deceitful

The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior to them. This false difference is already the mimetic illusion of modern individualism, which represents the greatest resistance to the mimetic truth that is reenacted again and again in human relations. The paradox is that the resistance itself

Satan and scandal thus overlap, but scandal describes primarily the process of desiring, then stumbling over models who are rivals and obstacles, and finally assigning blame, which leads to victimization. Satan describes primarily the mechanism of accusing and lynching a victim. Satan and scandal are key terms for understanding mythology.

Instead of criticizing ourselves, we use our knowledge in bad faith, turning it against others. Indeed, we practice a hunt for scapegoats to the second degree, a hunt for hunters of scapegoats. Our society's obligatory compassion authorizes new forms of cruelty.