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Subsection 7. Envy, malice and hatred as causes.
Envy and malice are two links in this chain, and both, as Guianerius proves in treatise 15, chapter 2, from Galen’s commentary 22 on the third book of Aphorisms, cause this illness by themselves, especially in people whose bodies are otherwise predisposed to melancholy. Valescus of Taranta and Felix Platter observe that envy so gnaws at many people’s hearts that they become thoroughly melancholy. That is presumably why Solomon, Proverbs 14:13, calls it “the rotting of the bones,” and Cyprian “a hidden wound.”
The Sicilian tyrants never devised A greater torment—
The Sicilian tyrants never invented a torment like it. It crucifies people’s souls, withers their bodies, makes them hollow-eyed, pale, thin and ghastly to behold: Cyprian, sermon 2, On Jealousy and Envy. As a moth eats a garment, says Chrysostom, so envy consumes a person, making him a living anatomical specimen, a skeleton, “a lean and pale carcass, brought to life by a fiend”—Hall, Characters. Whenever an envious wretch sees another person prosper, grow rich, thrive and succeed in the world, gain honours, offices or the like, he resents it and grieves.
He wastes away at the sight Of others’ success—and is his own punishment.
He tortures himself if his equal, friend or neighbour is promoted, praised or successful. Once he hears of it, it wounds him afresh; no greater pain can come to him than news of another person’s good fortune. Every such sight is a dagger at his heart. He looks on with an envious eye, like those who fell from Lucian’s rock of honour, and will harm himself to injure someone else: “He will fall headlong, provided he falls upon his enemy.” Like the man in Aesop, he would willingly lose one eye so that his companion might lose both; or like the rich man in Quintilian who poisoned the flowers in his garden so that his neighbour’s bees could gather no more honey from them.
His whole life is sorrow, and every word he speaks a satire; nothing fattens him but other people’s ruin. In a word, envy is simply “sorrow at another’s good fortune”—sorrow for other people’s blessings, past, present or future—and “joy at adversity,” joy in their suffering. It is the opposite of compassion, which grieves at other people’s misfortunes and affects the body adversely in a different way. So John of Damascus defines it in On the Orthodox Faith, book 2; Thomas Aquinas, II–II, question 36, article 1; Aristotle, Rhetoric, book 2, chapters 4 and 10; Plato, Philebus; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, book 3; Gregory of Nyssa, On the Virtue of the Soul, chapter 12; Basil, On Envy; Pindar, ode 1, series 5. And we find it true.
It is a common disease, almost natural to us, as Tacitus maintains, to envy another person’s prosperity. And in most people it is incurable. “I have read Greek, Hebrew and Chaldean authors,” says Marcus Aurelius, “and consulted many wise men for a remedy for envy. I could find none except to renounce all happiness and remain wretched and miserable for ever.” It is the beginning of hell in this life, and a passion without excuse. Every other sin has some pleasure attached to it, or admits of an excuse; envy alone lacks both. Other sins last only a while: the belly can be satisfied, anger subsides, hatred comes to an end; envy never ceases. Cardan, On Wisdom, book 2.
Examples from sacred and secular history are familiar enough to read at a glance: Saul and David, Cain and Abel. “It was not his own sin that distressed him, but his brother’s prosperity,” says Theodoret; his brother’s good fortune was what galled him. Rachel, being barren, envied her sister, Genesis 30; Joseph’s brothers envied him, Genesis 37. David had a touch of this vice, as he confesses in Psalm 37. Jeremiah and Habakkuk resented the prosperity of others, but eventually corrected themselves. Psalm 75: “Do not fret,” and so on. Domitian resented Agricola’s merit—that a private man should receive such glory. Caecina was envied by his fellow citizens because he was more richly dressed.
But women, above all others, are weakest: “Women are envious over beauty”—Musaeus; “She either loves or hates; there is no third possibility”—Granatensis. They love or hate, with no middle ground. “Women, when injured, are generally implacable,” like Agrippina. If a woman sees her neighbour neater or more elegant, with finer headdresses, jewels or clothes, she becomes enraged and attacks her husband like a lioness; she abuses and mocks the other woman and cannot bear her. So the Roman ladies in Tacitus reacted to Salonina, Caecina’s wife: because she had a better horse and finer trappings, they were deeply offended, as if she had injured them by possessing them. Our gentlewomen behave in the same way at their usual gatherings: one resents or mocks another’s finery and good fortune.
Myrsine, a girl of Attica, was murdered by her companions because she surpassed all the others in beauty: Constantine, Agriculture, book 11, chapter 7. Every village will supply such examples.