Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/540

 522 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

removal of this situation the desired object would at once come into our possession. The susceptibility of the envious turns rather upon the thing to be possessed, that of the jealous upon the possessor. One may envy another his fame, even when there is not the slightest claim to fame on the part of the envier. We are jealous of another when we are of the opinion that he enjoys a fame which we deserve as much or more than he. Jealousy is a feeling of a type and strength so specific that it may arise out of any sort of exceptional psychic combination. That which embitters and gnaws the jealous is a certain fiction of feeling, however unreasonable it may be, that the object of the jealousy has, so to speak, robbed him of the fame. In a certain degree midway between the phenomena of envy and of jealousy stands a third feeling, belonging in the same scale, which we may call disfavor the envious desire for the object, not because it is in itself especially desirable for the subject, but only because the other possesses it. The passionate form of this feeling pre- fers rather to forego the object, or even to destroy it, rather than to have it in the possession of the other person. These variously specialized forms of disfavor run through the reciprocal attitudes of people in countless ways. The vast problem area, throughout which the relationships of people to things appear as the causes or the effects of their relationships to each other, is in very large measure covered by this type of affections. In the case of these factors the issue is not merely that money or power, love or social position, is desired, so that competition, or any other surpassing or eliminating of a person, is a mere technique in its essential meaning, not other than the surmounting of a physical difficulty. Rather do the accompanying feelings which attach themselves to such a merely external and secondary relationship of persons grow in these modifications of disfavor to independent sociological forms which merely have their content in the desire for the objects. This is confirmed by the circumstance that the last-mentioned steps of the series have completely canceled the interest for the objective content in question, and have retained it merely as material in and of itself quite indifferent, with refer- ence to which the personal relationship is crystallized.