Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/344



[ this brief treatise concerning envy and hatred, Plutarch, after he hath shewed in general terms that they be two different vices, and declared withal the properties of the one and the other, proveth this difference by divers reasons and arguments ranged in their order: he discovereth the nature of envious persons and malicious; and sheweth by a proper similitude that the greatest personages in the world be secured from the claws and paws of envious persons, and yet for all that, cease not to have many enemies. And verily it seemeth that the author began this little work especially for to beat down envy, and that the infamy thereof might so much more appear, in comparing and matching it with another detestable vice, the which notwithstanding he saith is less enormous than it.]

seemeth at the first sight that there is no difference between envy and hatred, but that they be both one. For vice (to speak in general) having (as it were) many hooks or crotchets, by means thereof as it stirreth to and fro, it yieldeth unto those passions which hang thereto many occasions and opportunities to catch hold one of another, and so to be knit and interlaced one within the other; and the same verily (like unto diseases of the body) have a sympathy and fellow-feeling one of another's distemperature and inflammation: for thus it cometh to pass, that a malicious and spightful man is as much grieved and offended at the prosperity of another as the envious person: and so we hold that benevolence and goodwill is opposite unto them both, for that it is an affection of a man wishing good unto his neighbour: and envy in this respect resembleth hatred, for that they have both a will and intention quite contrary unto love: but forasmuch as no things be the same, and the resemblances between them be not so effectual to make them all one, as the differences to distinguish them asunder; let us search and examine the said differences, beginning at the very source and original of these passions.

Hatred then, is engendered and ariseth in our heart upon an imagination and deep apprehension that we conceive of him whom we hate, that either he is naught and wicked in general to every man, or else intending mischief particularly unto