ENVY
Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is
envy. Envy is, I should say, one of the most universal and deep-seated
of human passions. It is very noticeable in children before they are a
year old, and has to be treated with the most tender respect by every
educator. The very slightest appearance of favouring one child at the
expense of another is instantly observed and resented. Distributive
justice, absolute, rigid, and unvarying, must be observed by anyone who
has children to deal with. But children are only slightly more open in
their expressions of envy, and of jealousy (which is a special form of
envy), than are grown-up people. The emotion is just as prevalent among
adults as among children. Take, for example, maid-servants: I remember
when one of our maids, who was a married woman, became pregnant, and
we said that she was not to be expected to lift heavy weights, the
instant result was that none of the others would lift heavy weights,
and any work of that sort that needed doing we had to do ourselves.
Envy is the basis of democracy. Heraclitus asserts that the citizens
of Ephesus ought all to be hanged because they said, “There shall be
none first among us”. The democratic movement in Greek States must have
been almost wholly inspired by this passion. And the same is true of
modern democracy. There is, it is true, an idealistic theory according
to which democracy is the best form of government. I think myself that
this theory is true. But there is no department of practical politics
where idealistic theories are strong enough to cause great changes;
when great changes occur, the theories which justify them are always a
camouflage for passion. And the passion that has given driving force
to democratic theories is undoubtedly, the passion of envy. Read the
memoirs of Madame Roland, who is frequently represented as a noble
woman inspired by devotion to the people. You will find that what made
her such a vehement democrat was the experience of being shown into the
servants’ hall when she had occasion to visit an aristocratic château.
Among average respectable women envy plays an extraordinarily large
part. If you are sitting in the Underground and a well-dressed woman
happens to walk along the car, watch the eyes of the other women. You
will see that every one of them, with the possible exception of those
who are even better dressed, will watch the woman with malevolent
glances, and will be struggling to draw inferences derogatory to her.
The love of scandal is an expression of this general malevolence:
any story against another woman is instantly believed, even on the
flimsiest evidence. A lofty morality serves the same purpose: those
who have a chance to sin against it are envied, and it is considered
virtuous to punish them for their sins. This particular form of virtue
is certainly its own reward.
Exactly the same thing, however, is to be observed among men, except
that women regard all other women as their competitors, whereas
men as a rule only have this feeling towards other men in the same
profession. Have you, reader, ever been so imprudent as to praise an
artist to another artist? Have you ever praised a politician to another
politician of the same party? Have you ever praised an Egyptologist
to another Egyptologist? If you have, it is a hundred to one that you
will have produced an explosion of jealousy. In the correspondence
of Leibniz and Huyghens there are a number of letters lamenting the
supposed fact that Newton had become insane. “Is it not sad”, they
write to each other, “that the incomparable genius of Mr. Newton should
have become overclouded by the loss of reason?” And these two eminent
men, in one letter after another, wept crocodile tears with obvious
relish. As a matter of fact, the event which they were hypocritically
lamenting had not taken place, though a few examples of eccentric
behaviour had given rise to the rumour.
Of all the characteristics of ordinary human nature envy is the
most unfortunate; not only does the envious person wish to inflict
misfortune and do so whenever he can with impunity, but he is also
himself rendered unhappy by envy. Instead of deriving pleasure from
what he has, he derives pain from what others have. If he can, he
deprives others of their advantages, which to him is as desirable as
it would be to secure the same advantages himself. If this passion is
allowed to run riot it becomes fatal to all excellence, and even to the
most useful exercise of exceptional skill. Why should a medical man go
to see his patients in a car when the labourer has to walk to his work?
Why should the scientific investigator be allowed to spend his time in
a warm room when others have to face the inclemency of the elements?
Why should a man who possesses some rare talent of great importance to
the world be saved from the drudgery of his own house-work? To such
questions envy finds no answer. Fortunately, however, there is in human
nature a compensating passion, namely that of admiration. Whoever
wishes to increase human happiness must wish to increase admiration and
to diminish envy.
What cure is there for envy? For the saint there is the cure of
selflessness, though even in the case of saints envy of other saints
is by no means impossible. I doubt whether St. Simeon Stylites would
have been wholly pleased if he had learnt of some other saint who had
stood even longer on an even narrower pillar. But, leaving saints
out of account, the only cure for envy in the case of ordinary men
and women is happiness, and the difficulty is that envy is itself a
terrible obstacle to happiness. I think envy is immensely promoted
by misfortunes in childhood. The child who finds a brother or sister
preferred before himself acquires the habit of envy, and when he goes
out into the world looks for injustices of which he is the victim,
perceives them at once if they occur, and imagines them if they do
not. Such a man is inevitably unhappy, and becomes a nuisance to his
friends, who cannot be always remembering to avoid imaginary slights.
Having begun by believing that no one likes him, he at last by his
behaviour makes his belief true. Another misfortune in childhood which
has the same result is to have parents without much parental feeling.
Without having an unduly favoured brother or sister, a child may
perceive that the children in other families are more loved by their
mother and father than he is. This will cause him to hate the other
children and his own parents, and when he grows up he will feel himself
an Ishmael. Some kinds of happiness are everyone’s natural birthright,
and to be deprived of them is almost inevitably to become warped and
embittered.
But the envious man may say: “What is the good of telling me that the
cure for envy is happiness? I cannot find happiness while I continue
to feel envy, and you tell me that I cannot cease to be envious until
I find happiness.” But real life is never so logical as this. Merely
to realize the causes of one’s own envious feelings is to take a long
step towards curing them. The habit of thinking in terms of comparisons
is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed
to the full, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as
something else that may possibly be happening to someone else. “Yes,”
says the envious man, “this is a sunny day, and it is springtime, and
the birds are singing, and the flowers are in bloom, but I understand
that the springtime in Sicily is a thousand times more beautiful, that
the birds sing more exquisitely in the groves of Helicon, and that
the rose of Sharon is more lovely than any in my garden.” And as he
thinks these thoughts the sun is dimmed, and the birds’ song becomes
a meaningless twitter, and the flowers seem not worth a moment’s
regard. All the other joys of life he treats in the same way. “Yes,”
he will say to himself, “the lady of my heart is lovely, I love her
and she loves me, but how much more exquisite must have been the Queen
of Sheba! Ah, if I had but had Solomon’s opportunities!” All such
comparisons are pointless and foolish; whether the Queen of Sheba or
our next-door neighbour be the cause of discontent, either is equally
futile. With the wise man, what he has does not cease to be enjoyable
because someone else has something else. Envy, in fact, is one form of
a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing
things never in themselves, but only in their relations. I am earning,
let us say, a salary sufficient for my needs. I should be content, but
I hear that someone else whom I believe to be in no way my superior
is earning a salary twice as great as mine. Instantly, if I am of an
envious disposition, the satisfactions to be derived from what I have
grow dim, and I begin to be eaten up with a sense of injustice. For all
this the proper cure is mental discipline, the habit of not thinking
profitless thoughts. After all, what is more enviable than happiness?
And if I can cure myself of envy I can acquire happiness and become
enviable. The man who has double my salary is doubtless tortured by the
thought that someone else in turn has twice as much as he has, and so
it goes on. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon. But Napoleon
envied Cæsar, Cæsar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied
Hercules, who never existed. You cannot, therefore, get away from envy
by means of success alone, for there will always be in history or
legend some person even more successful than you are. You can get away
from envy by enjoying the pleasures that come your way, by doing the
work that you have to do, and by avoiding comparisons with those whom
you imagine, perhaps quite falsely, to be more fortunate than yourself.
Unnecessary modesty has a great deal to do with envy. Modesty is
considered a virtue, but for my part I am very doubtful whether, in
its more extreme forms, it deserves to be so regarded. Modest people
need a great deal of reassuring, and often do not dare to attempt tasks
which they are quite capable of performing. Modest people believe
themselves to be outshone by those with whom they habitually associate.
They are therefore particularly prone to envy, and, through envy, to
unhappiness and illwill. For my part, I think there is much to be
said for bringing up a boy to think himself a fine fellow. I do not
believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every
peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The
consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds. Imagine how
unhappy the life of a peacock would be if he had been taught that it
is wicked to have a good opinion of oneself. Whenever he saw another
peacock spreading out his tail, he would say to himself: “I must not
imagine that my tail is better than that, for that would be conceited,
but oh, how I wish it were! That odious bird is so convinced of his own
magnificence! Shall I pull out some of his feathers? And then perhaps
I need no longer fear comparison with him.” Or perhaps he would lay
a trap for him, and prove that he was a wicked peacock who had been
guilty of unpeacockly behaviour, and he would denounce him to the
assembly of the leaders. Gradually he would establish the principle
that peacocks with specially fine tails are almost always wicked, and
that the wise ruler in the peacock kingdom would seek out the humble
bird with only a few draggled tail feathers. Having got this principle
accepted, he would get all the finest birds put to death, and in the
end a really splendid tail will become only a dim memory of the past.
Such is the victory of envy masquerading as morality. But where every
peacock thinks himself more splendid than any of the others, there is
no need for all this repression. Each peacock expects to win the first
prize in the competition, and each, because he values his own peahen,
believes that he has done so.
Envy is, of course, closely connected with competition. We do not envy
a good fortune which we conceive as quite hopelessly out of our reach.
In an age when the social hierarchy is fixed, the lowest classes do not
envy the upper classes so long as the division between rich and poor is
thought to be ordained by God. Beggars do not envy millionaires, though
of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful. The
instability of social status in the modern world, and the equalitarian
doctrines of democracy and socialism, have greatly extended the range
of envy. For the moment this is an evil, but it is an evil which must
be endured in order to arrive at a more just social system. As soon
as inequalities are thought about rationally they are seen to be
unjust unless they rest upon some superiority of merit. And as soon
as they are seen to be unjust, there is no remedy for the resulting
envy except the removal of the injustice. Our age is therefore one in
which envy plays a peculiarly large part. The poor envy the rich, the
poorer nations envy the richer nations, women envy men, virtuous women
envy those who, though not virtuous, remain unpunished. While it is
true that envy is the chief motive force leading to justice as between
different classes, different nations, and different sexes, it is at
the same time true that the kind of justice to be expected as a result
of envy is likely to be the worst possible kind, namely that which
consists rather in diminishing the pleasures of the fortunate than
in increasing those of the unfortunate. Passions which work havoc in
private life work havoc in public life also. It is not to be supposed
that out of something as evil as envy good results will flow. Those,
therefore, who from idealistic reasons desire profound changes in our
social system, and a great increase of social justice, must hope that
other forces than envy will be instrumental in bringing the changes
about.
All bad things are interconnected, and any one of them is liable to be
the cause of any other; more particularly fatigue is a very frequent
cause of envy. When a man feels inadequate to the work he has to do,
he feels a general discontent which is exceedingly liable to take the
form of envy towards those whose work is less exacting. One of the ways
of diminishing envy, therefore, is to diminish fatigue. But by far
the most important thing is to secure a life which is satisfying to
instinct. Much envy that seems purely professional really has a sexual
source. A man who is happy in his marriage and his children is not
likely to feel much envy of other men because of their greater wealth
or success, so long as he has enough to bring up his children in what
he feels to be the right way. The essentials of human happiness are
simple, so simple that sophisticated people cannot bring themselves to
admit what it is they really lack. The women we spoke of earlier who
look with envy on every well-dressed woman are, one may be sure, not
happy in their instinctive life. Instinctive happiness is rare in the
English-speaking world, especially among women. Civilization in this
respect appears to have gone astray. If there is to be less envy, means
must be found for remedying this state of affairs, and if no such means
are found our civilization is in danger of going down to destruction
in an orgy of hatred. In old days people only envied their neighbours,
because they knew little about anyone else. Now through education
and the Press they know much in an abstract way about large classes
of mankind of whom no single individual is among their acquaintance.
Through the movies they think they know how the rich live, through
the newspapers they know much of the wickedness of foreign nations,
through propaganda they know of the nefarious practices of all whose
skin has a pigmentation different from their own. Yellows hate whites,
whites hate blacks, and so on. All this hatred, you may say, is stirred
up by propaganda, but this is a somewhat shallow explanation. Why is
propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it
tries to stir up friendly feeling? The reason is clearly that the human
heart as modern civilization has made it is more prone to hatred than
to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied,
because it feels deeply, perhaps even unconsciously, that it has
somehow missed the meaning of life, that perhaps others, but not we
ourselves, have secured the good things which nature offers for man’s
enjoyment. The positive sum of pleasures in a modern man’s life is
undoubtedly greater than was to be found in more primitive communities,
but the consciousness of what might be has increased even more.
Whenever you happen to take your children to the Zoo you may observe in
the eyes of the apes, when they are not performing gymnastic feats or
cracking nuts, a strange strained sadness. One can almost imagine that
they feel they ought to become men, but cannot discover the secret of
how to do it. On the road of evolution they have lost their way; their
cousins marched on and they were left behind. Something of the same
strain and anguish seems to have entered the soul of civilized man. He
knows there is something better than himself almost within his grasp,
yet he does not know where to seek it or how to find it. In despair he
rages against his fellow man, who is equally lost and equally unhappy.
We have reached a stage in evolution which is not the final stage. We
must pass through it quickly, for if we do not, most of us will perish
by the way, and the others will be lost in a forest of doubt and fear.
Envy therefore, evil as it is, and terrible as are its effects, is not
wholly of the devil. It is in part the expression of an heroic pain,
the pain of those who walk through the night blindly, perhaps to a
better resting-place, perhaps only to death and destruction. To find
the right road out of this despair civilized man must enlarge his heart
as he has enlarged his mind. He must learn to transcend self, and in so
doing to acquire the freedom of the Universe.