envy or that at least by
intercourse with him a man may himself win honour from the reflected
light of his superiority; and here, too, there is the hope of one day
attaining all those advantages himself. On the other hand, in the envy
that is directed to natural gifts and personal advantages, like beauty
in women, or intelligence in men, there is no consolation or hope of
one kind or the other; so that nothing remains but to indulge a
bitter and irreconcilable hatred of the person who possesses these
privileges; and hence the only remaining desire is to take vengeance
on him.

But here the envious man finds himself in an unfortunate position; for
all his blows fall powerless as soon as it is known that they come
from him. Accordingly he hides his feelings as carefully as if they
were secret sins, and so becomes an inexhaustible inventor of tricks
and artifices and devices for concealing and masking his procedure,
in order that, unperceived, he may wound the object of his envy. For
instance, with an air of the utmost unconcern he will ignore the
advantages which are eating his heart out; he will neither see them,
nor know them, nor have observed or even heard of them, and thus make
himself a master in the art of dissimulation. With great cunning he
will completely overlook the man whose brilliant qualities are gnawing
at his heart, and act as though he were quite an unimportant person;
he will take no notice of him, and, on occasion, will have even quite
forgotten his existence. But at the same time he will before all
things endeavour by secret machination carefully to deprive those
advantages of any opportunity of showing themselves and becoming
known. Then out of his dark corner he will attack these qualities with
censure, mockery, ridicule and calumny, like the toad which spurts
its poison from a hole. No less will he enthusiastically praise
unimportant people, or even indifferent or bad performances in the
same sphere. In short, he will becomes a Proteas in stratagem, in
order to wound others without showing himself. But what is the use
of it? The trained eye recognises him in spite of it all. He betrays
himself, if by nothing else, by the way in which he timidly avoids
and flies from the object of his envy, who stands the more completely
alone, the more brilliant he is; and this is the reason why pretty
girls have no friends of their own sex. He betrays himself, too, by
the causeless hatred which he shows--a hatred