ardinals with beautiful women naked as your hand in hell, in my picture
of the last judgment. Your envy is very praiseworthy; you are a fine
envious fellow; let us be good friends."

But if the envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as
beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the
turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus,"
some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Annees Litteraires," this
animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which
Mandeville could never make an apology.

One asks why the ancients thought that the eye of the envious man
bewitched those who looked at it. It is the envious, rather, who are
bewitched.

Descartes says: "That envy impels the yellow bile which comes from the
lower part of the liver, and the black bile which comes from the spleen,
which is diffused from the heart through the arteries, etc." But as no
kind of bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, by speaking thus, does
not seem to merit too much that his natural philosophy should be envied.

A certain Voet or Voetius, a theological scamp, who accused Descartes of
atheism, was very ill with the black bile; but he knew still less than
Descartes how his detestable bile was diffused in his blood.

Madame Pernelle is right: "The envious will die, but envy never."
(Tartufe, Act v, Scene iii.)

But it is good proverb which says that "it is better to be envious than
to have pity." Let us be envious, therefore, as hard as we can.

_EQUALITY_

SECTION I

It is clear that men, enjoying the faculties connected with their
nature, are equal; they are equal when they perform animal functions,
and when they exercise their understanding. The King of China, the Great
Mogul, the Padisha of Turkey, cannot say to the least of men: "I forbid
you to digest, to go to the privy and to think." All the animals of each
species are equal among themselves. Animals by nature have over us the
advantage of independence. If a bull which is wooing a heifer is driven
away with the blows of the horns by a stronger bull, it goes in search
of another mistress in another field, and lives free. A cock, beaten by
a cock, consoles itself in another poultry-house. It is not so with us.
A little vizier exiles a bostangi to Lemnos: the vizier Azem exiles the
little vizier to Tenedos: the padisha exiles the little vizier Azem to
Rhodes: the Janissaries put the padisha in prison, and ele