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We shall better understand this from the poising
them together.
Men let go their enmity and hatred, when either they
are persuaded they were not injured at all, or if they now
believe them to be good whom before they hated as evil,
or, lastly, when they are appeased by the insinuations of a
benefit received. For as Thucydides saith, A later service
or good turn, if it be done at the right moment, will take
away the ill resenting of a former fault, though this was
greater than the recompense.1
[p. 99]
Yet the first of these removes not envy, for men will
persist in this vice, though they know they are not wronged;
and the two latter (the esteem or credit of a person, and
the bestowing a favor) do exasperate it more. For they
most envy the virtuous, as those who are in possession of
the chiefest good; and when they receive a kindness from
any in prosperity, it is with reluctance, as though they
grudged then not only the power but the will of conferring
it; the one of which comes from their happy fortune, the
other from their virtue. Both are good. Therefore envy
is an entirely distinct affection from hatred, since, as we see,
the very things that appease the one only rouse and exasperate the other.
1 Thucyd. I. 42.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 2.
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