Of Envy and Hatred (1-2)

Envy and hatred are passions so like each other that they are often taken for the same. And generally, vice has (as it were) many hooks, whereby it gives unto those passions that hang thereto many opportunities to be twisted and entangled with one another; for as differing diseases of the body agree in many like causes and effects, so do the disturbance of the mind. He who is in prosperity is equally an occasion of grief to the envious and to the malicious man; therefore we look upon benevolence, which is a willing our neighbor’s good, as an opposite to both envy and hatred, and fancy these two to be the same because they have a contrary purpose to that of love. But their resemblances make them not so much one as their unlikeness makes them distinct. Therefore we endeavor to describe each of them apart, beginning at the original of either passion.

Hatred proceeds from an opinion that the person we hate is evil, if not generally so, at least in particular to us. For they who think themselves injured are apt to hate the author of their wrong; yea, even those who are reputed injurious or malicious to others than ourselves we usually nauseate and abhor. But envy has only one sort of object, the felicity of others. Whence it becomes infinite, and, like an evil or diseased eye, is offended with every thing that is bright. On the other hand, hatred is always determined by the subject it adheres to.