5
Further, envy is always unjust; for none wrong by being happy, and upon this sole account they are envied. But hatred is often just; for there are some men so much to be avoided and disliked, that we should judge those worthy to be hated themselves who do not shun and detest them. And of this it is no weak evidence, that many will acknowledge they hate, but none will confess they envy; and hatred of the evil is registered amongst laudable things.
5
Therefore, as some were commending Charillus, the nephew of Lycurgus and king of Sparta, for his universally mild and gentle disposition,—How, answered his colleague, can Charillus be a virtuous person, who is pleasing even to the vicious? So the poet too, when he had variously and with an infinite curiosity described the deformities of Thersites’s body, easily couched all the baseness of his manners in a word,— Most hateful to Achilles and Ulysses too; for to be an enemy to the good is the greatest extravagance of vice.
5
Men will deny the envy; and when it is alleged, will feign a thousand excuses, pretending they were angry, or that they feared or hated the person, cloaking envy with the name of any passion they can think of, and concealing it as the most loathsome sickness of the soul.
