Hand in hand with Covetousness
goes its close companion-Invidia or Envy, which hates to see
other men happy. The names by which it offers itself to the world's applause
are Right and Justice, and it makes a great parade of these austere virtues.
It begins by asking, plausibly: "Why should not I enjoy what others enjoy?"
and it ends by demanding: "Why should others enjoy what I may not?" --Envy
is the great leveller: if it cannot level things up, it will level them
down; and the words constantly in its mouth are “My Rights” and “My Wrongs.”
At its best, Envy is a climber and a snob; at its worst, it is a
destroyer-rather than have anybody happier than itself, it will see us all
miserable together.
In love, Envy is cruel, jealous
and possessive. My friend and my married partner must be wholly wrapped up
in me, and must find no interests outside me. That is my right: No person,
no work, no hobby must rob me of any part of that right. If we cannot be
happy together, we will be unhappy together-but there must be no escape into
pleasures that I cannot share. If my husband's work means more to him than I
do, I will see him ruined rather than pre-occupied; if my wife is so
abandoned as to enjoy Beethoven or dancing, or anything else which I do not
appreciate, I will so nag and insult her that she will no longer be able to
indulge these tastes with a mind at ease. If my neighbours are able to take
pleasure in intellectual interests which are above my head, I will sneer at
them and call them by derisive names, because they make me feel inferior,
and that is a thing I cannot bear. All men have equal rights-and if these
people were born with any sort of privilege, I will see to it that that
privilege shall be made worthless--if I can, and by any means I can devise.
Let justice be done to me, though the heavens fall and the earth be shot to
pieces.
If Avarice is the sin of the
Haves against the Have-Nots, Envy is the sin of the Have-Nots against the
Haves. If we want to see what they look like on a big scale, we may say
that Avarice has been the sin of the Anglo-Saxon democracies, and Envy the
sin of Germany. Both are cruel—the one with a heavy, complacent and
bloodless cruelty; the other with a violent, calculated, and savage cruelty.
But Germany only displays in accentuated form an evil of which we have
plenty at home.
The difficulty about dealing
with Envy is precisely that it is the sin of the Have-Nots, and that,
on that account, it can always find support among those who are just and
generous-minded. Its demands for a place in the sun are highly plausible,
and those who detect any egotism in the demand can readily be silenced by
accusing them of oppression, inertia, and a readiness to grind the face of
the poor. Let us look for a moment at some of the means by which Envy holds
the world to ransom.
One of its achievements has been
to change the former order by which society was based on status and
substitute a new basis—that of contract. Status means, roughly speaking,
that the relations of social units are ordered according to the intrinsic
qualities which those units possess by nature. Men and institutions are
valued for what they are. Contract means that they are valued, and their
relations ordered, in virtue of what bargain they are able to strike.
Knowledge, for example, and the man of knowledge, can be rated at a market
value—prized, that is, not for the sake of knowledge, but for what is called
their contribution to society. The family is esteemed, or not esteemed,
according as it can show its value as an economic unit. Thus, all
inequalities can, theoretically, be reduced to financial and utilitarian
terms, and the very notion of intrinsic superiority can be denied and
derided. In other words, all pretension to superiority can be debunked.
The years between the wars saw
the most ruthless campaign of debunking ever undertaken by nominally
civilised nations. Great artists were debunked by disclosures of their
private weaknesses; great statesmen, by attributing to them mercenary and
petty motives, or by alleging that all their work was meaningless, or done
for them by other people. Religion was debunked, and shown to consist of a
mixture of craven superstition and greed. Courage was debunked, patriotism
was debunked, learning and art were debunked, love was debunked, and with it
family affection and the virtues of obedience, veneration and solidarity.
Age was debunked by youth and youth by age. Psychologists stripped bare
the pretensions of reason and conscience and self-control, saying that these
were only the respectable disguises of unmentionable unconscious impulses.
Honour was de-bunked with peculiar virulence, and good faith, and
unselfishness. Everything that could possibly be held to constitute an
essential superiority had the garments of honour torn from its back and was
cast out into the darkness of derision. Civilisation was finally debunked
till it had not a rag left to cover its nakedness.
It is well that the hypocrisies
which breed like mushrooms in the shadow of great virtues should be
discovered and removed; but Envy is not the right instrument for that
purpose; for it tears down the whole fabric to get at the parasitic growths.
Its enemy, in fact, is the virtues themselves. Envy cannot bear to admire
or respect; it cannot bear to be grateful. But it is very plausible; it
always announces that it works in the name of truth and equity. Sometimes
it may be a good thing to debunk Envy a little. For example: here is a
phrase which we have heard a good deal of late:
“These services (payments,
compensations or what not) ought not to be made a matter of charity. We have
a right to demand that they should be borne by the State."
It sounds splendid; but what
does it mean?
Now, you and I are the State;
and where the bearing of financial burdens is concerned, the taxpayer is the
State. The heaviest burden of taxation is, naturally, borne by those who
can best afford to pay. When a new burden is imposed the rich will have to
pay most of it.
Of the money expended in
charity, the greater part—for obvious reasons—is contributed by the rich.
Consequently, if the burden hitherto borne by charity is transferred to the
shoulders of the taxpayer, it will inevitably continue to be carried by
exactly the same class of people. The only difference is this: that people
will no longer pay because they want to—eagerly and for love—but because
they must, reluctantly and under pain of fine or imprisonment. The result,
roughly speaking, is financially the same: the only difference is the
elimination of the two detested virtues of love and gratitude.
I do not say for a moment that
certain things should not be the responsibility of the State—that is, of
everybody. No doubt those who formerly contributed out of love should be
very willing to pay a tax instead. But what I see very clearly is the
hatred of the gracious act, and the determination that nobody shall be
allowed any kind of spontaneous pleasure in well-doing if Envy can prevent
it. "This ointment might have been sold for much and given to the poor."
Then, our nostrils would not be offended by any odour of sanctity—the house
would not be "filled with the smell of the ointment." It is characteristic
that it should have been Judas who debunked that act of charity.
