alleviate its own torment by causing torment in others.  But in this way a man gradually develops in himself real cruelty and malice.  The observation may also be added that as, according to Kant, matter subsists only through the antagonism of the powers of expansion and contraction, so human society subsists only by the antagonism of hatred, or anger, and fear.  For there is a moment in the life of all of us when the malignity of our nature might perhaps make us murderers, if it were not accompanied by a due admixture of fear to keep it within bounds; and this fear, again, would make a man the sport and laughing stock of every boy, if anger were not lying ready in him, and keeping watch.

But it is Schadenfreude, a mischievous delight in the misfortunes of others, which remains the worst trait in human nature.  It is a feeling which is closely akin to cruelty, and differs from it, to say the truth, only as theory from practice.  In general, it may be said of it that it takes the place which pity ought to take—­pity which is its opposite, and the true source of all real justice and charity.

Envy is also opposed to pity, but in another sense; envy, that is to say, is produced by a cause directly antagonistic to that which produces the delight in mischief.  The opposition between pity and envy on the one hand, and pity and the delight in mischief on the other, rests, in the main, on the occasions which call them forth.  In the case of envy it is only as a direct effect of the cause which excites it that we feel it at all.  That is just the reason why envy, although it is a reprehensible feeling, still admits of some excuse, and is, in general, a very human quality; whereas the delight in mischief is diabolical, and its taunts are the laughter of hell.

The delight in mischief, as I have said, takes the place which pity ought to take.  Envy, on the contrary, finds a place only where there is no inducement to pity, or rather an inducement to its opposite; and it is just as this opposite that envy arises in the human breast; and so far, therefore, it may still be reckoned a human sentiment.  Nay, I am afraid that no one will be found to be entirely free from it.  For that a man should feel his own lack of things more bitterly at the sight of another’s delight in the enjoyment of them, is natural; nay, it is inevitable; but this should not rouse his hatred of the man who is happier than himself.  It is just this hatred, however, in which true envy consists.  Least of all should a man be envious, when it is a question, not of the gifts of fortune, or chance, or another’s favour, but of the gifts of nature; because everything that is innate in a man rests on a metaphysical basis, and possesses justification of a higher kind; it is, so to speak, given him by Divine grace.  But, unhappily, it is just in the case of personal advantages that envy is most irreconcilable.  Thus it is that intelligence, or even genius, cannot get on in the world without begging pardon for its existence, wherever it is not in a position to be able, proudly and boldly, to despise the world.