For our self-consciousness and our pride there can be nothing more flattering than the sight of envy lurking in its retreat and plotting its schemes; but never let a man forget that where there is envy there is hatred, and let him be careful not to make a false friend out of any envious person.  Therefore it is important to our safety to lay envy bare; and a man should study to discover its tricks, as it is everywhere to be found and always goes about incognito; or as I have said, like a venomous toad it lurks in dark corners.  It deserves neither quarter nor sympathy; but as we can never reconcile it let our rule of conduct be to scorn it with a good heart, and as our happiness and glory is torture to it we may rejoice in its sufferings: 

Den Neid wirst nimmer du versoehnen; So magst du ihn getrost verhoehnen.  Dein Glueck, dein Ruhm ist ihm ein Leiden:  Magst drum an seiner Quaal dich weiden.

We have been taking a look at the depravity of man, and it is a sight which may well fill us with horror.  But now we must cast our eyes on the misery of his existence; and when we have done so, and are horrified by that too, we must look back again at his depravity.  We shall then find that they hold the balance to each other.  We shall perceive the eternal justice of things; for we shall recognise that the world is itself the Last Judgment on it, and we shall begin to understand why it is that everything that lives must pay the penalty of its existence, first in living and then in dying.  Thus the evil of the penalty accords with the evil of the sin—­malum poenae with malum culpae.  From the same point of view we lose our indignation at that intellectual incapacity of the great majority of mankind which in life so often disgusts us.  In this Sansara, as the Buddhists call it, human misery, human depravity and human folly correspond with one another perfectly, and they are of like magnitude.  But if, on some special inducement, we direct our gaze to one of them, and survey it in particular, it seems to exceed the other two.  This, however, is an illusion, and merely the effect of their colossal range.

All things proclaim this Sansara; more than all else, the world of mankind; in which, from a moral point of view, villainy and baseness, and from an intellectual point of view, incapacity and stupidity, prevail to a horrifying extent.  Nevertheless, there appear in it, although very spasmodically, and always as a fresh surprise, manifestations of honesty, of goodness, nay, even of nobility; and also of great intelligence, of the thinking mind of genius.  They never quite vanish, but like single points of light gleam upon us out of the great dark mass.  We must accept them as a pledge that this Sansara contains a good and redeeming principle, which is capable of breaking through and of filling and freeing the whole of it.

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