Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/345

selves: for commonly it falleth out, that those who think they have received some injury at such an one's hand, are disposed to hate him, yea, and those whom otherwise they know to be maliciously bent and wont to hurt others, although they have not wronged them, yet they hate and cannot abide to look upon them with patience; whereas ordinarily they bear envy unto such only as seem to prosper and to live in better state than their neighbours: by which reckoning it should seem that envy is a thing indefinite, much like unto the disease of the eyes ophthalmia, which is offended with the brightness of any light whatsoever; whereas hatred is determinate, being always grounded upon some certain subject matters respective to itself, and on them it worketh. Secondly, our hatred doth extend even to brute beasts; for some you shall have who naturally abhor and cannot abide to see cats nor the flies cantharides, nor toads, nor yet snakes and any such serpents. As for Germanicus Cæsar, he could not of all things abide either to see a cock or to hear him crow. The sages of Persia called their Magi, killed all their mice and rats, as well for that themselves could not away with them but detested them, as also because the god (forsooth) whom they worshipped had them in horror. And in truth, all the Arabians and Ethiopians generally hold them abominable. But envy properly is between man and man; neither is there any likelihood at all that there should be imprinted envy in savage creatures one against another; because they have not this imagination and apprehension, that another is either fortunate or unfortunate, neither be they touched with any sense of honour or dishonour; which is the one thing that principally and most of all other giveth an edge and whetteth on envy; whereas it is evident that they hate one another, they Dear malice and maintain enmity, nay, they go to war as against those that be disloyal, treacherous, and such as are not to be trusted: for in this wise do eagles war with dragons, crows with owls, and the little nonnet or tit-mouse fighteth with the linnet, insomuch, as by report, the very blood of them after they be cilled will not mingle together; and that which is more, if you seem to mix them, they will separate and run apart again one from the other: and by all likelihood, the hatred that the lion hath to the cock, and the elephant also unto an hog, proceedeth from fear: for lightly that which creatures naturally fear, the same they also hate; so that herein also a man may assign and note the difference between envy and hatred, for that the nature of beasts is capable of the one but not of the other.