§ 5. Concerning Envy

— Notion. 1. Envy is sadness concerning another's good, insofar as that good is a diminishment of one's own excellence. It is directly opposed to charity, which rejoices concerning the neighbor's good; and it is accustomed to be conceived not toward those who excel us from afar, but toward equals or those a little superior. Mortal from its kind, because of imperfection of the act or the smallness of the good concerning which one is sad, it will be only venial.

Therefore it is not envy if you are sad concerning another's good, a) because from it you fear harm to yourself or to others: this is fear; b) because we lack the good which the other has, so that we do not grieve formally because it belongs to another: this is emulation, zeal; c) because the other is unworthy: this is indignation. These three can be ordered and good, or also inordinate and graver evils.

But it is envy properly so called if you apprehend the very increase of another's excellence as if it were an evil to you, and for this reason are pained that the other grows in excellence and thus becomes superior to you.

The sin of envy is easily committed by the ambitious and by women.

N.B. To curse the day on which someone was born, on which he took a wife, from pain because he was born, can be a simple manifestation of sadness concerning the evils which arose on that occasion: which is no sin or only a slight one. But it would be grave irreverence toward God to carp at the dispositions of divine Providence; and it would be gravely opposed to charity truly to wish grave evil either to oneself or to another.

2. As a capital vice, envy begets hatred, detraction, joy concerning the evil of the neighbor, whispering, that is, evil speaking concerning the neighbor, for the removal of his friendship with others. The whisperer ought to strive to restore that friendship.

The opposite virtue is charity, by which we rejoice concerning another's good as concerning our own.