FORTITUDE AND ENVY 31 



Indeed, as a rule (despite that well-known hymn, which, 

 by asserting that " dogs delight to bark and bite for God has 

 made them so," is responsible for a vast amount of bias in 

 the future observation of the learner) ; despite this and many 

 similar axioms, the beasts that perish are singularly tolerant, 

 kind, and courteous towards each other. Excluding the 

 great stimulus of sex in which vigorous self-assertion 

 becomes a virtue, animals have few quarrels amongst them- 

 selves ; nothing, at any rate, to compare with the universal 

 distrust of civilised man for his fellows, or his almost uncon- 

 scious envy of better fortune in others, his discontent with 

 what he has, his desire for what he has not. That all these 

 are necessary to his advancement may be freely admitted; 

 but this does not weaken the evidence by which, even if 

 fortitude be not inferred from it, we can safely conclude — 

 First, that our fellow mortals display much endurance — that 

 " first lesson" in ethics as Rousseau calls it ; and, secondly, 

 that Schopenhauer was right when he wrote : " To envy is 

 human." 



So let us pass on to the next virtue and its corresponding 

 vice. 



