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The Ugly Emotion: Envy

Categories: Envy

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Published: Oct 22, 2018

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Sources of envy, influence of envy, how to control envy, works cited.

Parrott, W. G. (1991). The emotional experiences of envy and jealousy. In R. J. Sternberg & J. Kolligan Jr. (Eds.), Competence considered (pp. 149-165). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Smith, R. H., Parrott, W. G., Diener, E. F., Hoyle, R. H., & Kim, S. H. (1999). Dispositional envy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(8), 1007-1020.
Salovey, P., & Rodin, J. (1984). Some antecedents and consequences of social-comparison jealousy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47(4), 780-792.
van de Ven, N., Zeelenberg, M., & Pieters, R. (2009). The envy premium in product evaluation. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(2), 382-395.
Tesser, A. (1991). Emotion in social comparison and reflection processes. In J. Suls & T. A. Wills (Eds.), Social comparison: Contemporary theory and research (pp. 115-141). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Salovey, P., & Rodin, J. (1986). The psychology of envy and its relationship to depression, anger, and self-esteem. In R. J. Hetherington, E. M. Aronson, & L. G. Tennenbaum (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 19, pp. 333-378). New York: Academic Press.
Cohen-Charash, Y., & Mueller, J. S. (2007). Does perceived unfairness exacerbate or mitigate interpersonal counterproductive work behaviors related to envy?. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 666-680.
Lange, J., Crusius, J., & Hagemeyer, B. (2016). The evil queen's dilemma: Linking narcissistic admiration and rivalry with schadenfreude and aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(9), 1216-1230.
Smith, R. H. (2008). Envy and its transmutations. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, & L. F. Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (pp. 637-651). New York: Guilford.
Matsunaga, M. (2010). How do people envy others?: Revisiting the role of inferiority, hostility, and depression in the social comparison- envy link. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(5), 454-459.

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Essays by Francis Bacon

Sir Francis Bacon
Non-fiction
Essay, treatise
16th century
17th century
Collections
Philosophical literature

THE ESSAYS OR COUNSELS, CIVIL AND MORAL, OF FRANCIS Ld. VERULAM VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS

Of Truth Of Death Of Unity in Religion Of Revenge Of Adversity Of Simulation and Dissimulation Of Parents and Children Of Marriage and Single Life Of Envy Of Love Of Great Place Of Boldness Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature Of Nobility Of Seditions and Troubles Of Atheism Of Superstition Of Travel Of Empire Of Counsel Of Delays Of Cunning Of Wisdom for a Man’s Self Of Innovations Of Dispatch Of Seeming Wise Of Friendship Of Expense Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates Of Regiment of Health Of Suspicion Of Discourse Of Plantations Of Riches Of Prophecies Of Ambition Of Masques and Triumphs Of Nature in Men Of Custom and Education Of Fortune Of Usury Of Youth and Age Of Beauty Of Deformity Of Building Of Gardens Of Negotiating Of Followers and Friends Of Suitors Of Studies Of Faction Of Ceremonies and Respects Of Praise Of Vain-glory Of Honor and Reputation Of Judicature Of Anger Of Vicissitude of Things Of Fame

THE RIGHT HONORABLE

MY VERY GOOD LORD

THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM

HIS GRACE, LORD

HIGH ADMIRAL OF ENGLAND

EXCELLENT LORD:

SALOMON saies; A good Name is as a precious oyntment; And I assure my selfe, such wil your Graces Name bee, with Posteritie. For your Fortune, and Merit both, have been Eminent. And you have planted Things, that are like to last. I doe now publish my Essayes; which, of all my other workes, have beene most Currant: For that, as it seemes, they come home, to Mens Businesse, and Bosomes. I have enlarged them, both in Number, and Weight; So that they are indeed a New Worke. I thought it therefore agreeable, to my Affection, and Obligation to your Grace, to prefix your Name before them, both in English, and in Latine. For I doe conceive, that the Latine Volume of them, (being in the Universall Language) may last, as long as Bookes last. My Instauration, I dedicated to the King: My Historie of Henry the Seventh, (which I have now also translated into Latine) and my Portions of Naturall History, to the Prince: And these I dedicate to your Grace; Being of the best Fruits, that by the good Encrease, which God gives to my Pen and Labours, I could yeeld. God leade your Grace by the Hand. Your Graces most Obliged and faithfull Servant,

FR. ST. ALBAN

WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate,and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain dis- coursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advan- tage, as with the merchant; but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked, and open day-light, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum, because it fireth the imagina- tion; and yet, it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt; such as we spake of before. But how- soever these things are thus in men’s depraved judgments, and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last, was the light of reason; and his sabbath work ever since, is the illumina- tion of his Spirit. First he breathed light, upon the face of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light, into the face of man; and still he breatheth and in- spireth light, into the face of his chosen. The poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise in- ferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the win- dow of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adven- tures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological, and philosophical truth, to the truth of civil business; it will be ac- knowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear, and round dealing, is the honor of man’s nature; and that mixture of falsehoods, is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding, and crooked courses, are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice, that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith pret- tily, when he inquired the reason, why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge? Saith he, If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal, to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men; it being foretold, that when Christ cometh, he shall not find faith upon the earth.

MEN fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children, is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and relig- ious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations, there is some- times mixture of vanity, and of superstition. You shall read, in some of the friars’ books of mortifica- tion, that a man should think with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger’s end pressed, or tortured, and thereby imagine, what the pains of death are, when the whole body is corrupted, and dissolved; when many times death passeth, with less pain than the torture of a limb; for the most vital parts, are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake only as a philosopher, and nat- ural man, it was well said, Pompa mortis magis terret, quam mors ipsa. Groans, and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible. It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates, and masters, the fear of death; and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupateth it; nay, we read, after Otho the em- peror had slain himself, pity (which is the tender- est of affections) provoked many to die, out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. Nay, Seneca adds niceness and satiety: Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris; mori velle, non tantum fortis aut miser, sed etiam fastidiosus potest. A man would die, though he were neither valiant, nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft, over and over. It is no less worthy, to observe, how little alteration in good spirits, the approaches of death make; for they appear to be the same men, till the last instant. Augustus Caesar died in a compliment; Livia, con- jugii nostri memor, vive et vale. Tiberius in dissi- mulation; as Tacitus saith of him, Jam Tiberium vires et corpus, non dissimulatio, deserebant. Ves- pasian in a jest, sitting upon the stool; Ut puto deus fio. Galba with a sentence; Feri, si ex re sit populi Romani; holding forth his neck. Septimius Severus in despatch; Adeste si quid mihi restat agendum. And the like. Certainly the Stoics bestowed too much cost upon death, and by their great prepara- tions, made it appear more fearful. Better saith he, qui finem vitae extremum inter munera ponat naturae. It is as natural to die, as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful, as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed, and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolors of death. But, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is’, Nunc dimittis; when a man hath obtained worthy ends, and expectations. Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy. – Extinctus amabitur idem.

IN RELIGION

RELIGION being the chief band of human so- ciety, it is a happy thing, when itself is well contained within the true band of unity. The quarrels, and divisions about religion, were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was, because the religion of the heathen, consisted rather in rites and ceremonies, than in any constant belief. For you may imagine, what kind of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors, and fathers of their church, were the poets. But the true God hath this attribute, that he is a jealous God; and therefore, his worship and religion, will endure no mixture, nor partner.We shall therefore speak a few words, concerning the unity of the church; what are the fruits thereof ; what the bounds; and what the means.

The fruits of unity (next unto the well pleasing of God, which is all in all) are two: the one, towards those that are without the church, the other, towards those that are within. For the former; it is certain, that heresies, and schisms, are of all others the greatest scandals; yea, more than corruption of manners. For as in the natural body, a wound, or solution of continuity, is worse than a corrupt humor; so in the spiritual. So that nothing, doth so much keep men out of the church, and drive men out of the church, as breach of unity. And there- fore, whensoever it cometh to that pass, that one saith, Ecce in deserto, another saith, Ecce in pene- tralibus; that is, when some men seek Christ, in the conventicles of heretics, and others, in an outward face of a church, that voice had need continually to sound in men’s ears, Nolite exire, – Go not out. The doctor of the Gentiles (the propriety of whose vocation, drew him to have a special care of those without) saith, if an heathen come in, and hear you speak with several tongues, will he not say that you are mad? And certainly it is little better, when atheists, and profane persons, do hear of so many discordant, and contrary opinions in re- ligion; it doth avert them from the church, and maketh them, to sit down in the chair of the scorners. It is but a light thing, to be vouched in so serious a matter, but yet it expresseth well the deformity. There is a master of scoffing, that in his catalogue of books of a feigned library, sets down this title of a book, The Morris-Dance of Heretics. For indeed, every sect of them, hath a diverse pos- ture, or cringe by themselves, which cannot but move derision in worldlings, and depraved politics, who are apt to contemn holy things.

As for the fruit towards those that are within; it is peace; which containeth infinite blessings. It establisheth faith; it kindleth charity; the outward peace of the church, distilleth into peace of con- science; and it turneth the labors of writing, and reading of controversies, into treaties of mortifica- tion and devotion.

Concerning the bounds of unity; the true plac- ing of them, importeth exceedingly. There appear to be two extremes. For to certain zealants, all speech of pacification is odious. Is it peace, Jehu,? What hast thou to do with peace? turn thee be- hind me. Peace is not the matter, but following, and party. Contrariwise, certain Laodiceans, and lukewarm persons, think they may accommodate points of religion, by middle way, and taking part of both, and witty reconcilements; as if they would make an arbitrament between God and man. Both these extremes are to be avoided; which will be done, if the league of Christians, penned by our Savior himself, were in two cross clauses thereof, soundly and plainly expounded: He that is not with us, is against us; and again, He that is not against us, is with us; that is, if the points funda- mental and of substance in religion, were truly discerned and distinguished, from points not merely of faith, but of opinion, order, or good in- tention. This is a thing may seem to many a matter trivial, and done already. But if it were done less partially, it would be embraced more generally.

Of this I may give only this advice, according to my small model. Men ought to take heed, of rend- ing God’s church, by two kinds of controversies. The one is, when the matter of the point contro- verted, is too small and light, not worth the heat and strife about it, kindled only by contradiction. For, as it is noted, by one of the fathers, Christ’s coat indeed had no seam, but the church’s vesture was of divers colors; whereupon he saith, In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit; they be two things, unity and uniformity. The other is, when the matter of the point controverted, is great, but it is driven to an over-great subtilty, and obscurity; so that it becometh a thing rather ingenious, than substantial. A man that is of judgment and under- standing, shall sometimes hear ignorant men dif- fer, and know well within himself, that those which so differ, mean one thing, and yet they themselves would never agree. And if it come so to pass, in that distance of judgment, which is be- tween man and man, shall we not think that God above, that knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men, in some of their contradictions, intend the same thing; and accepteth of both? The nature of such controversies is excellently expressed, by St. Paul, in the warning and precept, that he giveth concerning the same, Devita profanas vocum novi- tates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae. Men create oppositions, which are not; and put them into new terms, so fixed, as whereas the meaning ought to govern the term, the term in effect gov- erneth the meaning.There be also two false peaces, or unities: the one, when the peace is grounded, but upon an implicit ignorance; for all colors will agree in the dark: the other, when it is pieced up, upon a direct admission of contraries, in funda- mental points. For truth and falsehood, in such things, are like the iron and clay, in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s image; they may cleave, but they will not incorporate.

Concerning the means of procuring unity; men must beware, that in the procuring, or reuniting, of religious unity, they do not dissolve and deface the laws of charity, and of human society. There be two swords amongst Christians, the spiritual and temporal; and both have their due office and place, in the maintenance of religion. But we may not take up the third sword, which is Mahomet’s sword, or like unto it; that is, to propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to force consciences; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blasphemy, or intermixture of practice against the state; much less to nourish seditions; to author- ize conspiracies and rebellions; to put the sword into the people’s hands; and the like; tending to the subversion of all government, which is the ordinance of God. For this is but to dash the first table against the second; and so to consider men as Christians, as we forget that they are men. Lucretius the poet, when he beheld the act of Aga- memnon, that could endure the sacrificing of his own daughter, exclaimed: Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum.

What would he have said, if he had known of the massacre in France, or the powder treason of England? He would have been seven times more Epicure, and atheist, than he was. For as the tem- poral sword is to be drawn with great circumspec- tion in cases of religion; so it is a thing monstrous to put it into the hands of the common people. Let that be left unto the Anabaptists, and other furies. It was great blasphemy, when the devil said, I will ascend, and be like the highest; but it is greater blasphemy, to personate God, and bring him in saying, I will descend, and be like the prince of darkness; and what is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend, to the cruel and execrable actions of murthering princes, butchery of people, and subversion of states and governments? Surely this is to bring down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of a dove, in the shape of a vulture or raven; and set, out of the bark of a Christian church, a flag of a bark of pirates, and assassins. Therefore it is most necessary, that the church, by doctrine and decree, princes by their sword, and all learnings, both Christian and moral, as by their Mercury rod, do damn and send to hell for ever, those facts and opinions tending to the support of the same; as hath been already in good part done. Surely in counsels concerning religion, that coun- sel of the apostle would be prefixed, Ira hominis non implet justitiam Dei. And it was a notable observation of a wise father, and no less ingenu- ously confessed; that those which held and per- suaded pressure of consciences, were commonly interested therein., themselves, for their own ends.

REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’ s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man, to pass by an offence. That which is past is gone, and irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do, with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labor in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong, for the wrong’s sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man, for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man’s enemy is still before hand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more gener- ous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. But base and crafty cowards, are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable; You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read, that we are commanded to forgive our friends. But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at God’s hands, and not be content to take evil also? And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well. Public revenges are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Caesar; for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry the Third of France; and many more. But in private revenges, it is not so. Nay rather, vindic- tive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.

Of Adversity

IT WAS an high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that the good things, which belong to prosperity, are to be wished; but the good things, that belong to adversity, are to be admired. Bona rerum secundarum optabilia; ad- versarum mirabilia. Certainly if miracles be the command over nature, they appear most in adver- sity. It is yet a higher speech of his, than the other (much too high for a heathen), It is true greatness, to have in one the frailty of a man, and the security of a God. Vere magnum habere fragilitatem homi- nis, securitatem Dei. This would have done better in poesy, where transcendences are more allowed. And the poets indeed have been busy with it; for it is in effect the thing, which figured in that strange fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth not to be without mystery; nay, and to have some approach to the state of a Christian; that Hercules, when he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom human nature is represented), sailed the length of the great ocean, in an earthen pot or pitcher; lively describing Christian resolution, that saileth in the frail bark of the flesh, through the waves of the world. But to speak in a mean. The virtue of pros- perity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testa- ment; adversity is the blessing of the New; which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God’s favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David’s harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in de- scribing the afflictions of Job, than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without com- forts and hopes. We see in needle-works and em- broideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work, upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work, upon a lightsome ground: judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart, by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Of Simulation AND DISSIMULATION

DISSIMULATION is but a faint kind of pol- icy, or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit, and a strong heart, to know when to tell truth, and to do it. Therefore it is the weaker sort of politics, that are the great dissemblers.

Tacitus saith, Livia sorted well with the arts of her husband, and dissimulation of her son; attri- buting arts or policy to Augustus, and dissimula- tion to Tiberius. And again, when Mucianus encourageth Vespasian, to take arms against Vitel- lius, he saith, We rise not against the piercing judgment of Augustus, nor the extreme caution or closeness of Tiberius. These properties, of arts or policy, and dissimulation or closeness, are indeed habits and faculties several, and to be distin- guished. For if a man have that penetration of judgment, as he can discern what things are to be laid open, and what to be secreted, and what to be showed at half lights, and to whom and when (which indeed are arts of state, and arts of life, as Tacitus well calleth them), to him, a habit of dis- simulation is a hinderance and a poorness. But if a man cannot obtain to that judgment, then it is left to bim generally, to be close, and a dissembler. For where a man cannot choose, or vary in parti- culars, there it is good to take the safest, and wari- est way, in general; like the going softly, by one that cannot well see. Certainly the ablest men that ever were, have had all an openness, and frankness, of dealing; and a name of certainty and veracity; but then they were like horses well managed; for they could tell passing well, when to stop or turn; and at such times, when they thought the case indeed required dissimulation, if then they used it, it came to pass that the former opin- ion, spread abroad, of their good faith and clear- ness of dealing, made them almost invisible.

There be three degrees of this hiding and veil- ing of a man’s self. The first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is. The second, dissimulation, in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and arguments, that he is not, that he is. And the third, simulation, in the affirmative; when a man industriously and ex- pressly feigns and pretends to be, that he is not.

For the first of these, secrecy; it is indeed the virtue of a confessor. And assuredly, the secret man heareth many confessions. For who will open himself, to a blab or a babbler? But if a man be thought secret, it inviteth discovery; as the more close air sucketh in the more open; and as in con- fession, the revealing is not for worldly use, but for the ease of a man’s heart, so secret men come to the knowledge of many things in that kind; while men rather discharge their minds, than impart their minds. In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. Besides (to say truth) nakedness is un- comely, as well in mind as body; and it addeth no small reverence, to men’s manners and actions, if they be not altogether open. As for talkers and futile persons, they are commonly vain and credu- lous withal. For he that talketh what he knoweth, will also talk what he knoweth not. Therefore set it down, that an habit of secrecy, is both politic and moral. And in this part, it is good that a man’s face give his tongue leave to speak. For the discovery of a man’ s self, by the tracts of his countenance, is a great weakness and betraying; by how much it is many times more marked, and believed, than a man’s words.

For the second, which is dissimulation; it fol- loweth many times upon secrecy, by a necessity; so that he that will be secret, must be a dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning, to suffer a man to keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret, without swaying the bal- ance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not, they will gather as much by his silence, as by his speech. As for equivocations, or oraculous speeches, they can- not hold out long. So that no man can be secret, except he give himself a little scope of dissimula- tion; which is, as it were, but the skirts or train of secrecy.

But for the third degree, which is simulation, and false profession; that I hold more culpable, and less politic; except it be in great and rare mat- ters. And therefore a general custom of simulation (which is this last degree) is a vice, using either of a natural falseness or fearfulness, or of a mind that hath some main faults, which because a man must needs disguise, it maketh him practise simulation in other things, lest his hand should be out of use.

The great advantages of simulation and dissi- mulation are three. First, to lay asleep opposition, and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum, to call up all that are against them. The second is, to reserve to a man’s self a fair retreat. For if a man engage himself by a manifest declaration, he must go through or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech, to freedom of thought. And therefore it is a good shrewd proverb of the Spaniard, Tell a lie and find a troth. As if there were no way of discovery, but by simulation. There be also three disadvantages, to set it even. The first, that simulation and dissi- mulation commonly carry with them a show of fearfulness, which in any business, doth spoil the feathers, of round flying up to the mark. The sec- ond, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many, that perhaps would otherwise co-operate with him; and makes a man walk almost alone, to his own ends. The third and greatest is, that it depriveth a man of one of the most principal in- struments for action; which is trust and belief. The best composition and temperature, is to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.

AND CHILDREN

THE joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other. Children sweeten labors; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the cares of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity by generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foun- dations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them, that have no posterity. They that are the first raisers of their houses, are most indulgent towards their children; beholding them as the continuance, not only of their kind, but of their work; and so both children and creatures.

The difference in affection, of parents towards their several children, is many times unequal; and sometimes unworthy; especially in the mothers; as Solomon saith, A wise son rejoiceth the father, but an ungracious son shames the mother. A man shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of the eldest respected, and the young- est made wantons; but in the midst, some that are as it were forgotten, who many times, never- theless, prove the best. The illiberality of parents, in allowance towards their children, is an harmful error; makes them base; acquaints them with shifts; makes them sort with mean company; and makes them surfeit more when they come to plenty. And therefore the proof is best, when men keep their authority towards the children, but not their purse. Men have a foolish manner (both par- ents and schoolmasters and servants) in creating and breeding an emulation between brothers, dur- ing childhood, which many times sorteth to dis- cord when they are men, and disturbeth families. The Italians make little difference between chil- dren, and nephews or near kinsfolks; but so they be of the lump, they care not though they pass not through their own body. And, to say truth, in nature it is much a like matter; insomuch that we see a nephew sometimes resembleth an uncle, or a kinsman, more than his own parent; as the blood happens. Let parents choose betimes, the vocations and courses they mean their children should take; for then they are most flexible; and let them not too much apply themselves to the disposition of their children, as thinking they will take best to that, which they have most mind to. It is true, that if the affection or aptness of the children be extra- ordinary, then it is good not to cross it; but gener- ally the precept is good, optimum elige, suave et facile illud faciet consuetudo. Younger brothers are commonly fortunate, but seldom or never where the elder are disinherited.

Of Marriage

AND SINGLE LIFE

HE THAT hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impedi- ments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mis- chief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the un- married or childless men; which both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason that those that have chil- dren, should have greatest care of future times; unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. Some there are, who though they lead a single life, yet their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times imperti- nences. Nay, there are some other, that account wife and children, but as bills of charges. Nay more, there are some foolish rich covetous men, that take a pride, in having no children, because they may be thought so much the richer. For per- haps they have heard some talk, Such an one is a great rich man, and another except to it, Yea, but he hath a great charge of children; as if it were an abatement to his riches. But the most ordinary cause of a single life, is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and garters, to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants; but not always best sub- jects; for they are light to run away; and almost all fugitives, are of that condition. A single life doth well with churchmen; for charity will hardly water the ground, where it must first fill a pool. It is indifferent for judges and magistrates; for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall have a ser- vant, five times worse than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly in their hortatives, put men in mind of their wives and children; and I think the despising of marriage amongst the Turks, maketh the vulgar soldier more base. Cer- tainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they may be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hardhearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their tenderness is not so oft called upon. Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly loving hus- bands, as was said of Ulysses, vetulam suam praetu- lit immortalitati. Chaste women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds, both of chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she think her hus- band wise; which she will never do, if she find him jealous. Wives are young men’s mistresses; com- panions for middle age; and old men’s nurses. So as a man may have a quarrel to marry, when he will. But yet he was reputed one of the wise men, that made answer to the question, when a man should marry, – A young man not yet, an elder man not at all. It is often seen that bad husbands, have very good wives; whether it be, that it raiseth the price of their husband’s kindness, when it comes; or that the wives take a pride in their patience. But this never fails, if the bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends’ consent; for then they will be sure to make good their own folly.

THERE be none of the affections, which have been noted to fascinate or bewitch, but love and envy. They both have vehement wishes; they frame themselves readily into imaginations and suggestions; and they come easily into the eye, especially upon the present of the objects; which are the points that conduce to fascination, if any such thing there be. We see likewise, the Scripture calleth envy an evil eye; and the astrologers, call the evil influences of the stars, evil aspects; so that still there seemeth to be acknowledged, in the act of envy, an ejaculation or irradiation of the eye. Nay, some have been so curious, as to note, that the times when the stroke or percussion of an envi- ous eye doth most hurt, are when the party envied is beheld in glory or triumph; for that sets an edge upon envy: and besides, at such times the spirits of the person envied, do come forth most into the outward parts, and so meet the blow.

But leaving these curiosities (though not un- worthy to be thought on, in fit place), we will handle, what persons are apt to envy others; what persons are most subject to be envied themselves; and what is the difference between public and private envy.

A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever en- vieth virtue in others. For men’s minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others’ evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another’s virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depress- ing another’s fortune.

A man that is busy, and inquisitive, is com- monly envious. For to know much of other men’s matters, cannot be because all that ado may con- cern his own estate; therefore it must needs be, that he taketh a kind of play-pleasure, in looking upon the fortunes of others. Neither can he, that mindeth but his own business, find much matter for envy. For envy is a gadding passion, and walk- eth the streets, and doth not keep home: Non est curiosus, quin idem sit malevolus.

Men of noble birth, are noted to be envious towards new men, when they rise. For the distance is altered, and it is like a deceit of the eye, that when others come on, they think themselves, go back.

Deformed persons, and eunuchs, and old men, and bastards, are envious. For he that cannot pos- sibly mend his own case, will do what he can, to impair another’s; except these defects light upon a very brave, and heroical nature, which thinketh to make his natural wants part of his honor; in that it should be said, that an eunuch, or a lame man, did such great matters; affecting the honor of a miracle; as it was in Narses the eunuch, and Agesi- laus and Tamberlanes, that were lame men.

The same is the case of men, that rise after ca- lamities and misfortunes. For they are as men fallen out with the times; and think other men’s harms, a redemption of their own sufferings.

They that desire to excel in too many matters, out of levity and vain glory, are ever envious. For they cannot want work; it being impossible, but many, in some one of those things, should surpass them. Which was the character of Adrian the Em- peror; that mortally envied poets, and painters, and artificers, in works wherein he had a vein to excel.

Lastly, near kinsfolks, and fellows in office, and those that have been bred together, are more apt to envy their equals, when they are raised. For it doth upbraid unto them their own fortunes, and pointeth at them, and cometh oftener into their remembrance, and incurreth likewise more into the note of others; and envy ever redoubleth from speech and fame. Cain’s envy was the more vile and malignant, towards his brother Abel, because when his sacrifice was better accepted, there was no body to look on. Thus much for those, that are apt to envy.

Concerning those that are more or less subject to envy: First, persons of eminent virtue, when they are advanced, are less envied. For their for- tune seemeth , but due unto them; and no man envieth the payment of a debt, but rewards and liberality rather. Again, envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man’s self; and where there is no comparison, no envy; and therefore kings are not envied, but by kings. Nevertheless it is to be noted, that unworthy persons are most envied, at their first coming in, and afterwards overcome it better; whereas contrariwise, persons of worth and merit are most envied, when their fortune continueth long. For by that time, though their virtue be the same, yet it hath not the same lustre; for fresh men grow up that darken it.

Persons of noble blood, are less envied in their rising. For it seemeth but right done to their birth. Besides, there seemeth not much added to their fortune; and envy is as the sunbeams, that beat hotter upon a bank, or steep rising ground, than upon a flat. And for the same reason, those that are advanced by degrees, are less envied than those that are advanced suddenly and per saltum.

Those that have joined with their honor great travels, cares, or perils, are less subject to envy. For men think that they earn their honors hardly, and pity them sometimes; and pity ever healeth envy. Wherefore you shall observe, that the more deep and sober sort of politic persons, in their greataess, are ever bemoaning themselves, what a life they lead; chanting a quanta patimur! Not that they feel it so, but only to abate the edge of envy. But this is to be understood, of business that is laid upon men, and not such, as they call unto themselves. For nothing increaseth envy more, than an unnecessary and ambitious engrossing of business. And nothing doth extinguish envy more, than for a great person to preserve all other infe- rior officers, in their full lights and pre-eminences of their places. For by that means, there be so many screens between him and envy.

Above all, those are most subject to envy, which carry the greatness of their fortunes, in an insolent and proud manner; being never well, but while they are showing how great they are, either by outward pomp, or by triumphing over all opposi- tion or competition; whereas wise men will rather do sacrifice to envy, in suffering themselves some- times of purpose to be crossed, and overborne in things that do not much concern them. Notwith- standing, so much is true, that the carriage of greatness, in a plain and open manner (so it be without arrogancy and vain glory) doth draw less envy, than if it be in a more crafty and cunning fashion. For in that course, a man doth but dis- avow fortune; and seemeth to be conscious of his own want in worth; and doth but teach others, to envy him.

Lastly, to conclude this part; as we said in the beginning, that the act of envy had somewhat in it of witchcraft, so there is no other cure of envy, but the cure of witchcraft; and that is, to remove the lot (as they call it) and to lay it upon another. For which purpose, the wiser sort of great persons, bring in ever upon the stage somebody upon whom to derive the envy, that would come upon them- selves; sometimes upon ministers and servants; sometimes upon colleagues and associates; and the like; and for that turn there are never wanting, some persons of violent and undertaking natures, who, so they may have power and business, will take it at any cost.

Now, to speak of public envy. There is yet some good in public envy, whereas in private, there is none. For public envy, is as an ostracism, that eclipseth men, when they grow too great. And therefore it is a bridle also to great ones, to keep them within bounds.

This envy, being in the Latin word invidia, goeth in the modern language, by the name of discontentment; of which we shall speak, in hand- ling sedition. It is a disease, in a state, like to infec- tion. For as infection spreadeth upon that which is sound, and tainteth it; so when envy is gotten once into a state, it traduceth even the best actions thereof, and turneth them into an ill odor. And therefore there is little won, by intermingling of plausible actions. For that doth argue but a weak- ness, and fear of envy, which hurteth so much the more, as it is likewise usual in infections; which if you fear them, you call them upon you.

This public envy, seemeth to beat chiefly upon principal officers or ministers, rather than upon kings, and estates themselves. But this is a sure rule, that if the envy upon the minister be great, when the cause of it in him is small; or if the envy be general, in a manner upon all the ministers of an estate; then the envy (though hidden) is truly upon the state itself. And so much of public envy or discontentment, and the difference thereof from private envy, which was handled in the first place.

We will add this in general, touching the affec- tion of envy; that of all other affections, it is the most importune and continual. For of other affec- tions, there is occasion given, but now and then; and therefore it was well said, Invidia festos dies non agit: for it is ever working upon some or other. And it is also noted, that love and envy do make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual. It is also the vilest affec- tion, and the most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the devil, who is called, the envious man, that soweth tares amongst the wheat by night; as it always cometh to pass, that envy worketh subtilly, and in the dark, and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the wheat.

THE stage is more beholding to love, than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. You may observe, that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent) there is not one, that hath been transported to the mad degree of love: which shows that great spirits, and great business, do keep out this weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, Marcus Antonius, the half partner of the empire of Rome, and Appius Claudius, the decemvir and lawgiver; whereof the former was indeed a voluptuous man, and inordinate; but the latter was an austere and wise man: and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epicurus, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus; as if man, made for the contemplation of heaven, and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel be- fore a little idol, and make himself a subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye; which was given him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing, to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature, and value of things, by this; that the speaking in a perpetual hyper- bole, is comely in nothing but in love. Neither is it merely in the phrase; for whereas it hath been well said, that the arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self; certainly the lover is more. For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of him- self, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise. Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved; but to the loved most of all, except the love be reci- proque. For it is a true rule, that love is ever re- warded, either with the reciproque, or with an inward and secret contempt. By how much the more, men ought to beware of this passion, which loseth not only other things, but itself! As for the other losses, the poet’s relation doth well figure them: that he that preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas. For whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous affection, quitteth both riches and wisdom. This passion hath his floods, in very times of weakness; which are great prosperity, and great adversity; though this latter hath been less observed: both which times kindle love, and make it more fervent, and therefore show it to be the child of folly. They do best, who if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarters; and sever it wholly from their serious affairs, and actions, of life; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men’s fortunes, and maketh men, that they can no ways be true to their own ends. I know not how, but martial men are given to love: I think, it is but as they are given to wine; for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures. There is in man’s nature, a secret inclination and motion, towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth, and embaseth it.

Of Great Place

MEN in great place are thrice servants: ser- vants of the sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of business. So as they have no freedom; neither in their persons, nor in their ac- tions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty: or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self. The rising unto place is laborious; and by pains, men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base; and by indignities, men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse, which is a melan- choly thing. Cum non sis qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere. Nay, retire men cannot when they would, neither will they, when it were reason; but are impatient of privateness, even in age and sick- ness, which require the shadow; like old towns- men, that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scom. Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men’s opinions, to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it; but if they think with themselves, what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be, as they are, then they are happy, as it were, by report; when perhaps they find the contrary within. For they are the first, that find their own griefs, though they be the last, that find their own faults. Certainly men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health, either of body or mind. Illi mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi. In place, there is license to do good, and evil; whereof the latter is a curse: for in evil, the best condition is not to win; the second, not to can. But power to do good, is the true and lawful end of aspiring. For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet, towards men, are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be, without power and place, as the vantage, and commanding ground. Merit and good works, is the end of man’s motion; and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man’s rest. For if a man can be partaker of God’s theatre, he shall like- wise be partaker of God’s rest. Et conversus Deus, ut aspiceret opera quae fecerunt manus suae, vidit quod omnia essent bona nimis; and then the sab- bath. In the discharge of thy place, set before thee the best examples; for imitation is a globe of pre- cepts. And after a time, set before thee thine own example; and examine thyself strictly, whether thou didst not best at first. Neglect not also the examples, of those that have carried themselves ill, in the same place; not to set off thyself, by tax- ing their memory, but to direct thyself, what to avoid. Reform therefore, without bravery, or scan- dal of former times and persons; but yet set it down to thyself, as well to create good precedents, as to follow them. Reduce things to the first institution, and observe wherein, and how, they have degen- erate; but yet ask counsel of both times; of the ancient time, what is best; and of the latter time, what is fittest. Seek to make thy course regular, that men may know beforehand, what they may expect; but be not too positive and peremptory; and express thyself well, when thou digressest from thy rule. Preserve the right of thy place; but stir not questions of jurisdiction; and rather as- sume thy right, in silence and de facto, than voice it with claims, and challenges. Preserve likewise the rights of inferior places; and think it more honor, to direct in chief, than to be busy in all. Embrace and invite helps, and advices, touching the execution of thy place; and do not drive away such, as bring thee information, as meddlers; but accept of them in good part. The vices of authority are chiefly four: delays, corruption, roughness, and facility. For delays: give easy access; keep times appointed; go through with that which is in hand, and interlace not business, but of necessity. For corruption: do not only bind thine own hands, or thy servants’ hands, from taking, but bind the hands of suitors also, from offering. For integrity used doth the one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery, doth the other. And avoid not only the fault, but the sus- picion. Whosoever is found variable, and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth sus- picion of corruption. Therefore always, when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change; and do not think to steal it. A servant or a favorite, if he be inward, and no other apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought, but a by-way to close corruption. For roughness: it is a needless cause of discontent: severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate. Even reproofs from authority, ought to be grave, and not taunting. As for facility: it is worse than bribery. For bribes come but now and then; but if importunity, or idle respects, lead a man, he shall never be without. As Solomon saith, To re- spect persons is not good; for such a man will transgress for a piece of bread. It is most true, that was anciently spoken, A place showeth the man. And it showeth some to the better, and some to the worse. Omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi im- perasset, saith Tacitus of Galba; but of Vespasian he saith, Solus imperantium, Vespasianus mutatus in melius; though the one was meant of sufficiency, the other of manners, and affection. It is an assured sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom honor amends. For honor is, or should be, the place of virtue; and as in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding star; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man’s self, whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. Use the memory of thy prede- cessor, fairly and tenderly; for if thou dost not, it is a debt will sure be paid when thou art gone. If thou have colleagues, respect them, and rather call them, when they look not for it, than exclude them , when they have reason to look to be called. Be not too sensible, or too remembering, of thy place in conversation, and private answers to suitors; but let it rather be said, When he sits in place, he is another man.

Of Boldness

IT IS a trivial grammar-school text, but yet worthy a wise man’s consideration. Question was asked of Demosthenes, what was the chief part of an orator? he answered, action; what next? action; what next again? action. He said it, that knew it best, and had, by nature, himself no ad- vantage in that he commended. A strange thing, that that part of an orator, which is but superficial, and rather the virtue of a player, should be placed so high, above those other noble parts, of invention, elocution, and the rest; nay, almost alone, as if it were all in all. But the reason is plain. There is in human nature generally, more of the fool than of the wise; and therefore those faculties, by which the foolish part of men’s minds is taken, are most potent. Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts. But nevertheless it doth fascinate, and bind hand and foot, those that are either shallow in judg- ment, or weak in courage, which are the greatest part; yea and prevaileth with wise men at weak times. Therefore we see it hath done wonders, in popular states; but with senates, and princes less; and more ever upon the first entrance of bold per- sons into action, than soon after; for boldness is an ill keeper of promise. Surely, as there are mounte- banks for the natural body, so are there mounte- banks for the politic body; men that undertake great cures, and perhaps have been lucky, in two or three experiments, but want the grounds of science, and therefore cannot hold out. Nay, you shall see a bold fellow many times do Mahomet’s miracle. Mahomet made the people believe that he would call an hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers, for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill. So these men, when they have promised great matters, and failed most shame- fully, yet (if they have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado. Certainly to men of great judgment, bold persons are a sport to behold; nay, and to the vulgar also, boldness has somewhat of the ridicu- lous. For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity. Especially it is a sport to see, when a bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, and wooden pos- ture; as needs it must; for in bashfulness, the spirits do a little go and come; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir. But this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. This is well to be weighed; that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not danger, and inconveniences. Therefore it is ill in counsel, good in execution; so that the right use of bold per- sons is, that they never command in chief, but be seconds, and under the direction of others. For in counsel, it is good to see dangers; and in execution, not to see them, except they be very great.

Of Goodness & GOODNESS OF NATURE

I TAKE goodness in this sense, the affecting of the weal of men, which is that the Grecians call philanthropia; and the word humanity (as it is used) is a little too light to express it. Good- ness I call the habit, and goodness of nature, the inclination. This of all virtues, and dignities of the mind, is the greatest; being the character of the Deity: and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing; no better than a kind of vermin. Goodness answers to the theological virtue, char- ity, and admits no excess, but error. The desire of power in excess, caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess, caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel, nor man, come in dan ger by it. The inclination to good- ness, is imprinted deeply in the nature of man; in- somuch, that if it issue not towards men, it will take unto other living creatures; as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, who nevertheless are kind to beasts, and give alms, to dogs and birds; inso- much, as Busbechius reporteth, a Christian boy, in Constantinople, had like to have been stoned, for gagging in a waggishness a long-billed fowl. Errors indeed in this virtue of goodness, or charity, may be committed. The Italians have an ungra- cious proverb, Tanto buon che val niente: so good, that he is good for nothing. And one of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas Machiavel, had the confidence to put in writing, almost in plain terms, That the Christian faith, had given up good men, in prey to those that are tyrannical and un- just. Which he spake, because indeed there was never law, or sect, or opinion, did so much mag- nify goodness, as the Christian religion doth. Therefore, to avoid the scandal and the danger both, it is good, to take knowledge of the errors of an habit so excellent. Seek the good of other men, but be not in bondage to their faces or fancies; for that is but facility, or softness; which taketh an honest mind prisoner. Neither give thou AEsop’s cock a gem, who would be better pleased, and hap- pier, if he had had a barley-corn. The example of God, teacheth the lesson truly: He sendeth his rain, and maketh his sun to shine, upon the just and unjust; but he doth not rain wealth, nor shine honor and virtues, upon men equally. Common benefits, are to be communicate with all; but pe- culiar benefits, with choice. And beware how in making the portraiture, thou breakest the pattern. For divinity, maketh the love of ourselves the pat- tern; the love of our neighbors, but the portraiture. Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor, and fol- low me: but, sell not all thou hast, except thou come and follow me; that is, except thou have a vocation, wherein thou mayest do as much good, with little means as with great; for otherwise, in feeding the streams, thou driest the fountain. Neither is there only a habit of goodness, directed by right reason; but there is in some men, even in nature, a disposition towards it; as on the other side, there is a natural malignity. For there be, that in their nature do not affect the good of others. The lighter sort of malignity, turneth but to a crassness, or frowardness, or aptness to oppose, or difficulties, or the like; but the deeper sort, to envy and mere mischief. Such men, in other men’s ca- lamities, are, as it were, in season, and are ever on the loading part: not so good as the dogs, that licked Lazarus’ sores; but like flies, that are still buzzing upon any thing that is raw; misanthropi, that make it their practice, to bring men to the bough, and yet never a tree for the purpose in their gar- dens, as Timon had. Such dispositions, are the very errors of human nature; and yet they are the fittest timber, to make great politics of; like to knee tim- ber, that is good for ships, that are ordained to be tossed; but not for building houses, that shall stand firm. The parts and signs of goodness, are many. If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island, cut off from other lands, but a conti- nent, that joins to them. If he be compassionate towards the afflictions of others, it shows that his heart is like the noble tree, that is wounded itself, when it gives the balm. If he easily pardons, and remits offences, it shows that his mind is planted above injuries; so that he cannot be shot. If he be thankful for small benefits, it shows that he weighs men’s minds, and not their trash. But above all, if he have St. Paul’s perfection, that he would wish to be anathema from Christ, for the salvation of his brethren, it shows much of a divine nature, and a kind of conformity with Christ himself

Of Nobility

WE WILL speak of nobility, first as a portion of an estate, then as a condition of particu- lar persons. A monarchy, where there is no nobil- ity at all, is ever a pure and absolute tyranny; as that of the Turks. For nobility attempers sover- eignty, and draws the eyes of the people, somewhat aside from the line royal. But for democracies, they need it not; and they are commonly more quiet, and less subject to sedition, than where there are stirps of nobles. For men’s eyes are upon the business, and not upon the persons; or if upon the persons, it is for the business’ sake, as fittest, and not for flags and pedigree. We see the Switzers last well, notwithstanding their diversity of religion, and of cantons. For utility is their bond, and not respects. The united provinces of the Low Coun- tries, in their government, excel; for where there is an equality, the consultations are more indif- ferent, and the payments and tributes, more cheerful. A great and potent nobility, addeth majesty to a monarch, but diminisheth power; and putteth life and spirit into the people, but presseth their fortune. It is well, when nobles are not too great for sovereignty nor for justice; and yet maintained in that height, as the insolency of inferiors may be broken upon them, before it come on too fast upon the majesty of kings. A numerous nobility causeth poverty, and inconvenience in a state; for it is a surcharge of expense; and besides, it being of necessity, that many of the nobility fall, in time, to be weak in fortune, it maketh a kind of disproportion, between honor and means.

As for nobility in particular persons; it is a rev- erend thing, to see an ancient castle or building, not in decay; or to see a fair timber tree, sound and perfect. How much more, to behold an ancient noble family, which has stood against the waves and weathers of time! For new nobility is but the act of power, but ancient nobility is the act of time. Those that are first raised to nobility, are com- monly more virtuous, but less innocent, than their descendants; for there is rarely any rising, but by a commixture of good and evil arts. But it is reason, the memory of their virtues remain to their pos- terity, and their faults die with themselves. Nobil- ity of birth commonly abateth industry; and he that is not industrious, envieth him that is. Besides, noble persons cannot go much higher; and he that standeth at a stay, when others rise, can hardly avoid motions of envy. On the other side, nobil- ity extinguisheth the passive envy from others, towards them; because they are in possession of honor. Certainly, kings that have able men of their nobility, shall find ease in employing them, and a better slide into their business; for people naturally bend to them, as born in some sort to command.

Of Seditions

AND TROUBLES

SHEPHERDS of people, had need know the calendars of tempests in state; which are com- monly greatest, when things grow to equality; as natural tempests are greatest about the Equinoc- tia. And as there are certain hollow blasts of wind, and secret swellings of seas before a tempest, so are there in states:

–Ille etiam caecos instare tumultus Saepe monet, fraudesque et operta tunescere bella.

Libels and licentious discourses against the state, when they are frequent and open; and in like sort, false news often running up and down, to the dis- advantage of the state, and hastily embraced; are amongst the signs of troubles. Virgil, giving the pedigree of Fame, saith, she was sister to the Giants:

Illam Terra parens, irra irritata deorum, Extremam (ut perhibent) Coeo Enceladoque sororem Progenuit.-

As if fames were the relics of seditions past; but they are no less, indeed, the preludes of seditions to come. Howsoever he noteth it right, that seditious tumults, and seditious fames, differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine; es- pecially if it come to that, that the best actions of a state, and the most plausible, and which ought to give greatest contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced: for that shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith; conflata magna invidia, seu bene seu male gesta premunt. Neither doth it follow, that because these fames are a sign of troubles, that the suppressing of them with too much severity, should be a remedy of troubles. For the despising of them, many times checks them best; and the going about to stop them, doth but make a wonder long-lived. Also that kind of obedience, which Tacitus speaketh of, is to be held suspected: Erant in officio, sed tamen qui mallent mandata impe- rantium interpretari quam exequi; disputing, ex- cusing, cavilling upon mandates and directions, is a kind of shaking off the yoke, and assay of dis- obedience; especially if in those disputings, they which are for the direction, speak fearfully and tenderly, and those that are against it, audaciously.

Also, as Machiavel noteth well, when princes, that ought to be common parents, make them- selves as a party, and lean to a side, it is as a boat, that is overthrown by uneven weight on the one side; as was well seen, in the time of Henry the Third of France; for first, himself entered league for the extirpation of the Protestants; and pres- ently after, the same league was turned upon him- self. For when the authority of princes, is made but an accessory to a cause, and that there be other bands, that tie faster than the band of sovereignty, kings begin to be put almost out of possession.

Also, when discords, and quarrels, and factions are carried openly and audaciously, it is a sign the reverence of government is lost. For the motions of the greatest persons in a government, ought to be as the motions of the planets under primum mobile; according to the old opinion: which is, that every of them, is carried swiftly by the highest motion, and softly in their own motion. And therefore, when great ones in their own particular motion, move violently, and, as Tacitus expresseth it well, liberius quam ut imperan- tium meminissent; it is a sign the orbs are out of frame. For reverence is that, wherewith princes are girt from God; who threateneth the dissolving thereof; Solvam cingula regum.

So when any of the four pillars of government, are mainly shaken, or weakened (which are relig- ion, justice, counsel, and treasure), men had need to pray for fair weather. But let us pass from this part of predictions (concerning which, neverthe- less, more light may be taken from that which followeth); and let us speak first, of the materials of seditions; then of the motives of them; and thirdly of the remedies.

Concerning the materials of seditions. It is a thing well to be considered; for the surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it) is to take away the matter of them. For if there be fuel pre- pared, it is hard to tell, whence the spark shall come, that shall set it on fire. The matter of sedi- tions is of two kinds: much poverty, and much dis- contentment. It is certain, so many overthrown estates, so many votes for troubles. Lucan noteth well the state of Rome before the Civil War,

Hinc usura vorax, rapidumque in tempore foenus, Hinc concussa fides, et multis utile bellum.

This same multis utile bellum, is an assured and infallible sign, of a state disposed to seditions and troubles. And if this poverty and broken estate in the better sort, be joined with a want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent and great. For the rebellions of the belly are the worst. As for discontentments, they are, in the politic body, like to humors in the natural, which are apt to gather a preternatural heat, and to inflame. And let no prince measure the danger of them by this, whether they be just or unjust: for that were to imagine people, to be too reasonable; who do often spurn at their own good: nor yet by this, whether the griefs whereupon they rise, be in fact great or small: for they are the most dangerous discontentments, where the fear is greater than the feeling. Dolendi modus, timendi non item. Besides, in great oppressions, the same things that provoke the patience, do withal mate the courage; but in fears it is not so. Neither let any prince, or state, be secure concerning discontentments, be- cause they have been often, or have been long, and yet no peril hath ensued: for as it is true, that every vapor or fume doth not turn into a storm; so it is nevertheless true, that storms, though they blow over divers times, yet may fall at last; and, as the Spanish proverb noteth well, The cord breaketh at the last by the weakest pull.

The causes and motives of seditions are, innova- tion in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and cus- toms; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons; strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown des- perate; and what soever, in offending people, joineth and knitteth them in a common cause.

For the remedies; there may be some general preservatives, whereof we will speak: as for the just cure, it must answer to the particular disease; and so be left to counsel, rather than rule.

The first remedy or prevention is to remove, by all means possible, that material cause of sedition whereof we spake; which is, want and poverty in the estate. To which purpose serveth the opening, and well-balancing of trade; the cherishing of manufactures; the banishing of idleness; the re- pressing of waste, and excess, by sumptuary laws; the improvement and husbanding of the soil; the regulating of prices of things vendible; the moder- ating of taxes and tributes; and the like. Generally, it is to be foreseen that the population of a king- dom (especially if it be not mown down by wars) do not exceed the stock of the kingdom, which should maintain them. Neither is the population to be reckoned only by number; for a smaller num- ber, that spend more and earn less, do wear out an estate sooner, than a greater number that live lower, and gather more. Therefore the multiply- ing of nobility, and other degrees of quality, in an over proportion to the common people, doth speed- ily bring a state to necessity; and so doth likewise an overgrown clergy; for they bring nothing to the stock; and in like manner, when more are bred scholars, than preferments can take off .

It is likewise to be remembered, that forasmuch as the increase of any estate must be upon the foreigner (for whatsoever is somewhere gotten, is somewhere lost), there be but three things, which one nation selleth unto another; the commodity as nature yieldeth it; the manufacture; and the vec- ture, or carriage. So that if these three wheels go, wealth will flow as in a spring tide. And it cometh many times to pass, that materiam superabit opus; that the work and carriage is more worth than the material, and enricheth a state more; as is notably seen in the Low-Countrymen, who have the best mines above ground, in the world.

Above all things, good policy is to be used, that the treasure and moneys, in a state, be not gath- ered into few hands. For otherwise a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread. This is done, chiefly by suppressing, or at least keeping a strait hand, upon the devouring trades of usury, ingrossing great pasturages, and the like.

For removing discontentments, or at least the danger of them; there is in every state (as we know) two portions of subjects; the noblesse and the commonalty. When one of these is discontent, the danger is not great; for common people are of slow motion, if they be not excited by the greater sort; and the greater sort are of small strength, except the multitude be apt, and ready to move of themselves. Then is the danger, when the greater sort, do but wait for the troubling of the waters amongst the meaner, that then they may declare themselves. The poets feign, that the rest of the gods would have bound Jupiter; which he hearing of, by the counsel of Pallas, sent for Briareus, with his hundred hands, to come in to his aid. An em- blem, no doubt, to show how safe it is for mon- archs, to make sure of the good will of common people. To give moderate liberty for griefs and dis- contentments to evaporate (so it be without too great insolency or bravery), is a safe way. For he that turneth the humors back, and maketh the wound bleed inwards, endangereth malign ulcers, and pernicious imposthumations.

The part of Epimetheus mought well become Prometheus, in the case of discontentments: for there is not a better provision against them. Epime- theus, when griefs and evils flew abroad, at last shut the lid, and kept hope in the bottom of the vessel. Certainly, the politic and artificial nourish- ing, and entertaining of hopes, and carrying men from hopes to hopes, is one of the best antidotes against the poison of discontentments. And it is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction; and when it can handle things, in such manner, as no evil shall appear so peremptory, but that it hath some outlet of hope; which is the less hard to do, because both particu- lar persons and factions, are apt enough to flatter themselves, or at least to brave that, which they believe not.

Also the foresight and prevention, that there be no likely or fit head, whereunto discontented per- sons may resort, and under whom they may join, is a known, but an excellent point of caution. I understand a fit head, to be one that hath great- ness and reputation; that hath confidence with the discontented party, and upon whom they turn their eyes; and that is thought discontented, in his own particular: which kind of persons, are either to be won, and reconciled to the state, and that in a fast and true manner; or to be fronted with some other, of the same party, that may oppose them, and so divide the reputation. Generally, the divid- ing and breaking, of all factions and combinations that are adverse to the state, and setting them at distance, or at least distrust, amongst themselves, is not one of the worst remedies. For it is a desper- ate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state, be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it, be entire and united.

I have noted, that some witty and sharp speeches, which have fallen from princes, have given fire to seditions. Caesar did himself infinite hurt in that speech, Sylla nescivit literas, non po- tuit dictare; for it did utterly cut off that hope, which men had entertained, that he would at one time or other give over his dictatorship. Galba un- did himself by that speech, legi a se militem, non emi; for it put the soldiers out of hope of the dona- tive. Probus likewise, by that speech, Si vixero, non opus erit amplius Romano imperio militibus; a speech of great despair for the soldiers. And many the like. Surely princes had need, in tender matters and ticklish times, to beware what they say; especially in these short speeches, which fly abroad like darts, and are thought to be shot out of their secret intentions. For as for large discourses, they are flat things, and not so much noted.

Lastly, let princes, against all events, not be without some great person, one or rather more, of military valor, near unto them, for the repressing of seditions in their beginnings. For without that, there useth to be more trepidation in court upon the first breaking out of troubles, than were fit. And the state runneth the danger of that which Tacitus saith; Atque is habitus animorum fuit, ut pessimum facinus auderent pauci, plures vellent, omnes paterentur. But let such military persons be assured, and well reputed of, rather than factious and popular; holding also good correspondence with the other great men in the state; or else the remedy, is worse than the disease.

I HAD rather believe all the fables in the Leg- end, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. And therefore, God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works con- vince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scat- tered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. Nay, even that school which is most accused of atheism doth most dem- onstrate religion; that is, the school of Leucippus and Democritus and Epicurus. For it is a thousand times more credible, that four mutable elements, and one immutable fifth essence, duly and eter- nally placed, need no God, than that an army of infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, should have produced this order and beauty, without a divine marshal. The Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it. For none deny, there is a God, but those, for whom it maketh that there were no God. It ap- peareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man, than by this; that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it, within themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened, by the consent of others. Nay more, you shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And, which is most of all, you shall have of them, that will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if they did truly think, that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves? Epi- curus is charged, that he did but dissemble for his credit’s sake, when he affirmed there were blessed natures, but such as enjoyed themselves, without having respect to the government of the world. Wherein they say he did temporize; though in secret, he thought there was no God. But certainly he is traduced; for his words are noble and divine: Non deos vulgi negare profanum; sed vulgi opini- ones diis applicare profanum. Plato could have said no more. And although he had the confidence, to deny the administration, he had not the power, to deny the nature. The Indians of the West, have names for their particular gods, though they have no name for God: as if the heathens should have had the names Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, etc., but not the word Deus; which shows that even those bar- barous people have the notion, though they have not the latitude and extent of it. So that against atheists, the very savages take part, with the very subtlest philosophers. The contemplative atheist is rare: a Diagoras, a Bion, a Lucian perhaps, and some others; and yet they seem to be more than they are; for that all that impugn a received re- ligion, or superstition, are by the adverse part branded with the name of atheists. But the great atheists, indeed are hypocrites; which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end. The causes of atheism are: divisions in religion, if they be many; for any one main division, addeth zeal to both sides; but many divisions introduce atheism. Another is, scandal of priests; when it is come to that which St. Bernard saith, non est jam dicere, ut populus sic sacerdos; quia nec sic populus ut sacerdos. A third is, custom of profane scoffing in holy matters; which doth, by little and little, de- face the reverence of religion. And lastly, learned times, specially with peace and prosperity; for troubles and adversities do more bow men’s minds to religion. They that deny a God, destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts, by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God, by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising of human nature; for take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on, when he finds himself maintained by a man; who to him is instead of a God, or melior natura; which courage is manifestly such, as that creature, with- out that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself, upon divine protection and favor, gathered a force and faith, which human nature in itself could not obtain. Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt it-

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"Envy'd Wit" in "An Essay on Criticism"

2012, SEL - Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

The lines about Envy in the second part of Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism form one of the least discussed sections of the poem. In this paper I consider the interaction of allusion and wit in the passage and argue that the lines may be regarded as an early but crucial instance of self-fashioning in Pope's oeuvre.

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This article contextualizes the eighteenth-century English poet Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (1711) and his other literary essays in order to elicit Pope's contributions to the neoclassical norm. Exploring the aesthetic interchanges between Pope and his predecessors and contemporaries, I endeavor to show how Pope's poetry and prose have tackled the difficult task of unifying antithetical categories of invention and judgment into the Johnsonian " general nature. "

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This paper discusses Pope’s Essay on Criticism in terms of Derek Attridge’s theory of creativity. It argues that Pope’s text is fundamentally based on the same commitment to the other that Attridge describes as constitutive of the singularity of literature and hence the 300-year-old Essay is a vital text which communicates itself to the present in significant ways. The success of poetry for Pope depends primarily on an appropriate relation to nature and the first chapter of this paper argues that the way Pope describes this relation is very similar to Attridge’s description of the relation to the other. The three subsequent chapters discuss how Pope’s concept of “expression” continues this theme and describes the pitfalls as well as the success of relating to nature as the other. The last two sections discuss the Essay’s treatment of the rules. It is shown that the way the rules are presented in the Essay reflects Pope’s fundamental ethical commitment no less than his concepts of na...

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Essay Samples on Envy

A lesson that can be learned by experiencing strong emotions.

I experienced strong emotion when my friends didn't invite me to join their surprise for our friend Janessa. I know that day that it's Janessa's birthday that's why I am expecting that they will come to me to get my contribution for the surprise but...

Friendship and Envy In Novel 'A Separate Peace'

Friendship cannot always be Genuine His accomplishment took root in my mind and grew rapidly in [my mind] darkness where I was forced to hide it” (Knowles). Author John Knowles uses the narrator’s point of view to describe the way he feels about his friend....

A Separate Peace

Envy is a Dangerous Feeling That Destroys a Person

When the word envy comes to mind, we generally think it is a harmless feeling. But when left unaddressed, it can lead to very dangerous consequences. Envy has been experienced by humans since the beginning of time and throughout history there have been many instances...

Seven Deadly Sins

Envy One of the Seven Deadly Sins

Envy the most relatable of the seven deadly sins consumes so many of us on a day to day basis, but what exactly is envy? Envy has many different versions of the definition but the most commonly used is, wanting something that someone else has...

Envy And Jealously Between Woman In Roman Fever

It is generally agreed today that Friendships, who like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true friendship. But it is true? Friendship can share everything but when it comes to what you love most, it seems that friendship is in danger of breaking...

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The Influence of Social Comparison on Envy in People With High Self-Esteem

Social media creates a virtual community for people to follow the lives of each other. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are available for all to become users themselves. Individuals can document every moment of the lives on social media through their profiles. For instance,...

Effects of Social Media
Self Esteem

Best topics on Envy

1. A Lesson That Can Be Learned by Experiencing Strong Emotions

2. Friendship and Envy In Novel ‘A Separate Peace’

3. Envy is a Dangerous Feeling That Destroys a Person

4. Envy One of the Seven Deadly Sins

5. Envy And Jealously Between Woman In Roman Fever

6. The Influence of Social Comparison on Envy in People With High Self-Esteem

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1072 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1957

The country’s top banker — a leading oil producer — a once-revered professor — an acclaimed composer — a distinguished judge. All vanish without explanation and without trace.
A copper magnate becomes a worthless playboy. A philosopher-turned-pirate is rumored to roam the seas. The remnants of a brilliant invention are left as scrap in an abandoned factory.
What is happening to the world? Why does it seem to be in a state of decay? Can it be saved — and how?
Atlas Shrugged “is a mystery story, not about the murder of a man’s body, but about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit.”
Follow along as industrialist Hank Rearden and railroad executive Dagny Taggart struggle to keep the country afloat and unravel the mysteries that confront them. Discover why, at every turn, they are met with public opposition and new government roadblocks, taxes and controls — and with the disappearance of the nation’s most competent men and women.
Will Hank and Dagny succeed in saving the country — and will they discover the answer to the question “Who is John Galt?”

694 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1943

About the Book

What motivates a creative thinker? Is it a selfless desire to benefit mankind? A hunger for fame, fortune, and accolades? The need to prove superiority? Or is it a self-sufficient drive to pursue a creative vision, independent of others’ needs or opinions?
Ayn Rand addresses these questions through her portrayal of Howard Roark, an innovative architect who, as she puts it, “struggles for the integrity of his creative work against every form of social opposition.”
Initially rejected by twelve publishers as “too intellectual,” The Fountainhead became a best seller within two years purely through word of mouth, and earned Rand enduring commercial and artistic success.
The novel was also a personal landmark for Rand. In Howard Roark, she presented for the first time the uniquely Ayn Rand hero, whose depiction was the chief goal of her writing: the ideal man, man as “he could be and ought to be.”

432 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1936

The setting is Soviet Russia, early 1920s. Kira Argounova, a university engineering student who wants a career building bridges, falls in love with Leo Kovalensky, son of a czarist hero. Both Kira and Leo yearn to shape their own future — but they are trapped in a communist state that claims the right to sacrifice individual lives for the sake of the collective.
When Kira is kicked out of the university as an undesirable and Leo’s past makes him unemployable, life becomes a grim struggle for physical survival. Leo contracts tuberculosis but can’t get admitted to a state sanitarium, despite Kira’s best efforts. Desperate, she seeks help from Andrei Taganov, an ardent young communist whose love for Kira helps awaken him to the meaning of genuine personal values, not to be surrendered for others’ sake.
Once these two men are destroyed — Andrei by his disillusionment with communism, and Leo by his inability to go on fighting — Kira tries to flee, but will she find it possible to defy the state’s power?

105 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1938

Anthem is Ayn Rand’s “hymn to man’s ego.” It is the story of one man’s rebellion against a totalitarian, collectivist society. Equality 7-2521 is a young man who yearns to understand “the Science of Things.” But he lives in a bleak, dystopian future where independent thought is a crime and where science and technology have regressed to primitive levels.
All expressions of individualism have been suppressed in the world of Anthem ; personal possessions are nonexistent, individual preferences are condemned as sinful and romantic love is forbidden. Obedience to the collective is so deeply ingrained that the very word “I” has been erased from the language.
In pursuit of his quest for knowledge, Equality 7-2521 struggles to answer the questions that burn within him — questions that ultimately lead him to uncover the mystery behind his society’s downfall and to find the key to a future of freedom and progress.
Anthem anticipates the theme of Rand’s first best seller, The Fountainhead , which she stated as “individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man’s soul.”

ESSAY COLLECTION

167 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1964

Most ethical discussions take for granted the supreme moral value of selfless service. Debate then centers on details: Should we serve an alleged God or substitute “society” for God? How much sacrifice is required? Who’s entitled to benefit from others’ sacrifices?
In this volume’s lead essay, “The Objectivist Ethics,” Ayn Rand challenges that basic assumption by reconsidering ethics from the ground up.
Why, she asks, does man need morality in the first place? Her answer to that question culminates in the definition of a new code of morality, based in rational self-interest, aimed at each individual’s life and happiness, and rejecting sacrifice as immoral.
In additional articles, Rand expands her theory and discusses practical questions such as: Do people face intractable conflicts of interest? Isn’t everyone selfish? Doesn’t life require compromise? How do I live in an irrational society? What about the needs of others? What are political rights? What’s the rational function of government?
Her fresh, provocative answers cast new light on what it means to be genuinely selfish.

416 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1967

“The method of capitalism’s destruction,” Ayn Rand writes, “rests on never letting the world discover what it is that is being destroyed.” In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal , Rand and her colleagues define a new view of capitalism’s meaning, history, and philosophic basis and set out to demolish many of the myths surrounding capitalism.
Does capitalism lead to depressions, monopolies, child labor or war? Why is big business so hated? Why have conservatives failed to stop the growth of the state? Is religion compatible with capitalism? Is government regulation the solution to economic problems or their cause? What is freedom and what kind of government does it require? Is capitalism moral?
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal tackles these and other timeless questions about capitalism, and lays out Rand’s provocative thesis: that the system of laissez-faire capitalism is a moral ideal.

228 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1982

Philosophy: Who Needs It is the last work planned by Ayn Rand prior to her death in 1982. In these essays, Rand shows how abstract ideas have profound real-life consequences. She identifies connections between egalitarianism and inflation, collectivism and the regulation of pornography, alcoholism, and the problem of free will vs. determinism.
Contrary to the notion that philosophy is detached from the practical concerns of life, Rand sees philosophy’s influence everywhere, leading her to ask questions like: How can a person’s views about metaphysics impact his ambition and self-confidence? How has the notion of “duty” given morality a bad name? How did the belief that faith is superior to reason unleash the horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism?
Philosophy: Who Needs It also includes Rand’s assessment of a number of prominent thinkers, including John Rawls, John Maynard Keynes, B. F. Skinner, and, above all, Immanuel Kant, whom Rand regards as her arch philosophical adversary.
In these eighteen essays, readers learn why Rand’s answer to the question of who needs philosophy is an emphatic: you do.

198 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1961

In the lengthy introductory essay of For the New Intellectual , Rand argues that America and Western civilization are bankrupt, and that the cause of the bankruptcy is the failure of philosophy: specifically, the failure of philosophers and intellectuals to define and advocate a philosophy of reason.
In the subsequent selections, culled from her novels, Rand presents the outline of her philosophy of reason, which she calls Objectivism. These excerpts cover major topics in philosophy — from Objectivism’s basic axioms to its new theory of free will to its radical ethics of rational egoism to its moral-philosophic case for laissez-faire capitalism.
For the New Intellectual contains some of Rand’s most important passages on other philosophers, including Aristotle, Plato, Hume, Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche. Many of its selections also develop Rand’s unprecedented critique of altruism — the notion that our basic moral obligation is to live for others.

208 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1969 & 1971

In this collection, Ayn Rand explains the indispensable function of art in man’s life (chapter 1), the source of man’s deeply personal, emotional response to art (chapter 2), and how an artist’s fundamental, often unstated view of man and of the world shapes his creations (chapter 3). In a chapter that includes an extended discussion of music, Rand explores the valid forms of art (chapter 4).
Rand also presents her distinctive theory of literature (chapter 5) and sheds new light on Romanticism, under which category Rand classified her own work (chapters 6 and 10). Later essays explain how contemporary art reveals the debased intellectual and esthetic state of our culture (chapters 7, 8 and 9).
In the final essay (chapter 11), Rand articulates the goal of her own fiction writing and upholds the value of art that depicts men “as they might be and ought to be.” Chapter 12 is a short story Rand wrote in 1940, illustrating how an artist’s “sense of life” directs his subconscious and shapes his creative imagination.

320 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1966 & 1990

Rand begins by briefly presenting the issue that a theory of concepts addresses: the “problem of universals,” as it is sometimes termed in philosophy — and indicating why traditional theories are inadequate.
“To exemplify the issue as it is usually presented: When we refer to three persons as ‘men,’ what do we designate by that term? The three persons are three individuals who differ in every particular respect and may not possess a single identical characteristic (not even their fingerprints). If you list all their particular characteristics, you will not find one representing ‘manness.’ Where is the ‘manness’ in men? What, in reality, corresponds to the concept ‘man’ in our mind?”
Rand then develops her own theory, explaining what is identical across all the instances integrated by a properly formed concept. Her view is that concept formation, in crucial respects, is a mathematical process: it relies on a form of measurement. Essential to her theory is a new account of similarity and of abstraction as measurement-omission.
She concludes with a discussion of the cognitive importance of concepts and how her theory makes possible a new approach to epistemology.

304 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1999

Confronted by an important idea, event or movement, Ayn Rand always sought to identify its causes and effects: What gave rise to this and to what will it lead?
Rand also looks critically at the nascent environmentalist movement, which she saw as fomenting an “anti-industrial revolution,” and analyzes what she sees as the dominant emotional leitmotif of this era, which she calls “the Age of Envy.”
The essays by Peter Schwartz confirm that the timeless lessons of Rand’s analyses — especially those concerning environmentalism, multiculturalism and feminism — have been borne out by developments through the ’80s and ’90s. Her insights are as relevant today as they were four decades ago.

368 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1989

Between 1961, when she gave her first talk at Ford Hall Forum in Boston, and 1981, when she gave the last talk of her life in New Orleans, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam and the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) .
The Voice of Reason is a collection of these pieces gathered in book form for the first time. Here we get some of Rand’s most in-depth treatments of issues such as religion, sex, abortion, foreign policy and the mixed economy.
With Rand’s selections are five essays by philosopher Leonard Peikoff, Rand’s longtime associate and literary executor, covering such topics as education and socialized medicine, as well as a piece by Objectivist scholar Peter Schwartz on the difference between libertarianism and Objectivism.
The work concludes with Peikoff’s epilogue, “My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand: An Intellectual Memoir,” which answers the question “What was Ayn Rand really like?”

493 Pages | Available in eBook format | Published in 1991

Although Ayn Rand defined a full philosophic system, which she called Objectivism, she never wrote a comprehensive, nonfiction presentation of it. Rand’s interest in philosophy stemmed originally from her desire to create heroic fictional characters for her novels, especially Atlas Shrugged , whose final philosophic speech she called Objectivism’s “briefest summary.”
In 1976, philosopher Leonard Peikoff, her longtime student and associate, gave a lecture course that Rand described as “the only authorized presentation of the entire theoretical structure of Objectivism, i.e., the only one that I know of my own knowledge to be fully accurate.”
Following Rand’s death, Peikoff edited and reorganized those lectures to produce Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand , the first comprehensive statement of her philosophy. Published in 1991, this book presents Rand’s entire philosophy — metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics — in essentialized and systematic form.

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Kathryn Chetkovich

‘Why does it hurt only to read good work by the living?’

T his is a story about two writers. A story, in other words, of envy. I met the man at an artists’ colony, and I liked him from the first story I heard him tell, which was about how he’d once been jilted by a blind date, after which he went right out and bought himself some new clothes. He was working on his third book when I met him, but he had no particular interest in talking shop. He read the paper and watched sports on television. He was handsome in a shy, arrogant way, dressed safely but deliberately in his white shirts and black jeans.

He was, I soon learned, struggling.

There may be women out there who do not love this beyond all else in a man, but I’m not one of them.

H e played pool after dinner in the barn-like common room of the colony, and I would watch him through the window of the phone-booth door as I made my nightly call to my parents across the country in California. My father, who was eighty-one and not in good health, had recently fallen. He had damaged his back and shoulder, but he was reluctant to go to the doctor, and my mother was becoming frantic with worry and exhaustion. The anticipation of those ten-minute phone calls—during which I did nothing but listen, and even that not very well—dominated my days.

The booth itself was tiny, barely big enough for its folding chair, shelf, and payphone. The air felt pre-breathed and thick with the molecules of other people’s long-distance calls, of their quarrels and appeasements. A small, squat window was positioned at eye level if you were sitting down, and through it, while my parents’ distress poured into my ear, I could see a slice of the man, a helping from his waist to the middle of his thighs, as he played pool. I watched him set his legs, wiggling them into place. As my mother spoke in the tense, coded voice that signalled that my father was in the room with her, I focused on the cue sliding forward and back across his body like a bow. As long as I kept my eye trained on that cue, I told myself, I would not get sucked through the tiny holes of the receiver.

One afternoon, on the threshold of the building in which we both had bedrooms, I ran into the man and, partly in a bid to keep him talking, told him about my parents and my uncertainty about what I should be doing to help them. His own father had died after a long illness, he told me, so he had some idea what I was going through.

Just then a staff member came by and complimented him on one of his novels, neither of which I’d heard of—a fact that helped to equalize the discrepancy between his two published books and my none.

We both watched her walk away again, awkwardness rushing in to fill the space she left behind. He looked back at me. ‘You have to do your work,’ he said. ‘That’s your first responsibility.’

He meant, of course, my writing, and he spoke with a confidence I had never managed to feel about those hours of daydreaming at my desk, stringing together decorative little sentences to describe small, made-up events. Work to me always meant a job you were paid to do, necessary labour that someone else depended on.

He may have been struggling, but he knew what his work was. That was the first thing I envied about him.

W hen my father, after at last agreeing to see the doctor, was immediately scheduled for major surgery, I made arrangements to fly back to California. I left my computer and most of my belongings behind to ensure my return to the colony, and I bought a copy of the man’s second novel to take with me. Over the next week I read it in various locations—on the plane, in the hospital cafeteria, at my parents’ breakfast table. This life of waiting for what was going to happen in my father’s life now seemed like the only real one to me, and the book like a token I had managed to smuggle out of a dream.

There were moments, reading, where the recognition was so strong, and the life on the page so vivid, I could feel my pulse speed up.

This book is good, I thought with joy—the way you can when it’s the work of someone you don’t really know and expect you never will. Because it’s the very fact of not knowing the writer that gives you that proprietary thrill, that frees up the book to belong to you.

But I did know him, at least a little, so I also felt, intermittently, the stabs of dread familiar to all writers—that here were sentences, paragraphs, whole pages I not only admired but wished I had written.

And I suppose pride was also in the mix, because this man whose perception I envied had possibly liked me. I saw myself reflected, if in an incomplete and distorted way, in that possibility, the way you can see the ghost of yourself in a store window through which you can also see a real woman examining a shoe.

So from the start he was both man and writer, real and something more than real, to me. I had liked him as soon as I met him—a current rippled across my skin when he walked into a room—but something stronger kicked in once I met him on the page, naked and decked out in phrases I would never have thought of.

My father, having undergone a second, unanticipated operation, was still in the hospital when I returned to the colony. I spent four of the five-plus in-flight hours of the trip certain that the plane was going to crash, a conviction that every casual observation—the ominous silence from the cockpit, the flight attendants’ huddled conversations in the galley—seemed only to confirm. Maybe this was just residual anxiety from having been on high alert for the previous few days, or maybe I was not at all sure at that point where I truly belonged and had simply found a colourful way to express that dilemma.

To fend off the guilty suspicion that I was abandoning my father, I reminded myself that I was returning to work, a choice that he, in all his years at the office, had taught me the value of making. But the moment I walked into the colony’s dining room that night and my glance snagged on the man, his white shirt and Oscar Wilde hair, I knew it wasn’t just my work I’d returned for.

I was falling for another writer, and I recognized my descent by its peculiar calling card: the fear of what I wanted. In my remaining week at the colony, confident that nothing would actually ‘happen’ between us there, I engineered as many coincidental meetings with him as I could. Because we lived on opposite sides of the country and would probably never see each other again, I felt crestfallen, and safe.

M y father remained in the hospital, not so much recovering as trading one complication for another, for the next two months. Once I got back home, I visited him every day and never got over the feeling, as I searched for a parking space and walked to the entrance and made my way down the wide squeaky hallway to his open door, that I was pulling myself along like a reluctant dog who might one day slip my collar and make a break for the car. I was afraid of finding some new test under way in my father’s room or some new piece of equipment—evidence of more bad news. When a doctor would come in armed with nothing more ominous than a clipboard, I was afraid of that, too—afraid that my father would not be able to come up with the answers to basic questions like what hospital he was in or who the president was. Even though I routinely have trouble remembering what day of the week it is and can almost never name the date, it terrified me to see my father muddled by this kind of mild confusion. His had always been a sharp and certain mind, an accountant’s mind; ‘sometimes wrong but never in doubt’ was one of his favourite sayings.

One day as my brother and I were leaving my father’s hospital room, I broke into tears—sudden, gulping sobs that overtook me and made it hard to breathe.

My brother put his arm around me and asked me what I was afraid of. Dad was not about to die, he assured me.

‘I’m not afraid he’s going to die,’ I found myself saying. ‘I’m afraid he’s going to live.’

I was afraid that my father was going to get what we all wanted: better enough to go home. And that once there he was going to take the rest of us down with him, starting with my mother.

During that time, the fact that my husband and I had recently separated and I had neither a family of my own nor a full-time job behind which to hide left me exposed to my parents’ needs, which were sizeable. I tried to regard the time I was spending with one or the other of them as a job I would later be glad to have done, but this gladness was often undermined by my resentments and foul moods, by my running tally of the sacrifices I was making and the uncomfortable fact—hard to admit, even to myself—that I wasn’t getting any writing done.

Then one day in my mailbox there was a letter from the man at the colony.

Of course I wrote him back right away, labouring for hours to strike an appropriately offhand tone. I drove my letter to the post office for faster pickup, and began waiting impatiently for a response. Before long we were corresponding, with a double-edged satisfaction that seemed destined to mark everything that happened between us. It was a simple thrill to see an envelope addressed in his hand in my mailbox—and then I would open the letter and begin answering it in my head, and the thrill would get complicated.

In the letters I wrote him, I was compelled to see my life as it must have looked from the outside: a lot of driving and errand-running, a lot of empty, necessary hours at the hospital. Meanwhile, his letters, chronicling his successes and failures at his desk, where he was at work on a novel about family troubles, reminded me of the writer’s life I myself was failing to live.

I knew, from his descriptions of them, that his days were no easier than mine. He was still struggling, throwing away much of what he’d written, and I took a furtive solace in that. But occasionally he would report having had a good day, and I would feel, under my encouraging cheer, the shudder of panic you get when a friend deserts you by joining AA or leaving a bad marriage. It was one thing for him to be sitting down to it every day while I was not; but to hear that he might be getting somewhere made me feel abandoned and ashamed. He was pulling ahead in the great race of life, and he was throwing my own stasis into unbearable relief. Fortunately, over the next two months, such days were rare enough to discount.

Eventually my father came home to a house that had been fitted for his wheelchair-bound return: doors taken off their hinges, rugs rolled up, and a hospital bed installed in the den, with a baby monitor so my mother could hear him call. My reluctance to visit him got worse once he was home. At home bad things might be happening and no expert, no breezy young man with a stethoscope, was there to take charge. There was only my mother, with her fraying nerves, and later a willing but under-qualified aide and a nurse who visited a couple of times a week. In the hospital there had at least been the grim herd comfort of other ill people and other worn out families.

And of course the hospital was a place you could always leave. In the hospital my father was someone else’s responsibility. At home, he was ours.

One night, encouraged by a recent letter and feeling at loose ends at home, I called the man. I was anxious and uncomfortable the whole time we talked, but as soon as we were off the phone I couldn’t wait to talk to him again. We talked periodically after that, but it felt like the sort of dangerous pleasure you eventually have to swear off, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that each conversation brought us closer to the inevitable one in which we would agree to stop talking altogether, so I mostly tried to enjoy the idea of calling him without actually doing it, all the while reminding myself that there was a good chance that we would never speak again and that even if we did, it certainly wasn’t going to lead to anything.

As my father was ostensibly getting better, to the point where he was able to drag himself around the house behind a walker, he was also clearly getting worse. It was hard to get a firm sense of exactly what was wrong, and for a while I was frustrated because he seemed simply unwilling to make the necessary effort. But he couldn’t: he was too tired and discouraged; he was in too much pain. Finally he agreed to go back to the hospital. As soon as he was there, crammed into a corner of the busy emergency room, he looked up at my mother with exhaustion and relief and said, ‘We made the right decision to come back here.’ As if his body had just been waiting for the signal, organ after organ began to shut down over the next few days. Even so, he fought to stay alive. He elected to go on a ventilator, after which he had to be heavily sedated and eventually slipped into unconsciousness. His body by then was wrecked.

Two weeks later we finally decided to disconnect the machine that had been breathing for him. The doctor warned us that it might take him as long as a week to die. The nurse we liked unhooked him from everything except the heart monitor and the morphine drip before she left for the day, and another nurse took over and wheeled him to a temporary room down the hall. My brother and I took the first shift, sitting on opposite sides of the bed and holding his hands. The television was on and we watched it absent-mindedly. After the cramped busyness of the ICU, the room we were in seemed peaceful, in a makeshift way, but my father did not. It seemed to me that he was no more resigned to dying than he had ever been, and I couldn’t bring myself to say the encouraging things that seemed called for, urging him to let go and to trust that everything would be all right. But if he was waiting to hear these, he didn’t wait long; an hour later, he was gone.

I drove to the shopping centre that afternoon under cover of buying groceries and stopped to call the man from a payphone. I think he may have told me the story of the day his own father died, but I don’t remember for certain. What I remember is just my relief that he was home, that when the phone rang, he answered. I remember standing outside a pizza parlour, watching the cars glide in and out of their spaces, listening to his voice.

I had told my mother I would stay with her for a while, so I moved my clothes and books and computer to her house, and began trying to write, without much success, in my father’s study. In the days immediately following his death, my sister and I had sorted and cleared what looked like the most current piles. It felt at the time as though we were working with the determined haste of people trying to beat a storm or nightfall; now night had indeed fallen, my father’s death had become real, and I lacked the courage or energy to examine, much less remove, any of his things. In the centre of his otherwise cluttered desk I cleared a small space for my work, and when I stepped into the room and saw it from a distance, it looked not unlike one of those mysterious crop circles—an emptiness created for no known reason.

I knew this was a strange time for me, living in my parents’ house again for the first time in twenty years, but it was probably even stranger than I realized. I had a sense that my friends were listening in a particular way when we talked, forming opinions. I recognized that attitude of the concerned outsider; I have employed it often enough myself.

The man, too, seemed worried about me and surprised me by inviting me to come and visit him in New York. I still didn’t know him well enough to feel comfortable with him, and I often felt nervous when I picked up the phone to call him. It was odd in one way and not odd at all in another to find myself sitting across the table from him in the apartment he had described to me in his letters. We talked for hours that first night, pushing the words back and forth while each of us tried to figure out what the other was saying underneath them. Finally I took my dishes to the sink and he came up behind me and, after all those months, put his hands on my shoulders.

O ver the next two years, as we visited each other for weeks and then months at a stretch, the man and I settled into a routine that included a lot of satisfying time together and a number of anguished fights.

During the day, imagining him hard at work on his novel, I tried to work myself. My collection of short stories had finally been accepted and published by a university press the fall after my father died, and much as I thought I was prepared for the polite silence that greeted that publication, I must have been more disappointed than I realized, because I now found myself questioning my efforts more ruthlessly than ever. It sometimes took me a whole morning to get to my desk; once there, often I would turn on the computer and distract myself by opening a book or answering email or fussing over a small editorial job. When I did finally manage to turn my attention to writing, I worried that the play I had begun working on was a mistake and that I should go back to writing fiction; on the other hand, I reasoned, if I really wanted to work on a play, a play was what I should work on—but then with every line I saw fresh evidence that I was going down the wrong road, and every step was taking me farther from the one thing I knew how to do: write stories. Except that by now I worried that I had already forgotten what I once knew about that, too. I hadn’t written a story in what seemed a long time, and even though I remembered pretty much always feeling as if I didn’t know what I was doing, even when I was doing it, I could see now that in fact I had known what I was doing, before, and it was only now that I didn’t.

I looked forward to evening, to the sight of the man, who still felt new and mysterious, walking through the door, and I also dreaded that moment because it meant either lying about what I had accomplished or, worse, telling the truth—and it meant having to hear about his day.

Because the man, who had been struggling so agreeably when I met him, had finally found his key, the way in. In the months it took me to produce a drifty fifteen-page story about the end of a marriage, a short play about a woman who sleeps with her best friend’s husband, and seventy pages of a screenplay that had the desperate signs of ‘learning experience’ written all over it, he piled up several hundred pages of his new novel.

It was, alas, good. My own reading told me this, but I had independent verification as well—because as sections were finished they flew almost immediately into print, and just as immediately, the phone would begin to ring with congratulatory messages, comparisons to dead writers and to living writers whose reputations were so established they might as well be dead.

In the middle of this somewhat tense time the man came home one night, feeling frustrated after a couple of hard days, and asked if I would read some pages that were giving him trouble. I was immensely relieved to think that he, too, could produce bad work, and grateful that he was willing to show it to me.

I had the sudden wish to knock him to the floor and hike up my skirt, but I thought I would read the pages first.

He brought me olives and a glass of wine, and I sat down to read. Hoping for the worst and prepared to be encouraging.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said when I finished. ‘This is great.’

‘Do you really think so?’ he asked hopefully. ‘You really think it’s okay?’

‘I think it’s perfect. Funny, true, interesting.’ I managed to shove the words up my throat and out my mouth. I might have wished for it to be bad, but I couldn’t tell him it was if it wasn’t.

‘Thank you. That’s a huge relief. That really really helps. Thank you.’

You want to see bad work, I’ll show you bad work, I thought, even as I was privately vowing never to show him another word I’d written.

I was forty, then forty-one, then forty-two years old. I had no children, the husband I had thought I would be with forever was gone, the father I had always assumed would one day really know me was dead, and I had no career to speak of. And now I was with a man who could do this.

The impulse to make love had passed.

W hen his novel was finally done, the man handed it in, and his editor called every hundred pages or so to say he was loving it, then called to say he was cutting the cheque, and finally called to say he wanted to take the man and me out for a celebratory dinner.

The day of that dinner, after putting in a few unhappy hours at my desk, I went out and bought myself a pair of black slacks and a silk blouse. The evening went well, I thought; the editor seemed to approve, and I felt, as always, gratified by that.

Halfway through the meal, when the editor said something polite about wanting to read some of my work, I did not know what to say, and the man intervened: ‘You did read it, actually. You passed on it.’

In one of those bizarre coincidences that is proof of either the universe’s intelligent plan or its gratuitous randomness, it happened that this editor was, in fact, the one person in New York who, two years earlier, had read and rejected my book before its publication by the university press. I might have thought, until that moment, that this unhappy fact belonged to the category of shameful secrets whose dark power is neutralized when someone actually speaks them aloud, but I saw immediately that it did not.

The editor, an urbane and gracious man, must have said something urbane and gracious then, but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my own voice in my head: Keep smiling, keep smiling!

Later that night, after the stony silence, the tears, the fury, I had to ask myself: What did I expect the man to do? I wanted it to be his fault, but it wasn’t. I was angry about what he’d said, but I would have been angry about whatever he’d said, even if he’d said nothing—because what I was really angry about was having to go out to dinner with an editor on whom my work had made so little impression that he did not even remember reading it. An editor, it turned out, whom I liked, whom I thought was not just funny and sweet but smart, and who was going to do everything in his power to make sure the man I was with got the notice he deserved.

O ver the next several months, what had at first seemed like a pathologically extreme anticipation of the man’s success on my part began to look like nothing more than a reasonable prediction. Advance copies of his book were released, and suddenly he was being interviewed, photographed, written and talked about by, it seemed, everyone. Clearly his book was on its way to becoming not a book but the book, and every day seemed to bring new evidence that he was on his way to becoming that rare thing, a writer whom people (not just other writers) have heard of.

On September 11, 2001, his book had been out about a week. In the shock of that day, he and I shuttled back and forth between the apartment and the television in the realtor’s office down the hall. I felt the sensation of disaster, the weird chill of fear limned by exhilaration at the possibility that the world and all its fixed routines might have changed in a single day.

As we tried, along with everyone else, to think about what had happened and what would happen next, another question went unasked: what would it mean for the man’s book? I was sure he was wondering this, and I was too, but I let the whole day go by without mentioning it. In those strange hours when anything seemed possible, it seemed not all that unlikely that the book on which the man I loved had spent ten years working might disappear before our eyes—and yet I said nothing.

I told myself that it would be unseemly, even in the privacy of our apartment, to focus on our petty concerns when thousands of people had lost their lives and the fate of the world itself was suddenly uncertain. But the truth is I didn’t mention his book because I didn’t want to. Because for one day, at least, for the first time in what felt like months, he and his work had been eclipsed—and I was relieved.

That was the place envy had delivered me to.

M y friends, trying to be helpful, had this to say: ‘I could never do that, be involved with a writer who was that much more successful than I was.’

But really: why not? Partly, I suppose, because a fellow writer’s success makes it that much harder to console oneself with thoughts of what Virginia Woolf called ‘the world’s notorious indifference’. The world, Woolf said, ‘does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether Carlyle scrupulously verifies this or that fact.’ So when the man was merely gifted but not particularly rewarded, I was comfortable; we were in it together, comrades in a world that didn’t care what we had to tell it. But now, what did his success prove, if not that when the gift is prodigious enough, the world does need us, it will pay?

When the subject of his success came up, often enough a friend would say, ‘The great thing is he really deserves it.’ Were they kidding? This was precisely what made it so hard. For once, the gods hadn’t made the stupid mistake of smiling on another no-talent, well-connected charlatan. No, this was a genuinely excellent piece of work by a man who had dedicated his life to doing such work and was now being rewarded for it. Proof that the system was not essentially corrupt and misguided, incapable of recognizing true merit, after all.

Where was the comfort in that?

One morning, unable to focus on whatever I was working on, I suddenly thought of a passage of his. I got up and walked across the room to pull down from the shelf the magazine in which the passage appeared. This was the wrong thing to be doing, I knew. Still, I watched myself do it. Heart knocking like a lunatic on a door that will never open, I flipped through the pages. I found it. It wasn’t as good as I’d remembered. It was better.

I refused to let myself form the question, but I knew it was in there, all the more powerful for going unasked: If I couldn’t do that, what was the point of my doing it at all? With that peculiarly severe egotism of the insecure, I could not believe I would ever be the best, and I could not bear to be anything less.

But why, then, didn’t I feel this when reading Wharton, or Faulkner (who crowed that a writer will not hesitate to rob his mother, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ being worth any number of old ladies)? Why aren’t we all still eating our hearts out over Shakespeare? Why does it hurt only to read good work by the living? Why does the pain increase as the distance narrows between ourselves and those gifted others: those we know, those we know who are our age (or worse, younger), those we know who are our age and our friends? Worst of all, maybe, when the enviable other is someone we share our life with.

According to an appealingly commonsensical theory of human behaviour known as Tesser’s self-evaluation maintenance model, we all want to think well of ourselves, and one of the ways we enhance our own self-esteem is through our interactions with other people who are doing well. In what’s known as the ‘reflective process’, someone else’s success can make us feel better about ourselves; this explains why, for example, we feel good when our favourite sports team—the individual members of which have never met us and probably have no desire to—wins. And it’s probably part of what’s behind the old model of marriage in which a striving, supportive woman was to be found behind every successful man. In addition to whatever material advantages they promised, the man’s achievements were a feather in his wife’s cap: a sign that she had succeeded in marrying well.

But this happy scenario holds only for those cases in which the other person is succeeding in an area outside one’s own domain. When a rival succeeds, the ‘comparison process’ begins: we measure ourselves against the successful other and feel diminished. Fortunately, this competitiveness is limited to a small number of areas. Unfortunately, those areas are extremely important; they’re the ones on which our sense of self are based.

I came home one evening and the man asked about my day, which had been unremarkable. I asked about his and learned that the British rights to his now-famous book had been sold for a whopping figure, higher than anyone had anticipated. It had been a big day, and he was proud and excited. It was the kind of news you want to call home with, and because his mother was no longer alive and he has no sisters, he had called his sister-in-law.

He hadn’t known where to call me, he said, or he would have. But I could see it in his wary, eager face: he wanted to call someone whose enthusiasm he could trust.

The part that was his girlfriend put her arms around him and told him how happy she was, and the other part, the miserable writer within, kept her distance.

Not long after this, we broke up. At the end of a holiday trip to visit family in the west, I told the man I couldn’t imagine going back to New York; it was too hard there. I told him there wasn’t enough air for both of us in that apartment; I told him I was drowning. He asked me to be more specific, and I told him I just didn’t think I was cut out for this life together.

‘What life? What are you talking about?’ It was late; we were arguing in the dark, on a sofa bed in his brother’s house.

‘This life. Where you’re so…big, and I’m so little.’ It made me feel littler just saying it.

‘I don’t think of you as little.’

The fact that I believed this helped not at all. I was drowning; what good did it do to hear that he thought I could swim?

But breaking up, it turned out, was not the answer, either. I still wanted him, and my pride, already inflamed, now fairly throbbed at the idea that it was my own weakness that kept me from having him. I was in pitched battle with myself, and the wrong side was winning.

A few months later, when I persuaded him to try again, I sensed this was our last good chance at being together. I also sensed, despite my recent conversion to the belief that problems are solved by talking, that this one, born of words, was one that words would never fix. The more I talked about it, the more secretive he would become, and the more guilty and resentful we would both feel.

It became, and remains, the thing we don’t talk about.

W hen the man told me stories about his wife—his ex-wife, but she had a fearsome presence that made her more real to me than I sometimes felt to myself—I would feel a cool draught, as though someone had left the door to the future open a crack.

She had been a writer, too. During the happy, lean years of their marriage they would both write eight hours a day, fuelled, in the starving-artist tradition, by a diet of rice and beans and jumbo packs of chicken thighs. They were going to publish together, the story went; their books would find their way to discerning, appreciative audiences. And when his first book made good on their bargain and hers did not, he tried to wait for her to catch up. She moved on to a second book and on to a second house, alone, where she hoped to work better without the distraction of his success. But the second book wouldn’t come together; she couldn’t finish it. It wasn’t until they had finally separated, for good this time, that she gave herself the gift of putting that work away. As far as he knew, she had stopped writing altogether—except for an essay that had just been published in an anthology, which he learned about and bought one day.

In her essay, as I remember it now, his ex-wife wrote about what it felt like when she and her husband separated. I had a hard time reading this; I was simultaneously so curious to know what she thought of their life together and so afraid to find out that the sentences kept shorting out on me. But I got the gist: she not only stopped writing when her marriage to the man dissolved; for a time, she stopped reading.

Well, I was in much better shape than that! On the other hand, he and I were still together. Who knew what I would have given up by the time it was over?

What would have happened, I wondered, if the situation had been reversed, and she had published first? He would have kept on, I’m sure; her success might have been satisfying or frustrating to him— perhaps both—but he would never have given up.

I thought of Alice Munro’s ‘Material’, a story about women and men, writing and envy. In it, a woman comes across a published story written by her ex-husband and discovers in it an affecting, sympathetic portrait of another woman whom, in their real life together, he had mocked and treated callously. ‘How honest this is and how lovely, I had to say as I read… It is an act of magic, there is no getting around it; it is an act, you might say, of a special, unsparing, unsentimental love.’ But when she sits down later, to write him a letter of praise, the words that appear on the page are these: ‘This is not enough, Hugo. You think it is, but it isn’t.’ And then she admits it to herself: she blames him, still; she envies and despises.

I’ve read this story half a dozen times over the years, and when I think of it, I always remember that woman envying her ex, the writer. But when I looked at it again recently, I was surprised to discover that it’s not just him she envies but them —that is, not just her former husband but her current one. Different from each other as they seem, they have both ‘decided what to do about everything they run across in this world, what attitude to take, how to ignore or use things’. What she envies is not something about being a writer, but something about being a man.

My father had been a managing partner—a phrase I had never stopped to consider before—of an accounting firm when I was growing up, and my mother was, therefore, the managing partner’s wife. A corporate first lady whose job, in addition to running the house, was to entertain my father’s business associates and accompany him on trips.

‘Everywhere we went I was his wife,’ she told me recently. We were in what is now her house, standing next to a dresser on which was a smiling picture of my father that neither of us was looking at. ‘He was never my husband. I hated that.’

‘But you weren’t in his field,’ I tried to explain. How could she possibly think that her situation was anywhere near as bad as mine was? ‘You weren’t trying to compete with him.’

‘No, I didn’t even have a field.’

She had the purity, the self-righteousness, of unadulterated resentment. Here was the old-fashioned envy I envied—the clean, sweet fury of a woman who had a man to blame. Their life together had been dedicated to his job, and she had had only one choice: she could have left him. But how could she? She had no income of her own and four kids, the youngest of whom, that good-natured albatross, was me. Whereas I—I!—had had all the advantages, and I still felt resentful. Nothing righteous about that.

I t’s tempting to take comfort in generalizations, and I have. I see myself as belonging to a generation of women who were raised to believe that we could do and be whatever we wanted—by women who, by and large, had not enjoyed that freedom themselves (and who perhaps envied their daughters for it). I grew up still wanting all the old things—to be pretty, to be good, to be liked—and also wanting not to care about such things.

But old habits die hard. Maybe it was no coincidence that when I was feeling most outstripped by the man’s success and talent, when I was reading those pages of his that I wished I had written, I responded by withholding from him the gift of myself. When he was being lauded and invited, the world praising his intelligence and imagination, my way of evening the score was to shy away from him.

As long as he wanted and didn’t quite have me, the logic went, we would be even—and I could stop feeling so outdone by what he had that I wanted. But what did that really mean? That if I could not be happy I was ready to make us both miserable. And that my answer to his work was my self; he had his book to make the world love him, and I had my sex with which to take my revenge.

It reminded me of something that had happened not long before I met the man. I had written a short play, in which six women are doing what my characters always seem to be doing—sitting around talking. I had written it for a class, because at that point I was having trouble writing anything unless it was for a teacher who would tell me it was good. As it happened, the teacher didn’t think this one was particularly good. She thought the stakes weren’t high enough, and nothing much happened, and six people was too many for a play that was only ten minutes long.

Afterward, as I was leaving the room, discouraged but not quite convinced, a man from the class came up to me and told me he’d liked what I’d written.

All his plays were about rodeo men and the half-dressed women who were always crying at kitchen tables after they left. I now realized he had a much more subtle mind than I’d ever given him credit for.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

He suggested that one thing the play might benefit from was the addition of a man, just at the very beginning, to pique the audience’s interest.

I told him I’d consider that.

‘You want to get a drink?’ he asked me.

W hat are we here for, others or ourselves? Grandiose and overstated as it sounds, doesn’t it come down to that? I always thought I would have at least a working answer to that question by this point in my life, but I don’t; and in the absence of that certainty, everything feels provisional.

The last time I saw my mother, she and I talked, over a pleasant restaurant dinner that both of us were happy not to have cooked, about what will happen when she can no longer stay in her house. I love my mother. I want her to be happy and safe, free from worry.

And yet what do I find myself doing? Reassuring her that everything will be fine, leaving my nearby brother to look out for her, flying to the other side of the continent, and writing about the guilt I feel.

Another writer and I talk about some of this one night. Before I really knew her, I used to think of this woman as a relentlessly cheerful and optimistic person, so given to looking on the bright side that she wasn’t even aware that’s what she was doing. Tonight she reassures me, again, about the merits of a draft I’ve shown her, gushing in a way that makes me want simultaneously to embrace her and to run screaming from the room. But it’s a good talk, full of confessed fear and desire, full of the agreement women love. We each order another glass of wine. I tell her, sounding less convinced to myself than I’d thought I was before I started talking, that I’m hopeful that my various crises of confidence may be opening the door to a new, more assured way of working.

When we get to her, she surprises me by revealing that she’s been depressed lately. She feels as though all anyone wants to do these days is exercise furiously to stay in shape, and she wants…something else. She’s losing track of the point of it all.

The next morning, my phone rings and it’s her, telling me that she’s just learned that her sister has inoperable cancer. I can hear the fear and grief in her voice, but I can also hear the mobilizing of forces, the list-making and dinner-cooking, the shoulder pressing gratefully to the wheel. She certainly wouldn’t have wished for it, but she has a job again; it’s clear what it is, it’s clear it must be done, it’s clear she knows how to do it and that she’s good at it. She’s suiting up to do what’s been women’s work since the beginning of time, and it would be hard to argue there’s anything on earth more meaningful.

That’s how I feel sitting here, anyway.

But then I think again of Munro’s story ‘Material’: ‘I envy and despise.’ Isn’t the most important irony of that story the invisible one at its centre—the fact that it was written by a woman, who gave to her gifted male doppelgänger the qualities and perceptions, the easy knowledge of how to ignore or use things, his ex-wife so envies?

L ife, obviously, is about more than this. It’s not as though anyone thinks that being a good writer makes you a good person. But it helps. (Isn’t this perhaps one reason why women, as a whole, are more apt than men to see writing and reading as therapeutic acts? All that private time spent rendering and transforming personal experience on paper is easier to justify if the writer—and, ideally, reader—is healed in the process.) If you’re truly talented, then your work becomes your way of doing good in the world; if you’re not, it’s a self-indulgence, even an embarrassment.

But how do you know you’re good, if not by comparing yourself favourably to others (an essentially un-good activity)? And how many women are comfortable doing that?

Here’s Edith Wharton: ‘If only my work were better, it would be all I need. But my kind of half-talent isn’t much use as an escape.’

Here’s Joan Didion on the subject of her first novel: ‘It’s got a lot of sloppy stuff. Extraneous stuff. Words that don’t work. Awkwardness. Scenes that should have been brought up, scenes that should have been played down. But then Play It As It Lays has a lot of sloppy stuff. I haven’t reread Common Prayer, but I’m sure that does too.’

Or Dorothy Parker: ‘I want so much to write well, though I know I don’t, and that I didn’t make it. But during and at the end of my life, I will adore those who have.’ (Here is perhaps womanly envy in its purest form: one’s own worthlessness worn as a hair-shirt reminder to love those who are better.)

It’s hard to talk about the category of ‘women writers’ or ‘women’s writing’ without feeling that you’re picking at a scab that will never heal as long as you keep picking. On the other hand, vexed as they are, those categories continue to be meaningful, even if we can’t always agree on just what the meaning is.

Most women I know are reluctant to say, ‘I am better than her, and her, and her—okay, I’ll keep going,’ and most men I know rely, when necessary, on some formulation of exactly that. Plus women have not only each other to compete against (in devious and exhausting ways, requiring much track-covering and nice-making as they go) but men to envy; because it’s still the case that women writers are compared to each other, and the big (as opposed to, say, lyrical) literary novel persists as an essentially male category. Women’s books are still not talked about in the same way men’s books are, and women are still sensitive to that.

As I was turning all this over in my mind, I thought again about meeting my boyfriend for the first time. How before I had known anything about him, I had known this would happen—that one day he would write his Big Book, and the world would roll a red carpet to his door. All those months when he was miserably, triumphantly, cranking it out, page by artful page, I had known it—more certainly than I had ever known anything about my own life. (No wonder I had gotten so little of my own work done—I had been so preoccupied with monitoring his.)

Had I been clairvoyant, then? Or was it something more metaphysical: had my fear acted like a cosmic magnet, drawing to itself the object of its obsession (forgetting for a moment that my boyfriend might have had anything to do with his own fate)?

Or had I, in some perverse way, got exactly what I wanted?

I had found a partner who, by being so good—and so successful— at what I wanted to do, had called my bluff. I didn’t want to quit, it turned out. I wanted to find a way to keep writing, whether I could ever be good enough or not.

I did envy his talent—the way he could go off in the morning and come home at night with five smart pages, the way he could expertly tease out a metaphor, nail a character in a sentence, and tackle geopolitics or brain chemistry without breaking a sweat. I envied the fact that in airports and restaurants, strangers—readers!—would come up to him and rave about his book; I envied his easy acceptance at magazines that had been routinely rejecting my work for years.

For all that, though, I was startled to realize that I didn’t wish I’d written his book, any more than I would have wished to wake up tomorrow looking like the beauty from a magazine cover. What I envied were what his talent and success had bestowed on him, a sense of the rightness of what he was doing. I wanted what women always want: permission. But he’d had that before this book was even written; it was, after all, the first thing I’d envied about him. It was arguably what enabled him to write the book in the first place.

I was raised to admire a life of service, and to this day, I do admire it. When I see someone bend to the task of helping another, I think she is doing the work of all, the human job. But someone else’s good deed never stabs my heart the way a good book does. I admire it, but I do not envy it. Whatever else it has done, my envy of the man has helped me see the difference between what I was raised to want, what I wish I could want, and what I do want.

I flatter myself that I’m doing better with it all, that I’m adjusting. The man and I are finally happy and at ease, for the most part, and his book and public stature are a fact of our life together.

But who am I kidding? At home sometimes I don’t want to check the phone messages; when I step into a bookstore and see that stack on the new-book table, I can sometimes feel my heart rattling the bars of its cage. I read the reviews and the interviews, but not all of them; I want them to be good, and then I want to forget them. The book itself, which I’ve read twice, I don’t even want to look at now.

That’s how much better I’m doing.

And yet I am doing better, because something within me has surfaced: another story. In this new story, every ugly impulse and selfish yearning, the whole insecure unlovable mess, has been given wing. There’s no better self to protect any more; the moral high ground has been ceded.

In this story, I don’t do the work I was born to, perhaps not even the work I am best at, but the work I have chosen—incompletely, erratically, often unhappily and uncertainly.

In this new story, I write to refute the ex-wife, and to avenge her. She is my enemy and my friend.

I have met the circumstances that are larger than my capacity to be gracious, it turns out. I have come up against the limits of my goodness: someone I love has what I want, and he probably always will. What else is there to do for it? I might as well work.

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Granta 167: Extraction Online

You Are the Product

‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’ Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.

‘What is the read receipt for?’ Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.

‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’ Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.

‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’ Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.

‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’ Two poems by Sylvia Legris.

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Kathryn Chetkovich's collection of short stories, Friendly Fire , was published by Ecco Press in the US, and by Picador in the UK . She lives in New York.

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Nothing to Envy

37 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-18

Chapter 19-Epilogue

Key Figures

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Nothing to Envy is structured around Mi-ran and Jun-sang’s romance. How does their love frame the events that follow? What do details about dating and sex in North Korea contribute to the book? How does the resolution of their romance effect the book’s arguments about North Korea?

Mrs. Song and Dr. Kim are both “true believers” for most of their lives. What factors change their minds? What convinces them to defect? How do their new lives in South Korea compare to each other’s, and what accounts for their different levels of satisfaction?

Choose one piece of North Korean propaganda contained within the book: a song, a lesson plan, a poster, or a press release. Then, analyze its effect. Was it meant for a foreign audience , or a domestic audience? What does it intend to teach that audience about North Korea? How is it used by Demick within the text? Could it be interpreted differently?

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Nvidia, Powered by A.I. Boom, Reports Soaring Revenue and Profits

The Silicon Valley company was again lifted by sales of its artificial intelligence chips, but it faces growing competition and heightened expectations.

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A display about Nvidia’s Blackwell platform dwarfs Jensen Huang as he presents it from a stage.

By Don Clark

Reporting from San Francisco

Nvidia, which makes microchips that power most artificial intelligence applications, began an extraordinary run a year ago.

Fueled by an explosion of interest in A.I., the Silicon Valley company said last May that it expected its chip sales to go through the roof. They did — and the fervor didn’t stop, with Nvidia raising its revenue projections every few months. Its stock soared, driving the company to a more than $2 trillion market capitalization that makes it more valuable than Alphabet, the parent of Google.

On Wednesday, Nvidia again reported soaring revenue and profits that underscored how it remains a dominant winner of the A.I. boom, even as it grapples with outsize expectations and rising competition.

Revenue was $26 billion for the three months that ended in April, surpassing its $24 billion estimate in February and tripling sales from a year earlier for the third consecutive quarter. Net income surged sevenfold to $5.98 billion.

Nvidia also projected revenue of $28 billion for the current quarter, which ends in July, more than double the amount from a year ago and higher than Wall Street estimates.

“We are fundamentally changing how computing works and what computers can do,” Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said in a conference call with analysts. “The next industrial revolution has begun.”

Nvidia’s shares, which are up more than 90 percent this year, rose in after-hours trading after the results were released. The company also announced a 10-for-1 stock split.

Nvidia, which originally sold chips for rendering images in video games, has benefited after making an early, costly bet on adapting its graphics processing units, or GPUs, to take on other computing tasks. When A.I. researchers began using those chips more than a decade ago to accelerate tasks like recognizing objects in photos, Mr. Huang jumped on the opportunity. He augmented Nvidia’s chips for A.I. tasks and developed software to aid developments in the field.

The company’s flagship processor, the H100, has enjoyed feverish demand to power A.I. chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While most high-end standard processors cost a few thousand dollars, H100s have sold for anywhere from $15,000 to $40,000 each, depending on volume and other factors, analysts said.

Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, said on Wednesday that it had worked in recent months with more than 100 customers that were building new data centers — which Mr. Huang calls A.I. factories — ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of GPUs, with some reaching 100,000. Tesla, for example, is using 35,000 H100 chips to help train models for autonomous driving, she said.

Nvidia will soon begin to ship a powerful successor to the H100, code-named Blackwell, which was announced in March. Demand for the new chips already appears to be strong, raising the possibility that some customers may wait for the speedier models rather than buy the H100. But there was little sign of such a pause in Nvidia’s latest results.

Ms. Kress said demand for Blackwell was well ahead of supply of the chip, and “we expect demand may exceed supply well into next year.” Mr. Huang added that the new chips should be operating in data centers late this year and that “we will see a lot of Blackwell revenue this year.”

The comments may ease fears of a slowdown in Nvidia’s momentum.

“Lingering concerns investors had in the short term regarding an ‘air bubble’ for GPU demand seem to have vanished,” Lucas Keh, an analyst at the research firm Third Bridge, said in an email.

Wall Street analysts are also looking for signs that some richly funded rivals could grab a noticeable share of Nvidia’s business. Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon have all developed their own chips that can be tailored for A.I. jobs, though they have also said they are boosting purchases of Nvidia chips.

Traditional rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices and Intel have also made optimistic predictions about their A.I. chips. AMD has said it expects to sell $4 billion worth of a new A.I. processor, the MI300, this year.

Mr. Huang frequently points to what he has said is a sustainable advantage: Only Nvidia’s GPUs are offered by all the major cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, so customers don’t have to worry about getting locked into using one of the services because of its exclusive chip technology.

Nvidia also remains popular among computer makers that have long used its chips in their systems. One is Dell Technologies, which on Monday hosted a Las Vegas event that featured an appearance by Mr. Huang.

Michael Dell, Dell’s chief executive and founder, said his company would offer new data center systems that packed 72 of the new Blackwell chips in a computer rack, standard structures that stand a bit taller than a refrigerator.

“Don’t seduce me with talk like that,” Mr. Huang joked. “That gets me superexcited.”

Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

News and Analysis

OpenAI said that it has begun training a new flagship A.I. model that would succeed the GPT-4 technology that drives its popular online chatbot, ChatGPT.

Elon Musk’s A.I. company, xAI, said that it had raised $6 billion , helping to close the funding gap with OpenAI, Anthropic and other rivals.

Google’s A.I. capabilities that answer people’s questions have generated a litany of untruths and errors — including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and the ingesting of rocks for nutrients — causing a furor online.

The Age of A.I.

D’Youville University in Buffalo had an A.I. robot speak at its commencement . Not everyone was happy about it.

A new program, backed by Cornell Tech, M.I.T. and U.C.L.A., helps prepare lower-income, Latina and Black female computing majors for A.I. careers.

Publishers have long worried that A.I.-generated answers on Google would drive readers away from their sites. They’re about to find out if those fears are warranted, our tech columnist writes .

A new category of apps promises to relieve parents of drudgery, with an assist from A.I. But a family’s grunt work is more human, and valuable, than it seems.

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She has published essays on love, envy, beauty, pornography, and pedagogy. Cambridge University Press & Assessment 978-1-009-00171-7 — The Philosophy of Envy Sara Protasi Frontmatter ... defense of envy, but I particularly appreciated the many objections that pushed me to strengthen my arguments and that, sometimes, changed my
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Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963 Edited By: M. Masud R. Khan Melanie Klein Preface R. E. Money-Kyrle This third volume of The Writings of Melanie Klein contains all her later work from 1946 until her death in 1960—with the exception of Narrative of a Child Analysis which is published separately as Volume IV. Unlike the papers ...
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First, persons of eminent virtue, when they are advanced, are less envied. For their fortune seems due to them; and no man envies the payment of a debt, but men do envy unwarranted rewards and unfounded prosperity. Again, envy is always joined with the comparing of a man's self; and where there is no comparison, there is no envy; and therefore ...
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Summary. Envy is often confused with jealousy, because they are both rivalrous painful emotions, which are directed at a competitor and are concerned with a good. But envy is about the potential or actual lack of the good, while jealousy is about the potential or actual loss of the good. This distinction is not always clear cut, as a section ...
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2 1. Envy Is Said in Many Ways According to Chaucer "all other sins oppose one virtue, but envy is against all virtue and all goodness" and is therefore the worst of the capitals sins.2 While the condemnation of envy is particularly fierce in the Middle Ages (when the Canterbury Tales were composed), it dates back to antiquity, consolidates in the modern era, and is inherited almost ...
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This public envy, seemeth to beat chiefly upon principal officers or ministers, rather than upon kings, and estates themselves. But this is a sure rule, that if the envy upon the minister be great, when the cause of it in him is small; or if the envy be general, in a manner upon all the ministers of an estate; then the envy (though hidden)
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It influences our speech and leads us to gossip, criticize and spread rumors that can harm another's position. It affects our feelings. Our feelings are now characterized by meanness, revenge, delinquency, violence, and even murder or suicide. It's plain that envy can hinder our getting along with other people.
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THE ESSAYS OR COUNSELS, CIVIL AND MORAL, OF FRANCIS Ld. VERULAM VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS THE ESSAYS Of Truth Of Death Of Unity in Religion Of Revenge Of Adversity Of Simulation and Dissimulation Of Parents and Children Of Marriage and Single Life Of Envy Of Love Of Great Place Of Boldness Of Goodness and Goodness of
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The lines about Envy in the second part of Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism form one of the least discussed sections of the poem. In this paper I consider the interaction of allusion and wit in the passage and argue that the lines may be regarded as an early but crucial instance of self-fashioning in Pope's oeuvre. See Full PDF. Download PDF.
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Envy is a Dangerous Feeling That Destroys a Person. When the word envy comes to mind, we generally think it is a harmless feeling. But when left unaddressed, it can lead to very dangerous consequences. Envy has been experienced by humans since the beginning of time and throughout history there have been many instances...
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Rand also looks critically at the nascent environmentalist movement, which she saw as fomenting an "anti-industrial revolution," and analyzes what she sees as the dominant emotional leitmotif of this era, which she calls "the Age of Envy." The essays by Peter Schwartz confirm that the timeless lessons of Rand's analyses — especially ...
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Answer the question; keep it relevant. Develop a logical and clearly structured argument. Support and illustrate your argument. Go beyond description to demonstrate critical thinking. Practice writing and proofreading. 3. Plan Your Essay. Every essay needs a strong and clear structure, organized around an argument.
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Complete summary of Yury Olesha's Envy. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of Envy. ... Start an essay ... Premium PDF. Download the entire Envy study guide as a printable PDF! ...
Envy
During the happy, lean years of their marriage they would both write eight hours a day, fuelled, in the starving-artist tradition, by a diet of rice and beans and jumbo packs of chicken thighs. They were going to publish together, the story went; their books would find their way to discerning, appreciative audiences.
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Essay Topics. 1. Nothing to Envy is structured around Mi-ran and Jun-sang's romance. How does their love frame the events that follow? What do details about dating and sex in North Korea contribute to the book? How does the resolution of their romance effect the book's arguments about North Korea?
Nvidia, Powered by A.I. Boom, Reports Soaring Revenue and Profits
The company reported revenue of $26 billion in its latest quarter, tripling its sales from a year earlier. Jim Wilson/The New York Times. Nvidia, which makes microchips that power most artificial ...