For envy is the moving spirit of that secret and informal, though flourishing, alliance everywhere made by mediocrity against individual eminence, no matter of what kind.  In his own sphere of work no one will allow another to be distinguished:  he is an intruder who cannot be tolerated. Si quelq’un excelle parmi nous, qu’il aille exceller ailleurs! this is the universal password of the second-rate.  In addition, then, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it has in being understood and recognized, there is the envy of thousands to be reckoned with, all of them bent on suppressing, nay, on smothering it altogether.  No one is taken for what he is, but for what others make of him; and this is the handle used by mediocrity to keep down distinction, by not letting it come up as long as that can possibly be prevented.

There are two ways of behaving in regard to merit:  either to have some of one’s own, or to refuse any to others.  The latter method is more convenient, and so it is generally adopted.  As envy is a mere sign of deficiency, so to envy merit argues the lack of it.  My excellent Balthazar Gracian has given a very fine account of this relation between envy and merit in a lengthy fable, which may be found in his Discreto under the heading Hombre de ostentacion.  He describes all the birds as meeting together and conspiring against the peacock, because of his magnificent feathers. If, said the magpie, we could only manage to put a stop to the cursed parading of his tail, there would soon be an end of his beauty; for what is not seen is as good as what does not exist.

This explains how modesty came to be a virtue.  It was invented only as a protection against envy.  That there have always been rascals to urge this virtue, and to rejoice heartily over the bashfulness of a man of merit, has been shown at length in my chief work.[1] In Lichtenberg’s Miscellaneous Writings I find this sentence quoted:  Modesty should be the virtue of those who possess no other.  Goethe has a well-known saying, which offends many people:  It is only knaves who are modest!—­Nur die Lumpen sind bescheiden! but it has its prototype in Cervantes, who includes in his Journey up Parnassus certain rules of conduct for poets, and amongst them the following:  Everyone whose verse shows him to be a poet should have a high opinion of himself, relying on the proverb that he is a knave who thinks himself one.  And Shakespeare, in many of his Sonnets, which gave him the only opportunity he had of speaking of himself, declares, with a confidence equal to his ingenuousness, that what he writes is immortal.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Welt als Wille, Vol.  II. c. 37.]