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.]

[Footnote 2: Collier, one of his critical editors, in his Introduction
to the Sonettes, remarks upon this point: "In many of them are to be
found most remarkable indications of self-confiden