Every word here is his. Nothing has been paraphrased, joined or improved. Each passage
was cut out of the book it belongs to by reference, and each carries that book and the
paragraph it came from, so anything on this page can be found again in the source.
He names this virtue in a few plain lines, nearly always as what takes envy’s place: envy is “regret
for the well being of others”, and when it is comprehended, happiness for their good is born in us. These passages
gather what he says of it. Envy is named only where he sets the virtue against it; the ego itself is gathered in
Envy.
The first part is why envy is out of place:
“Why should we feel envious of the good of others?” “On the contrary, he would be happy to see his friend doing well.”
The second part is how the virtue is born, by comprehension and by transmutation:
“…in its place appears the star that rejoices and shines for others’ well being.” “Envy, which is also frustrated desire, is transmuted into happiness for our neighbours good fortune.”
The third part is love, which wishes only the good of the one it loves:
“True Love demands nothing, asks nothing, desires nothing, thinks nothing, only wants one thing; the happiness of the beloved.” “Love pardons everything, gives everything, demands nothing, asks for nothing, and wishes only for the well-being of the object of its love.”
The fourth part is cooperation in place of competition:
“The sense of cooperation must absolutely replace the horrible battle of selfish competition.” “As we die from instant to instant, harmony among men slowly develops.”
The last part is what to do when envy or another negative emotion strikes:
“It is not easy to express oneself well when one has a negative emotion, but that’s the way it should be.” “…we must talk about it in a harmonious way, not in favor of envy, but for the good of others.”
How this was made. All fifty-two books were extracted (73,105 paragraphs,
2,157,671 words) and swept on his teaching of it: happiness, joy and rejoicing beside the well-being, the good fortune or the progress of others; envy, where the virtue, its birth or the work on the defect stand near; cooperation, where competition, rivalry or ambition stand near; love, where the well-being or the happiness of the other stands near; coveting, where the other’s goods stand near; and comparison with others. The paragraph either side of a core paragraph was taken where his sentence ran across. That returned 163 candidate paragraphs in 31 books. Every candidate was read
twice, by independent readers working from a written brief. The two passes agreed on whether to print
98.8% of the time and on the class 95.1%, and a third reader, who saw neither verdict,
settled the 2 disagreements. 19 were judged printable. 4 of them were set aside as the
same teaching kept where it stands in another of his books or another passage, and 0 were joined into the passage before
them, where his sentence ran across several short paragraphs, so 15 passages are printed here.
The rest are recorded with the reason each was set aside.
What was set aside. 13 were greetings, dates, editors’ notes or narrative,
13 were false friends (the words in their ordinary, worldly sense), 57 named the subject only in passing,
37 belonged to another built work, and 15 were neighbours on another subject. 4 more were
judged and not printed, and 5 were judged the second halves of sentences begun in the paragraph before.
No sentence of his is cut in half. Each range was extended against the corpus until his
sentence closed, a passage that turned out to be the second half of the one before it was
absorbed into it, and 4 ranges run over more than one paragraph.
15 passages also stand in a finished work, and every one is marked where it
stands, the most in Envy (9) and Anger (4). The editor ruled that this work prints in full and that shared
passages print here too. An overlap is allowed wherever the teaching needs it. What is not allowed is an
overlap a reader cannot see.
Checked against the source. Every passage was proved word for word against the raw extraction of its own
book, and the printed text against the paragraphs it joins, with no failures. One word split in two in the source (“ava rice”, Tarot and Kabbalah ¶2022) was mended to “avarice”.
The sixth work of The Virtues. Each virtue is gathered on its own and named against
the ego it replaces; the ego itself stays in its own work on the shelf, so Envy carries the rest. He names
this virtue in few words, so this is a short book, and nearly every passage is shared with Envy; they are
printed here and marked, so a reader who comes to this one book has the whole teaching.
The Virtues wear a warm pearl taken from the painting of the diamond on the pool, each virtue in its own colour;
Joy in Another’s Good’s is a star violet.
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