The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
CHAPTER
Envy, caused by pride, brought the Devil to ruin.
18. In this treatise we must investigate what is to be said according to Scripture about the Devil.
Did he from the very beginning of the world take delight in his own power and separate himself from that society and that charity by which the angels are blessed in their enjoyment of God? Or was he for a while in the holy company of the angels, himself just and blessed as they were? Some say that he fell from the heavenly abode because he envied man made to the image of God.38 Envy, indeed, does not precede pride but follows it: envy is not the cause of pride, but pride is the cause of envy. Since, therefore, pride is the love of one's own excellence, and envy is the hatred of another's happiness, it is easy to see which vice begets the other. For a person who loves his own excellence envies his peers because they are equal to him, his inferiors because he fears that they may become his equals, and his superiors because he is not their equal. It is by pride, therefore, that one becomes envious, not by envy that one becomes proud.
Pride is the beginning of all sin. The two loves in the two cities.
19. With good reason Scripture has said, Pride is the beginning of all sin.3° This testimony is supported also by the statement of St. Paul, Avarice is the root of all evils,*° if we understand ''avarice" in the general sense of the word, that is, the attitude by which a person desires more than what is due by reason of his excellence, and a certain love of one's own interest, his private interest, to which the Latin word privatus was wisely given, a term which obviously expresses loss rather than gain.*! For every privation (privatio) diminishes. Where pride, then, seeks to excel, there it is cast down into want and destitution, turning