Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.

Hazlitt characterizes envy as a kind of spiritual or imaginative constriction: a “littleness of soul” that cannot widen its view to include other people’s success or happiness without feeling diminished. The image of a limited field of vision suggests that envy is less a response to objective harm than a failure of perspective—an inability to recognize that another’s good fortune need not reduce one’s own. When the envier does not “occupy the whole space,” they feel “excluded,” implying a zero-sum psychology in which attention, admiration, or value must be monopolized. The remark also hints at Hazlitt’s moral psychology: vices arise from narrowed sympathy and self-absorption rather than from clear-eyed judgment.