envious (envius)

[ Claudas was a noble knyght and a sure and moc he and stronge, but he was euer enviouse a-gein alle tho that were a-bove hym. Merlin (E. E. T. S.), iii. 389. Be not thou envious against evil men. Prov. xxiv. 1. For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul. O. W. Holmes, Autocrat, vii. 2. Tinctured with envy; manifesting or expre ing envy: as, an envious disposition; an envious attack; an envious tongue. Cesar and Pompey of martialle wodne e, By theyr enuyose compa yd cruelte, Twene Germany and Affrik was gret enmyte. Political Poems , etc. (ed. Furnivall), p. 28. Then down together hands they shook, Without any envious sign. It is, however, in the insect world that this principle of the adaptation of animals to their environment is most fully and strikingly developed. A. R. Wallace, Nat. Select., p. 56. The step which distinguishes, so far as it can be distinguished, the animal kingdom from the vegetable one, takes place when, relatively to the needs of the organism, the environment is heterogeneous both in Time and Space. H. Spencer , Prin. of Psychol., § 151. Conditions of environment, in biol ., the sum of the agencies and influences which affect an organism from without; the totality of the extrinsic conditioning to which an organism is subjected, as opposed to its own intrinsic forces, and therefore as modifying its inherent tendencies, and as a factor in determining the final result of organization. It is an expre ion much used in connection with modern theories of evolution in explaining that at a given moment a given organism is the resultant of both intrinsic and extrinsic forces, the latter being its conditions of environment and the former its inherited conditions.