If the feeling of honor rests upon this peculiarity of human nature, it may have a very salutary effect upon the welfare of a great many people, as a substitute for morality; but upon their happiness, more especially upon that peace of mind and independence which are so essential to happiness, its effect will be disturbing and prejudicial rather than salutary.  Therefore it is advisable, from our point of view, to set limits to this weakness, and duly to consider and rightly to estimate the relative value of advantages, and thus temper, as far as possible, this great susceptibility to other people’s opinion, whether the opinion be one flattering to our vanity, or whether it causes us pain; for in either case it is the same feeling which is touched.  Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other people are pleased to think,—­and how little it requires to disconcert or soothe the mind that is greedy of praise: 

  Sic leve, sic parvum est, animum quod laudis avarum
  Subruit ac reficit.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Horace, Epist:  II., 1, 180.]

Therefore it will very much conduce to our happiness if we duly compare the value of what a man is in and for himself with what he is in the eyes of others.  Under the former conies everything that fills up the span of our existence and makes it what it is, in short, all the advantages already considered and summed up under the heads of personality and property; and the sphere in which all this takes place is the man’s own consciousness.  On the other hand, the sphere of what we are for other people is their consciousness, not ours; it is the kind of figure we make in their eyes, together with the thoughts which this arouses.[1] But this is something which has no direct and immediate existence for us, but can affect us only mediately and indirectly, so far, that is, as other people’s behavior towards us is directed by it; and even then it ought to affect us only in so far as it can move us to modify what we are in and for ourselves.  Apart from this, what goes on in other people’s consciousness is, as such, a matter of indifference to us; and in time we get really indifferent to it, when we come to see how superficial and futile are most people’s thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments, how perverse their opinions, and how much of error there is in most of them; when we learn by experience with what depreciation a man will speak of his fellow, when he is not obliged to fear him, or thinks that what he says will not come to his ears.  And if ever we have had an opportunity of seeing how the greatest of men will meet with nothing but slight from half-a-dozen blockheads, we shall understand that to lay great value upon what other people say is to pay them too much honor.

[Footnote 1:  Let me remark that people in the highest positions in life, with all their brilliance, pomp, display, magnificence and general show, may well say:—­Our happiness lies entirely outside us; for it exists only in the heads of others.]