happiness.  Not fame, but that which deserves to be famous, is what a man should hold in esteem.  This is, as it were, the true underlying substance, and fame is only an accident, affecting its subject chiefly as a kind of external symptom, which serves to confirm his own opinion of himself.  Light is not visible unless it meets with something to reflect it; and talent is sure of itself only when its fame is noised abroad.  But fame is not a certain symptom of merit; because you can have the one without the other; or, as Lessing nicely puts it, Some people obtain fame, and others deserve it.

It would be a miserable existence which should make its value or want of value depend upon what other people think; but such would be the life of a hero or a genius if its worth consisted in fame, that is, in the applause of the world.  Every man lives and exists on his own account, and, therefore, mainly in and for himself; and what he is and the whole manner of his being concern himself more than anyone else; so if he is not worth much in this respect, he cannot be worth much otherwise.  The idea which other people form of his existence is something secondary, derivative, exposed to all the chances of fate, and in the end affecting him but very indirectly.  Besides, other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness—­a fanciful happiness perhaps, but not a real one.

And what a mixed company inhabits the Temple of Universal Fame!—­generals, ministers, charlatans, jugglers, dancers, singers, millionaires and Jews!  It is a temple in which more sincere recognition, more genuine esteem, is given to the several excellencies of such folk, than to superiority of mind, even of a high order, which obtains from the great majority only a verbal acknowledgment.

From the point of view of human happiness, fame is, surely, nothing but a very rare and delicate morsel for the appetite that feeds on pride and vanity—­an appetite which, however carefully concealed, exists to an immoderate degree in every man, and is, perhaps strongest of all in those who set their hearts on becoming famous at any cost.  Such people generally have to wait some time in uncertainty as to their own value, before the opportunity comes which will put it to the proof and let other people see what they are made of; but until then, they feel as if they were suffering secret injustice.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Our greatest pleasure consists in being admired; but those who admire us, even if they have every reason to do so, are slow to express their sentiments.  Hence he is the happiest man who, no matter how, manages sincerely to admire himself—­so long as other people leave him alone.]

But, as I explained at the beginning of this chapter, an unreasonable value is set upon other people’s opinion, and one quite disproportionate to its real worth.  Hobbes has some strong remarks on this subject; and no doubt he is quite right. Mental pleasure, he writes, and ecstacy of any kind, arise when, on comparing ourselves with others, we come to the conclusion that we may think well of ourselves.  So we can easily understand the great value which is always attached to fame, as worth any sacrifices if there is the slightest hope of attaining it.