And it does not suffice them.  If the man who tells you that he writes, paints, sculptures, or sings for his own amusement, gives his work to the public, he lies; he lies if he puts his name to his writing, painting, statue, or song.  He wishes, at the least, to leave behind a shadow of his spirit, something that may survive him.  If the Imitation of Christ is anonymous, it is because its author sought the eternity of the soul and did not trouble himself about that of the name.  The man of letters who shall tell you that he despises fame is a lying rascal.  Of Dante, the author of those three-and-thirty vigorous verses (Purg. xi. 85-117) on the vanity of worldly glory, Boccaccio says that he relished honours and pomps more perhaps than suited with his conspicuous virtue.  The keenest desire of his condemned souls is that they may be remembered and talked of here on earth, and this is the chief solace that lightens the darkness of his Inferno.  And he himself confessed that his aim in expounding the concept of Monarchy was not merely that he might be of service to others, but that he might win for his own glory the palm of so great prize (De Monarchia, lib. i., cap. i.).  What more?  Even of that holy man, seemingly the most indifferent to worldly vanity, the Poor Little One of Assisi, it is related in the Legenda Trium Sociorum that he said:  Adhuc adorabor per totum mundum!—­You will see how I shall yet be adored by all the world! (II. Celano, i. 1).  And even of God Himself the theologians say that He created the world for the manifestation of His glory.

When doubts invade us and cloud our faith in the immortality of the soul, a vigorous and painful impulse is given to the anxiety to perpetuate our name and fame, to grasp at least a shadow of immortality.  And hence this tremendous struggle to singularize ourselves, to survive in some way in the memory of others and of posterity.  It is this struggle, a thousand times more terrible than the struggle for life, that gives its tone, colour, and character to our society, in which the medieval faith in the immortal soul is passing away.  Each one seeks to affirm himself, if only in appearance.

Once the needs of hunger are satisfied—­and they are soon satisfied—­the vanity, the necessity—­for it is a necessity—­arises of imposing ourselves upon and surviving in others.  Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity.  He boasts even of his weaknesses and his misfortunes, for want of anything better to boast of, and is like a child who, in order to attract attention, struts about with a bandaged finger.  And vanity, what is it but eagerness for survival?