either to make it still larger, or to squander it in
extravagance. A life like this, though pursued with a sense of
earnestness and an air of importance, is just as silly as many another
which has a fool's cap for its symbol.

_What a man has in himself_ is, then, the chief element in his
happiness. Because this is, as a rule, so very little, most of those
who are placed beyond the struggle with penury feel at bottom quite as
unhappy as those who are still engaged in it. Their minds are vacant,
their imagination dull, their spirits poor, and so they are driven to
the company of those like them--for _similis simili gaudet_--where
they make common pursuit of pastime and entertainment, consisting
for the most part in sensual pleasure, amusement of every kind, and
finally, in excess and libertinism. A young man of rich family enters
upon life with a large patrimony, and often runs through it in an
incredibly short space of time, in vicious extravagance; and why?
Simply because, here too, the mind is empty and void, and so the man
is bored with existence. He was sent forth into the world outwardly
rich but inwardly poor, and his vain endeavor was to make his
external wealth compensate for his inner poverty, by trying to obtain
everything _from without_, like an old man who seeks to strengthen
himself as King David or Marechal de Rex tried to do. And so in the
end one who is inwardly poor comes to be also poor outwardly.

I need not insist upon the importance of the other two kinds of
blessings which make up the happiness of human life; now-a-days the
value of possessing them is too well known to require advertisement.
The third class, it is true, may seem, compared with the second, of
a very ethereal character, as it consists only of other people's
opinions. Still every one has to strive for reputation, that is to
say, a good name. Rank, on the other hand, should be aspired to only
by those who serve the state, and fame by very few indeed. In any
case, reputation is looked upon as a priceless treasure, and fame as
the most precious of all the blessings a man can attain,--the Golden
Fleece, as it were, of the elect: whilst only fools will prefer rank
to property. The second and third classes, moreover, are reciprocally
cause and effect; so far, that is, as Petronius' maxim, _habes
habeberis_, is true; and conversely, the favor of others, in all its
forms, often puts us in the way of getting what we want.

CHAPTER II