another man engaged in work similar to your
own or akin to it, must at bottom be withdrawn from yourself; and you
can praise him only at the expense of your own claims.

Accordingly, mankind is in itself not at all inclined to award praise
and reputation; it is more disposed to blame and find fault, whereby
it indirectly praises itself. If, notwithstanding this, praise is
won from mankind, some extraneous motive must prevail. I am not here
referring to the disgraceful way in which mutual friends will puff one
another into a reputation; outside of that, an effectual motive is
supplied by the feeling that next to the merit of doing something
oneself, comes that of correctly appreciating and recognizing what
others have done. This accords with the threefold division of heads
drawn up by Hesiod[1] and afterwards by Machiavelli[2] _There are_,
says the latter, _in the capacities of mankind, three varieties:
one man will understand a thing by himself; another so far as it is
explained to him; a third, neither of himself nor when it is put
clearly before him_. He, then, who abandons hope of making good his
claims to the first class, will be glad to seize the opportunity of
taking a place in the second. It is almost wholly owing to this state
of things that merit may always rest assured of ultimately meeting
with recognition.

[Footnote 1: _Works and Days_, 293.]

[Footnote 2: _The Prince_, ch. 22.]

To this also is due the fact that when the value of a work has once
been recognized and may no longer be concealed or denied, all men vie
in praising and honoring it; simply because they are conscious
of thereby doing themselves an honor. They act in the spirit of
Xenophon's remark: _he must be a wise man who knows what is wise_.
So when they see that the prize of original merit is for ever out of
their reach, they hasten to possess themselves of that which comes
second best--the correct appreciation of it. Here it happens as with
an army which has been forced to yield; when, just as previously every
man wanted to be foremost in the fight, so now every man tries to
be foremost in running away. They all hurry forward to offer their
applause to one who is now recognized to be worthy of praise, in
virtue of a recognition, as a rule unconscious, of that law of
homogeneity which I mentioned in the last chapter; so that it may seem
as though their way of thinking and looking at things were homogeneous
with that of the celebrated man