and contribute to make the
spectacle the most brilliant and the most varied that may be. And they
have made a religion of art, a cure for the metaphysical evil, and
invented the meaningless phrase of art for art's sake.

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 sa