the passions are humanised only by
being juxtaposed and forced to live together. As fame is not man's only
goal and the realisation of it comes into manifold relations with other
interests no less vivid, we are able to criticise the impulse to pursue
it.

Fame may be the consequence of benefits conferred upon mankind. In that
case the abstract desire for fame would be reinforced and, as it were,
justified by its congruity with the more voluminous and stable desire to
benefit our fellow-men. Or, again, the achievements which insure fame
and the genius that wins it probably involve a high degree of vitality
and many profound inward satisfactions to the man of genius himself; so
that again the abstract love of fame would be reinforced by the
independent and more rational desire for a noble and comprehensive
experience. On the other hand, the minds of posterity, whose homage is
craved by the ambitious man, will probably have very false conceptions
of his thoughts and purposes. What they will call by his name will be,
in a great measure, a fiction of their own fancy and not his portrait at
all. Would Caesar recognise himself in the current notions of him, drawn
from some school-history, or perhaps from Shakespeare's satirical
portrait? Would Christ recognise himself upon our altars, or in the
romances about him constructed by imaginative critics? And not only is
remote experience thus hopelessly lost and misrepresented, but even this
nominal memorial ultimately disappears.

The love of fame, if tempered by these and similar considerations, would
tend to take a place in man's ideal such as its roots in human nature
and its functions in human progress might seem to justify. It would be
rationalised in the only sense in which any primary desire can be
rationalised, namely, by being combined with all others in a consistent
whole. How much of it would survive a thorough sifting and criticism,
may well remain in doubt. The result would naturally differ for
different temperaments and in different states of society. The wisest
men, perhaps, while they would continue to feel some love of honour and
some interest in their image in other minds, would yet wish that
posterity might praise them as Sallust praises Cato by saying: _Esse
quam videri bonus maluit_; he preferred worth to reputation.

[Sidenote: Disproportionate interest in the aesthetic.]

The fact that value is attributed to absent experience according to the
value exper