But as for you, ye know not how to act aright, unless it be to court the popular breeze, and win the empty applause of the multitude--nay, ye abandon the superlative worth of conscience and virtue, and ask a recompense from the poor words of others.

Let me tell thee how wittily one did mock the shallowness of this sort of arrogance.

A certain man assailed one who had put on the name of philosopher as a cloak to pride and vain-glory, not for the practice of real virtue, and added: "Now shall I know if thou art a philosopher if thou bearest reproaches calmly and patiently." The other for awhile affected to be patient, and, having endured to be abused, cried out derisively: "_Now_, do you see that I am a philosopher ?" The other, with biting sarcasm, retorted: "I should have hadst thou held thy peace." Moreover, what concern have choice spirits--for it is of such men we speak, men who seek glory by virtue--what concern, I say, have these with fame after the dissolution of the body in death's last hour?
For if men die wholly--which our reasonings forbid us to believe--there is no such thing as glory at all, since he to whom the glory is said to belong is altogether non-existent.

But if the mind, conscious of its own rectitude, is released from its earthly prison, and seeks heaven in free flight, doth it not despise all earthly things when it rejoices in its deliverance from earthly bonds, and enters upon the joys of heaven ?' SONG VII.
GLORY MAY NOT LAST.
Oh, let him, who pants for glory's guerdon, Deeming glory all in all, Look and see how wide the heaven expandeth, Earth's enclosing bounds how small! Shame it is, if your proud-swelling glory May not fill this narrow room! Why, then, strive so vainly, oh, ye proud ones! To escape your mortal doom?
Though your name, to distant regions bruited, O'er the earth be widely spread, Though full many a lofty-sounding title On your house its lustre shed, Death at all this pomp and glory spurneth When his hour draweth nigh, Shrouds alike th' exalted and the humble, Levels lowest and most high.
Where are now the bones of stanch Fabricius?
Brutus, Cato--where are they?
Lingering fame, with a few graven letters, Doth their empty name display.
But to know the great dead is not given From a gilded name alone; Nay, ye all alike must lie forgotten, 'Tis not _you_ that fame makes known.
Fondly do ye deem life's little hour Lengthened by fame's mortal breath; There but waits you--when this, too, is taken-- At the last a second death.
VIII.
'But that thou mayst not think that I wage implacable warfare against Fortune, I own there is a time when the deceitful goddess serves men well--I mean when she reveals herself, uncovers her face, and confesses her true character.

Perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning.