the people, who are, as it were, one great body of instructors, and the
multitude, who declare unanimously for what is wrong, then are we
altogether overwhelmed with bad opinions, and revolt entirely from
nature; so that they seem to deprive us of our best guide who have
decided that there is nothing better for man, nothing more worthy of
being desired by him, nothing more excellent, than honors and commands,
and a high reputation with the people; which indeed every excellent man
aims at; but while he pursues that only true honor which nature has in
view above all other objects, he finds himself busied in arrant
trifles, and in pursuit of no conspicuous form of virtue, but only some
shadowy representation of glory. For glory is a real and express
substance, not a mere shadow. It consists in the united praise of good
men, the free voice of those who form a true judgment of pre-eminent
virtue; it is, as it were, the very echo of virtue; and being generally
the attendant on laudable actions, should not be slighted by good men.
But popular fame, which would pretend to imitate it, is hasty and
inconsiderate, and generally commends wicked and immoral actions, and
throws discredit upon the appearance and beauty of honesty by assuming
a resemblance of it. And it is owing to their not being able to
discover the difference between them that some men ignorant of real
excellence, and in what it consists, have been the destruction of their
country and of themselves. And thus the best men have erred, not so
much in their intentions as by a mistaken conduct. What? is no cure to
be attempted to be applied to those who are carried away by the love of
money, or the lust of pleasures, by which they are rendered little
short of madmen, which is the case of all weak people? or is it because
the disorders of the mind are less dangerous than those of the body? or
because the body will admit of a cure, while there is no medicine
whatever for the mind?