"I am pleased with your simile," said De Montaigne, smiling. "Do not
spoil it, but go on with your argument."

Maltravers continued: "Scarcely do we win the applause of a moment, ere
we summon the past and conjecture the future. Our contemporaries no
longer suffice for competitors, our age for the Court to pronounce on
our claims: we call up the Dead as our only true rivals--we appeal to
Posterity as our sole just tribunal. Is this vain in us? Possibly.
Yet such vanity humbles. 'Tis then only we learn all the difference
between Reputation and Fame--between To-Day and Immortality!"

"Do you think," replied De Montaigne, "that the dead did not feel the
same when they first trod the path that leads to the life beyond life?
Continue to cultivate the mind, to sharpen by exercise the genius, to
attempt to delight or to instruct your race; and even supposing you fall
short of every model you set before you--supposing your name moulder
with your dust, still yon will have passed life more nobly than the
unlaborious herd. Grant that you win not that glorious accident, 'a
name below,' how can you tell but what you may have fitted yourself for
high destiny and employ in the world not of men, but of spirits? The
powers of the mind are things that cannot be less immortal than the mere
sense of identity; their acquisitions accompany us through the Eternal
Progress; and we may obtain a lower or a higher grade hereafter, in
proportion as we are more or less fitted by the exercise of our
intellect to comprehend and execute the solemn agencies of God. The
wise man is nearer to the angels than the fool is. This may be an
apocryphal dogma, but it is not an impossible theory."

"But we may waste the sound enjoyments of actual life in chasing the
hope you justly allow to be 'apocryphal;' and our knowledge may go for