. . . “But,” I urged, “places of honor
make the man, to whom they fall, honored and venerated.”
“Ah!” she answered, “have those offices
their force in truth that they may instill virtues into the minds of those that
hold them, and drive out vices from there? And yet we are too well accustomed
to see them making wickedness conspicuous rather than avoiding it. Wherefore we
are displeased to see such places often falling to the most wicked of men, so
that Catullus called Nonius ‘a diseased growth,’ though he sat in the highest
chair of office.
“Do you see how great a disgrace high
honors can add to evil men? Their unworthiness is less conspicuous if they are
not made famous by honors. Could you yourself have been induced by any dangers
to think of being a colleague with Decoratus, when you saw that he had the mind
of an unscrupulous buffoon, and a base informer? We cannot consider men worthy
of veneration on account of their high places, when we hold them to be unworthy
of those high places.
“But if you see a man endowed with
wisdom, you cannot but consider him worthy of veneration, or at least of the
wisdom with which he is endowed. For such a man has the worth peculiar to
virtue, which it transmits directly to those in whom it is found.
“But since honors from the vulgar crowd
cannot create merit, it is plain that they have not the peculiar beauty of this
worth. And here is a particular point to be noticed: if men are the more worthless
as they are despised by more people, high position makes them all the worse
because it cannot make venerable those whom it shows to so many people to be
contemptible. And this brings its penalty with it: wicked people bring a like
quality into their positions, and stain them with their infection.” . . .
—from
Book 3, Prose 4
The
various incomplete and false goods we tend to seek can be related in a number
of ways, sometimes in conjunction with one another, at other times with one in
service to another, but my own experience suggests that no two idols are more
closely allied than the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of position.
Note how
often we see riches and honor mingled together, perhaps because we admire those
who have much, or we give much to those we admire. Show me a man of status, and
you have most likely also shown me a man of money. This characterized the
careerism I saw around me as I was growing up, the promise that the more I
acquire the more important I will be, and the more important I am the more I
will acquire.
But
surely honor is nobler than merely having many possessions? After all, a man
can inherit his wealth, or stumble across it without it being due to his merit,
but it would seem that respect is something that we truly have to earn.
This
assumes, however, far too confidently, that we are receiving respect for the
right sorts of reasons, or from the right sorts of people. As unpleasant as it
may seem, the school of life teaches us that vice is praised more often than
virtue, and vicious people usually speak their minds more forcefully than
virtuous people.
Indeed,
honor will hardly make a man any better, and it is likely to make him worse if
he has received it out of ignorance or wickedness. We should rightly honor
people because they are good, but people don’t become good because they are
honored. As with the priority and order in so many things, we get the more
important and less important all jumbled up.
Let’s
say I could be hated for being a man of poor character, or I could conversely
be loved for being a man of poor character. Which of these would actually be
worse? I imagine some people would say they would prefer at least to be admired
instead of being despised, but this overlooks the very measure of good and evil
in our thoughts, words, and deeds. The latter is actually far more harmful than
former.
As soon
as honor is joined with vice, it makes the recipient worse, because it
encourages his misdeeds. It makes the admirers worse, because they have allowed
themselves to be influenced by all that is wrong. It makes the office of honor
itself worse, because it has sullied the dignity of the position.
I’ll
never find virtue separated from wisdom, since one cannot choose what is good
without first knowing what is good. But I will often find virtue separated from honor, since being good is not the same as just being thought of as good.
Written in 9/2015
IMAGE: Putting my face in the middle of this picture will make me no better, and could quite possibly make me much worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment