Boethius, The Consolation 3.10

. . . “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.