“Again, it is obvious that the great-minded man, if he is worthy of the greatest consideration, must be not only a good man, but one of the very best; for always the better a man is the greater is his desert, and the best man alone may claim the most. The really great-minded man, therefore, must be good; or rather, let us say that to be entitled to the praise of great-mindedness a man must be great in all virtue. Least of all, certainly, is it consistent with the character of a great-minded man to droop his crest at the face of danger and run away, or to do any act of injustice; for why should a man do anything dishonourable, { 175} to whom even the greatest things in the world are small measured by the estimate that he entertains of his own worth? And, indeed, it is quite ridiculous to imagine a man of genuine great-mindedness who is not at the same time a virtuous man. For, if he is bad he is certainly not worthy of honour, honour which is the reward of virtue, and is given only to the good. Let us say therefore that great-mindedness is a sort of crown and blossom of the virtues, for it elevates all the virtues, and without them it cannot exist. For which reason it is a hard thing to be truly great-minded; for this elevation of the soul is not possible without general goodness. We see therefore that it is with demonstrations of honour and dishonour that the great-minded man is principally concerned; and it is characteristic of him, that when great honour is done him by good persons, he is pleased, but always moderately, because on every occasion he only gets what he deserves, or perhaps less; because, in fact, virtue never can receive a proper equivalent for itself in the shape of anything external: he will not, however, reject any such offering, however inferior to his merits, because he will consider that people have given the best they had to give. But the honour that he receives for small services, and from persons of no excellence, he will hold very cheap; for it is not of such respect that he considers himself worthy. Exactly similar is his relation to dishonour; for disrespect in no kind can under any circumstances have reference to him. But honour, though the principal, is not the only external thing that belongs to the great-minded man; money, and power, and prosperity, and their opposites, affect him also in their proper place and degree, in such a { 176} fashion always as that he shall neither be much elevated by their presence, nor much depressed by their absence. For not even the absence of that honour, which he justly claims, will he allow to affect his peace very deeply, much less the withholding of that wealth and that influence, which are desired by the good only for the sake of the honour which they bring with them. He therefore who can look calmly on the absence of that which is most desired, will not break his heart because he finds himself destitute of those things which are valued only as they contribute to the attainment of that desire. For this reason it is that men of a high self-esteem are apt to appear proud and contemptuous. It would appear also that the accidents of birth and fortune contribute in some degree towards great-mindedness; for persons of noble birth are considered worthy of honour, and persons of great influence, and wealthy persons; and there is a superiority belonging to all such persons, which brings a certain amount of honour along with it that is grateful to a good man. And it cannot be denied that such things have a tendency to engender a certain loftiness of soul, for they are never without honour from some quarter. Nevertheless the only thing really deserving of honour is virtue, though where virtue is conjoined with these external advantages it will always command a latter share of public respect. But those who possess such external advantages without virtue have neither any reason for thinking themselves deserving of great consideration, nor are they properly called great-minded; for it is only of those who possess virtue that such things can be predicated. On the contrary, those who possess such external goods are apt to { 177} become insolent and haughty. For without virtue it is by no means easy to bear prosperity well; and, not bearing it well, such persons are apt to conceit themselves better than their neighbours, and to despise them, while themselves spend their lives at random, and do what chance throws in their way. For they imitate the manner of the great-minded man, not being like him in soul; and, while they do nothing on which a lofty estimate of themselves might justly be founded, they find it easy to usurp an apparent superiority by looking down upon their fellow-men.