Nevertheless, in most prominent men, one from of the desire for posthumous fame lingers, namely the fear of having anything known that will look bad in their biography. Read the life of almost any man who has achieved eminence, and you will find that, at a certain stage, he ceased to live quite spontaneously and began to have an eye on his biographer. This leads to a certain vein of hypocrisy and humbug from which few elderly eminent men are quite free. Admiration is seldom bestowed for what is admirable, and therefore those who seek it successfully seldom deserve it.それにかかわらず,多くの有名人においては,ある形態の死後の名声への欲望,つまり他人に知られたら困ることを伝記に書かれることへの恐怖心が残っている。功成り名を遂げた人の伝記を読むと,ある年齢以後は完全に自発的な生き方をやめ,伝記作家の眼を気にしはじめるのがわかる。これは年配の著名人がたいてい免れ得ない一種の偽善と欺瞞の性質となって現れる。立派な行為が賞賛を受けることは稀であり,また,それゆえ,賞賛を首尾よく得ようとする人々が,賞賛に値する人間であることは稀である。
