No. XII. AMBITION
Ambition is that longing for pre-eminence which urges men to intense and long-sustained exertions. Ambition is good or evil, according as it is selfish, or seeks the good of mankind.
Ambition is the putting forth of immense energy with a definite purpose in view. Nearly all the great achievements of the human race have been accomplished by means of the ambition of individuals, Alexander the Great, Cæsar, St. Paul, Henry IV. of France, Raleigh, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu, Warren Hastings, Clive, Napoleon, Wellington, Nelson, Faraday, Pallissy, Livingstone, Gordon, Edison, all achieved great deeds through ambition. But as the names represent types of good and bad character, so there are two kinds of ambition, noble and selfish, good and bad.
It must be confessed that Ambition is apt to lead men astray. It is hard to be ambitious without being at the same time selfish, proud, and covetous. Ambition is a dangerous possession to the young man whose character is not well grounded, and who has not learned to put the good of his fellow-men above his own personal advancement; and these two things always clash in questions of right and wrong. We are told that when the Russian engineers were consulting the Czar about the line of a railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow, he refused to listen to a statement of difficulties, but took a ruler, and, laying it on a map of Russia, drew a straight line between the two cities, and ordered the engineers to disregard towns, and private homes, and obstacles of any other kind. Napoleon literally waded "through slaughter to a throne," and cared nothing for the sacrifice of his soldiers or the tears of a whole nation.
Ambition is bad when it leads men to seek power to gratify personal ends. Cæsar's ambition was evil because he thirsted for personal power for his own gratification and pride. The thirst for money is a bad Ambition. It nearly always ends in making man a miser, than whom there is no man more contemptible and pitiable. It is seldom a man amasses a very great fortune without depriving other people of their rights. The wise man said: "He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent."
Ambition often destroys the character of the man who gives way to it. Macbeth was a great general, and a brave and honest man. In thinking over the murder of the king, which his wife proposed to him, he said:
"I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other";
meaning that he had no motive whatever for killing Duncan except the ambition to occupy his throne. Ambition destroyed him. Frederick the Great bound himself to befriend and support the young ruler of Austria, yet he violated his oath, robbed his ally, and plunged Europe into a long and desolating war. To quote his own words: "Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me, carried the day, and I decided for war." He sacrificed his own soul for the sake of the glory arising out of victorious war.
The danger of Ambition to young men is that it leads to discontent with their present lot in life. Many a young man has been utterly ruined by giving way to discontent because of Ambition. A young man in a bank, filled with Ambition, wishes to improve his position. His salary is small, and he feels cramped. He begins to speculate through brokers, paying a little cash down. Perhaps he is successful at first. Then he hears of some railway shares that are going up in price every day. If he can only get some money to buy he can repay it in a week, and make a great profit for himself. He takes the bank's money. He does this several times, until at last the crash comes, as it always does, and the young man is sent to spend some of the best years of his life in gaol. Ambition has destroyed his reputation, and has cost him his liberty and his friends.
To excel in his present calling, is a lawful Ambition for a young man, leaving it to the future, to his reputation, and to God, to lift him higher. How much wiser and happier Macbeth would have been if he had kept to his first resolution:
"If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me."
It is quite possible for Ambition and Contentment to go together, and to produce the very greatest results in the long run. This was the ambition of General Gordon, that he might excel others as a soldier, and yet be content with a position humble as men count such things. He refused repeated offers of money from the Emperor of China. He accepted the Peacock Feather and Yellow Jacket to give pleasure to his mother, and to enable him to exert the necessary influence upon the Chinese in settling the country after the horrors of war. This was the kind of Ambition held by Livingstone, by Palissy the potter, and, above all men in modern times, by Faraday. When Faraday made known some of his discoveries, he was offered large sums to make experiments for merchants, and he might soon have become very rich, but it would have taken all his time. He refused; he remained poor; he gave himself up to scientific research, and he made the name of England great in the scientific world, as it had never been before.
The highest Ambition a man can have is to be able to make a sacrifice of his inclinations, and to give himself up to some noble work for the good of mankind, without any thought of profit or pride, or place or power, or any other form of selfishness.