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