We have had some conspicuous examples of political aspirants who have put their personal ambition above their duty to their party and their country. Time and again one or the other of the great political parties has been well-nigh ruined by a man who could put his own personal ambition against even his country’s welfare.
It is a dangerous thing to put personal ambition above duty, anyway, but especially so to a politician or statesman, who is rendered doubly dangerous if he possesses great magnetic qualities.
We do not always know where the following of ambition’s call will lead us, but we do know this, that by being loyal to ambition and doing our best to follow it in its normal, wholesome state, when not perverted by selfishness, by love of ease or self-gratification, it will lead to our best and highest welfare, that when we follow, when we put ourselves in a position to give it the best and the freest scope, it will lead us to the highest self-expression of which we are capable, and will give us the greatest satisfaction. We know, too, that when our ambition is perverted to base ends our lives go all awry; when we are false to the higher voice within us, we are discontented, unhappy, inefficient, and our lives are ineffective.
When a man becomes so infatuated with the mania for wealth, position, fame or notoriety that he focuses his whole soul, all his powers and energies, upon a false ideal,--upon a selfish, narrow goal, he develops only a very small part of himself and he becomes very narrow. He lives most who lives truest. He lives most who touches life in the largest number of the largest and highest points.
Don’t start out in life with a false standard; a truly great man makes official position and money and houses and estates look so mean and poor that we feel like sinking out of sight with our cheap laurels and our ill-earned gold.
What has become of that something which in your youth keyed your determination up to such a lofty pitch? What has become of that something in you which would not let you rest, which robbed you of sleep, which constantly prodded you, bombarded you with visions of the great and wonderful things you were going to do in the future?
One of the earmarks of old age is the cooling down of the fires of ambition. While they burn brightly, as long as you feel just as eager and as determined as in your younger days to do your level best, to get up and to get on in the world, to keep growing, to keep improving, you are not aging very much. Your years may dispute this, but as long as a man aspires, as long as he is eager to grow, as long as he yearns and struggles to better his best he is not old.