The Pleasures of Life

CHAPTER 1. AMBITION.

“Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble minds)

To scorn delights and live laborious days.”——MILTON.

If fame be the last infirmity of noble minds, ambition is often the first; though, when properly directed, it may be no feeble aid to virtue.

Had not my youthful mind, says Cicero, “from many precepts, from many writings, drunk in this truth, that glory and virtue ought to be the darling, nay, the only wish in life; that, to attain these, the torments of the flesh, with the perils of death and exile, are to be despised; never had I exposed my person in so many encounters, and to these daily conflicts with the worst of men, for your deliverance. But, on this head, books are full; the voice of the wise is full; the examples of antiquity are full: and all these the night of barbarism had still enveloped, had it not been enlightened by the sun of science.”

The poet tells us that

“The many fail: the one succeeds.” [1]

But this is scarcely true. All succeed who deserve, though not perhaps as they hoped. An honorable defeat is better than a mean victory, and no one is really the worse for being beaten, unless he loses heart. Though we may not be able to attain, that is no reason why we should not aspire.

I know, says Morris,

“How far high failure overleaps the bound

Of low successes.”

And Bacon assures us that “if a man look sharp and attentively he shall see fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.”

To give ourselves a reasonable prospect of success we must realize what we hope to achieve; and then make the most of our opportunities. Of these the use of time is one of the most important. What have we to do with time, asks Oliver Wendell Holmes, but to fill it up with labor.

“At the battle of Montebello,” said Napoleon, “I ordered Kellermann to attack with 800 horse, and with these he separated the 6000 Hungarian grenadiers before the very eyes of the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was half a league off, and required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action; and I have observed that it is always these quarters of an hour that decide the fate of a battle,” including, we may add, the battle of life.

Nor must we spare ourselves in other ways, for

“He who thinks in strife

To earn a deathless fame, must do, nor ever care for life.” [2]

In the excitement of the struggle, moreover, he will suffer comparatively little from wounds and blows which would otherwise cause intense suffering.

It is well to weigh scrupulously the object in view, to run as little risk as may be, to count the cost with care.

But when the mind is once made up, there must be no looking back, you must spare yourself no labor, nor shrink from danger.

“He either fears his fate too much

Or his deserts are small,

That dares not put it to the touch

To gain or lose it all.” [3]

Glory, says Renan, “is after all the thing which has the best chance of not being altogether vanity.” But what is glory?

Marcus Aurelius observes that “a spider is proud when it has caught a fly, a man when he has caught a hare, another when he has taken a little fish in a net, another when he has taken wild boars, another when he has taken bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians;” [4] but this, if from one point of view it shows the vanity of fame, also encourages us with the evidence that every one may succeed if his objects are but reasonable.

Alexander may be taken as almost a type of Ambition in its usual form, though carried to an extreme.

His desire was to conquer, not to inherit or to rule. When news was brought that his father Philip had taken some town, or won some battle, instead of appearing delighted with it, he used to say to his companions, “My father will go on conquering, till there be nothing extraordinary left for you and me to do.” [5] He is said even to have been mortified at the number of the stars, considering that he had not been able to conquer one world. Such ambition is justly foredoomed to disappointment.

The remarks of Philosophers on the vanity of ambition refer generally to that unworthy form of which Alexander may be taken as the type–the idea of self-exaltation, not only without any reference to the happiness, but even regardless of the sufferings, of others.

“A continual and restless search after fortune,” says Bacon, “takes up too much of their time who have nobler things to observe.” Indeed he elsewhere extends this, and adds, “No man’s private fortune can be an end any way worthy of his existence.”

Goethe well observes that man “exists for culture; not for what he can accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him.” [6]

As regards fame we must not confuse name and essence. To be remembered is not necessarily to be famous. There is infamy as well as fame; and unhappily almost as many are remembered for the one as for the other, and not a few for the mixture of both.

Who would not rather be forgotten, than recollected as Ahab or Jezebel, Nero or Commodus, Messalina or Heliogabalus, King John or Richard III.?

“To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name than Herodias with one; and who would not rather have been the good thief than Pilate?” [7]

Kings and Generals are often remembered as much for their deaths as for their lives, for their misfortunes as for their successes. The Hero of Thermopylae was Leonidas, not Xerxes. Alexander’s Empire fell to pieces at his death. Napoleon was a great genius, though no Hero. But what came of all his victories? They passed away like the smoke of his guns, and he left France weaker, poorer, and smaller than he found her. The most lasting result of his genius is no military glory, but the Code Napoleon.

A surer and more glorious title to fame is that of those who are remembered for some act of justice or self-devotion: the self-sacrifice of Leonidas, the good faith of Regulus, are the glories of history.

In some cases where men have been called after places, the men are remembered, while the places are forgotten. When we speak of Palestrina or Perugino, of Nelson or Wellington, of Newton or Darwin, who remembers the towns? We think only of the men.

Goethe has been called the soul of his century.

It is true that we have but meagre biographies of Shakespeare or of Plato; yet how much we know about them.

Statesmen and Generals enjoy great celebrity during their lives. The newspapers chronicle every word and movement. But the fame of the Philosopher and Poet is more enduring.

Wordsworth deprecates monuments to Poets, with some exceptions, on this very account. The case of Statesmen, he says, is different. It is right to commemorate them because they might otherwise be forgotten; but Poets live in their books forever.

The real conquerors of the world indeed are not the generals but the thinkers; not Genghis Khan and Akbar, Rameses, or Alexander, but Confucius and Buddha, Aristotle, Plato, and Christ. The rulers and kings who reigned over our ancestors have for the most part long since sunk into oblivion–they are forgotten for want of some sacred bard to give them life–or are remembered, like Suddhodana and Pilate, from their association with higher spirits.

Such men’s lives cannot be compressed into any biography. They lived not merely in their own generation, but for all time. When we speak of the Elizabethan period we think of Shakespeare and Bacon, Raleigh and Spenser. The ministers and secretaries of state, with one or two exceptions, we scarcely remember, and Bacon himself is recollected less as the Judge than as the Philosopher.

Moreover, to what do Generals and Statesmen owe their fame? They were celebrated for their deeds, but to the Poet and the Historian they owe their fame, and to the Poet and Historian we owe their glorious memories and the example of their virtues.

“Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona

Multi; sed omnes illacrimabiles

Urgentur ignotique longa

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.”

There were many brave men before Agamemnon, but their memory has perished because they were celebrated by no divine Bard. Montrose happily combined the two, when in “My dear and only love” he promises,

“I’ll make thee glorious by my pen,

And famous by my sword.”

It is remarkable, and encouraging, how many of the greatest men have risen from the lowest rank, and triumphed over obstacles which might well have seemed insurmountable; nay, even obscurity itself may be a source of honor. The very doubts as to Homer’s birthplace have contributed to this glory, seven cities as we all know laying claim to the great poet–

“Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athenae.”

To take men of Science only. Ray was the son of a blacksmith, Watt of a shipwright, Franklin of a tallow-chandler, Dalton of a handloom weaver, Frauenhofer of a glazier, Laplace of a farmer, Linnaeus of a poor curate, Faraday of a blacksmith, Lamarck of a banker’s clerk; Davy was an apothecary’s assistant, Galileo, Kepler, Sprengel, Cuvier, and Sir W. Herschel were all children of very poor parents.

It is, on the other hand, sad to think how many of our greatest benefactors are unknown even by name. Who discovered the art of procuring fire? Prometheus is merely the personification of forethought. Who invented letters? Cadmus is a mere name.

These inventions, indeed, are lost in the mists of antiquity, but even as regards recent progress the steps are often so gradual, and so numerous, that few inventions can be attributed entirely, or even mainly, to any one person.

Columbus is said, and truly said, to have discovered America, though the Northmen were there before him.

We Englishmen have every reason to be proud of our fellow-countrymen. To take Philosophers and men of Science only, Bacon and Hobbes’ Locke and Berkeley, Hume and Hamilton, will always be associated with the progress of human thought; Newton with gravitation, Adam Smith with Political Economy, Young with the undulatory theory of light, Herschel with the discovery of Uranus and the study of the star depths, Lord Worcester, Trevethick, and Watt with the steam-engine, Wheatstone with the electric telegraph, Jenner with the banishment of smallpox, Simpson with the practical application of anaesthetics, and Darwin with the creation of modern Natural History.

These men, and such as these, have made our history and moulded our opinions; and though during life they may have occupied, comparatively, an insignificant space in the eyes of their countrymen, they became at length an irresistible power, and have now justly grown to a glorious memory.

[1] Tennyson.

[2] Beowulf.

[3] Montrose.

[4] He is referring here to one of his expeditions.

[5] Plutarch.

[6] Emerson.

[7] Sir J. Browne.