Article #82 - Ambition

  Although I am not a member of your association I feel so much interested in its proceedings that I shall offer a short essay it is most likely I shall not interest you much but the idea that it will be of future benefit to me is enough to incite me to action.

            What is there that shows itself in a more direful aspect than Ambition, that which has

destroyed nations who were fanned by the gentle breeze of political freedom crushed to earth the vital spark within and doomed them to languish and die in hereditory [sic] bondage

            Yet viewing the question in another light what has been more beneficial to mankind than

that which raised men and nations from that apparently unpenetrable cloud of darkness which

overshadowed them. What was it caused Bounapart to raise up armies against unoffending nations and crush to earth their highest hopes, hopes perhaps that one week before knew but

few and triffleing [sic] interruptions. Ambition has done all this and much more. It was Ambition

that fired as it were Byron’s soul and caused him to leave his native country to proclaim the

independence of Greece. But wherefore is the necessity of me enumerating instances in which

ambition has displayed itself for it is constantly displaying itself either at work or at play. It

seems to be the great moving power of mankind. How often do we see men, men with strong minds and who if they had not all their powers in action for the accumulation of wealth might

have been bright and shining ornament in society

            But virtue’s sold Good God what price

              Can recompense the pangs of vice

            O Bane of good seducing cheat

              Can man weak man thy powers defeat

            Some person whose intel[l]ect surpassed those of the generality of mankind and who by his untiring ambition rose step by step to the zenith of fame like Moses with the red sea smote as it were the thick cloud of darkness that hung around them. The clouds separated and the light

shone in with unparelled [sic] beauty. it deseminated [sic] like the winds of heaven and the nation was ultimately raised from that darkness and degradation to which it had been so long subjected and perhaps put on an equal footing with the most enlightened nations of the globe.