Note: The following is an excerpt from Orison Swett Marden’s Be Good to Yourself, published in 1910. Whereas ceaseless striving is often framed through an antiseptic neurochemical lens — as merely a fruitless, desultory, dopamine-driven chase —or as an ethically questionable, if not outright malevolent, thirst for money and power, Marden’s framing of ambition is highly refreshing. (Note that in Marden’s day, a “competence” described having modest financial security — a sufficient amount of money to live on comfortably, without needing to work.)
“What are the motives that keep men slaving after they have acquired a competence?” “Is ambition a selfish attribute?” These and similar questions are very frequently asked.
The passion for conquest, for power, the love of achievement, is one of the most dominant and persistent characteristics of human nature. With most men the bread-and-butter and housing problem, the question of getting a living, a competence, is only one, and often one of the least, of the motives for an active career.
We have an instinctive feeling that we have been set in motion by a Higher Power; that there is an invisible spring within us—the “imperious must “—which impels us to weave the pattern given us in the Mount of Transfiguration of our highest moment, to make our life-vision real. A divine impulse constantly urges us to reach our highest ideal. There is something back of our supreme ambition deeper than a mere personal gratification. There is a vital connection between it and the great plan of creation, the progress, the final goal, of the human race.
Even if dimly, we are conscious that we owe something to the world, and that it is our duty to pay the debt. There is something within which protests against our living idle, purposeless lives; which tells us that our debt to the human race is a personal one. It tells us that our message to humanity is not transferable; that we must deliver it ourselves. No matter how much money we may have, we don’t feel quite right unless we are doing our part of the world’s work. We feel that it is mean, contemptible, to be drones in the great human hive; to eat, drink, wear, and use what others earn by hard labor. We have a sneaking feeling that we are criminals; that it is unworthy of us to shirk a manly or womanly part in life; it violates our sense of justice, of fairness.
These promptings of humanity and the yearning of every normal man and woman for a fuller, completer life; the craving for expansion, for growth; the desire to objectify our life-visions, to give birth to the children of our brain, to exercise our inventiveness, our ingenuity, to express our artistic temperament, our talents, whatever they may be; the inherent, instinctive longing to become that which we were intended to be; to weave the life-pattern given us at birth—these are the impelling motives for a creative career.
One man expresses himself, or delivers his message to humanity, through his inventive ability to give his fellow men that which will emancipate them from drudgery; another delivers his message through his artistic ability; another through science; another through oratory, through business, or his pen, and so on through all the modes of human expression, each delivers himself according to his talent. In every case the highest motive is beyond the question of mere living-getting.
The great artist does not paint simply for a living, but because he must express that divine thing in him that is struggling for expression. He has an unconquerable desire to put upon canvas the picture that haunts his brain. We all long to bring out the ideal, whatever it may be, that lives within us. We want to see it; we want the world to see it.
It is not so much what men get out of their struggles, as the inherent passion in every normal man for self-expression—to do the biggest thing possible to him—that urges them on. This is what keeps men going, always struggling to achieve.
Some tribes believe that the spirit of every conquered enemy enters into the conqueror and makes him so much stronger. It is certain that every business or professional conquest, or financial victory, every triumph over obstacles, makes the achiever so much larger, so much stronger a man.
The exercise of the creative faculties, the stretching of the mind over greater and greater problems, and the solving of them, constitute a powerful mental tonic and give a satisfaction which nothing else gives. Think of the tameness, the insipidity, the weakness, the mental flabbiness of the life of the inactive and purposeless man who has nothing special to do, no great life-motive, pushing him on, in comparison with that of the man who feels all the forces within him heaving and tugging away to accomplish a mighty purpose!
The idle, aimless man does not know the meaning of personal power or the satisfaction which comes to the doer, the achiever.
Those who wonder why men who already have a competence continue to struggle, to play the game with as much zeal and ardor as ever, when they might retire from the field, little realize the tremendous fascination of the great life-game, especially for those who have artistic talent and those who have the ability to do things; men who have great executive powers, qualities of leadership.
With as much reason might we wonder why great singers, artists, actors, authors, do not retire from active life, give up their work when they are at the zenith of their power, when they are just in a position to do the greatest thing possible to them, as to wonder why great business and professional men do not retire in the most fruitful period of their lives merely because they have attained a competence.
The unborn creatures of the imagination of the artist, the author, the actor, the singer, struggling for expression, haunt them until they are made real. So the ambitions and ideals of the business man, the professional man, clamor for expression so long as he is able to continue in the game.
Those who have never won big battles in business do not realize what a deep hold this passion for conquest, this insatiable thirst for victory, gets upon the achiever; how it grips him, encourages him, nerves him for greater triumphs.
A great business man develops the lust of power, the passion for conquest, as did Napoleon or other great warriors. The desire to achieve, to dominate, grows stronger and more vigorous with every new victory.
The ambition for greater achievements is fed by every fresh triumph, and the passion for conquest, which years of winning and the habit of conquering have strengthened, becomes colossal, often abnormal, so that men who have grown accustomed to wielding enormous power shudder at the very thought of laying down the scepter.
Think of the great business potentates of our country, whose power governs vast fields of activity—think of these men as retiring, giving up active life, because they have acquired a competence! Some of our captains of industry, railroad men, bankers, and financiers, wield more real power today, exercise a greater influence upon civilization, than many European rulers.
We hear a great deal of criticism of the greed of rich men, which keeps them pushing ahead after they have more money than they can ever use to advantage, but the fact is, many of these men find their reward in the exercise of their powers, not in amassing money, and greed plays a comparatively small part in their struggle for conquest. Yet this is not true of all rich men. Many of them are playing the game, and keep on playing it, for the love of accumulating. Their selfishness and greed have been indulged so long that they amount to a passion, and the accumulators oftentimes become money-mad.
But the higher type of man plays the game, from start to finish, for the love of achievement; because it satisfies his sense of duty, of justice; plays it because it will make him a larger, completer man; because it satisfies his passion for expansion, for growth. He plays the game for the training it gives, for the opportunity of self-expression. He feels that he has a message to deliver to mankind, and that he must deliver it like a man.
It is the love of forging ahead, of pushing out into new fields, which has grown to giant proportions in the grand struggle for supremacy, the ambition to push on a little further, not greed or selfishness, that keeps the majority of men in harness.
The artist, the business or the professional man is much like the hunter, who will endure all sorts of hardships and privations in the pursuit of game but loses all interest in it the moment he bags it.
The love of achievement is satisfied in the very act of creation, in the realization of the ideal which had haunted the brain. Ease, leisure, comfort are nothing compared with the exhilaration which comes from achievement.
The struggle for supremacy—the conquest of obstacles, the mastery of nature, the triumph of ideals—has been the developer of man, the builder of what we call progress. It has brought out and broadened and strengthened the finest and noblest traits in human nature.
The idea that a man, whatever his work in the world, should retire just because he has made enough money to live upon for the rest of his life is unworthy of a real man, who was made to create, to achieve, to go on conquering.
Every normal human being is born with a great sacred obligation resting upon him—to use his highest faculties as long as he can, and to give his best to the world; and the laws of his nature and of the universe are such that the more he gives to the world, the more he gets for himself—the larger, the completer man he becomes. But the moment he tries to sell himself to selfishness, to greed, to self-indulgence, the smaller, meaner man he becomes.
Every normal human being is happiest as well as strongest when active, especially when doing that which he was intended to do, that which he is best fitted to do; when he is trying to make real the vision of his highest moment. He is weakest and most miserable when idle, or doing that which he is least fitted for by nature.
The divine discontent which all aspiring souls feel is a longing for growth, for a realization of possibilities. It is the call of the potencies within us to do, to be; the longing for that expansion and power which can only come from healthful, vigorous activity in pursuit of a worthy aim.
There is no mental tonic, no physical stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of growing larger, fuller, completer each day in the pursuit of one’s chosen work.
The passion for conquest, the conquering faculty which we all have—that something within us which aspires—becomes strong and powerful just in proportion as it has legitimate exercise and encouragement, so that every feeling out and stretching of the mind, every exercise of the faculties today makes a larger tomorrow possible.
