not do without standing on
barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate
speech exclusively,--become a most green forest without roots! Solomon
says, There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence. Of
some great silent Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson
says he was by _want of money_ and nothing other, one might ask, "Why
do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found your
sect?" "Truly," he will answer, "I am _continent_ of my thought
hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no
compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' is not for
promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live by. That
is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 'honor'? Alas,
yes;--but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of
yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato's statue?"

But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that
there are two kinds of ambition: one wholly blamable, the other
laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent
Samuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over
others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. "Seekest
thou great things, seek them not": this is most true. And yet, I say,
there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself
according to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak out,
to act out, what Nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit,
inevitable; nay, it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a
man. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting
in this: To unfold your _self_, to work what thing you have the
faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of
our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to
_speak_ by this necessity it feels.--We will say therefore: To decide
about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to take
into view. Not the coveting of the place alone, but the fitness for
the man of the place withal: that is the question. Perhaps the place
was _his_, perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation to seek
the place! Mirabeau's ambition to be Prime Minister, how shall we
blame it, if he were "the only man in France that could have done any
good there"? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly _felt_ how much
good he could do! But a poor Necker, who could do no good,