Page:The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, a Book for an Idle Holiday - Jerome (1886).djvu/51

 Wrong to be ambitious, forsooth! The men wrong, who, with bent back and sweating brow, cut the smooth road over which Humanity marches forward from generation to generation! Men wrong, for using the talents that their Master has entrusted to them—for toiling while others play!

Of course, they are seeking their reward. Man is not given that god-like unselfishness that thinks only of others' good. But in working for themselves they are working for us all. We are so bound together that no man can labour for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mould the Universe. The stream, in struggling onward, turns the mill-wheel; the coral insect, fashioning its tiny cell, joins continents to one another; and the ambitious man, building a pedestal for himself, leaves a monument to posterity. Alexander and Cæsar fought for their own ends, but, in doing so, they put a belt of civilisation half round the earth. Stephenson, to win a fortune, invented the steam-engine; and Shakespeare wrote his plays in order to keep a comfortable home for Mrs Shakespeare and the little Shakespeares.

Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against; and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have not a word to say against contented people so long as