But ambition, my boy, is like to all the other gifts that
lead men Godward. It must be a noble ambition, nobly controlled. A mere
striving for place and power, without a saving sense of the responsibility
conferred by that place and power, is ignoble. Such an ambition, I
know--as you will some day come to understand--is not a blessing but a
curse. It is the curse from which our age is suffering sorely; and which,
if it be not lifted, will continue to vitiate the strength and poison the
life of the race.
"Because I would have your ambition, a safe and worthy ambition, Aaron, I
ask that the supreme and final test of any work that comes from your hand
may be this; that it satisfy you, yourself--that you may be not ashamed to
sit down alone with your work, and thus to look it squarely in the face.
Not critics, nor authorities, not popular opinion, not even law or
religion, must be the court of final appeal when you are, by what you do,
brought to bar; but by you, _yourself_, the judgment must be rendered. And
this, too, is true, my son, by that judgment and that judgment alone, you
will truly live or you will truly die."
"And that"--said the novelist--so famous in the eyes of the world, so
infamous in his own sight--"and that is what she tried to make me believe,
when she and I were young together.
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