“Ambition is not a reprehensible quality, nor are ambitious men to be censured, if they seek glory through honorable and honest means. In fact, it is they who produce great and excellent works. Those who lack this passion are cold spirits, inclined toward laziness than activity. But ambition is pernicious and detestable when it has as its sole end power. - Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540). Remembrances, C.32, 1530, tr. Mario Domandi, 1965

What we fear is ambition that turns on us. We are glad and happy to see someone rise, but that feeling turns into a sense of horror once we see and understand that they have forgotten us, or that they have tricked us, in their lust for power. The ambition to obtain power is a horrible ambition, because it has no reason for its aim, except for the aim itself, no reason for power but power. This can never be fed, never be completed. More dangerously still, power is often only known to exist in the exercise of power. It is not enough simply to know that one can do whatever one wants, we are driven to actually do what we can. It is said that power corrupts absolutely, and this is because power, to be maintained, must be used. There is always someone more ambitious out there, someone who simply aims to be you and then to surpass you. The possession of power begets a fear in us of the loss of that power. When the purpose of power is for something, to be aimed at something else, then this is not quite as much as an issue. In this case, the purpose of power is to either maintain, or to obtain, something else. Power is simply a by-product of the activity you are engaged in. As such, you can take the power or leave it. The power doesn't eat itself, but is always expanded, always expanding in some direction or another. 

On the one hand we admire the ambitious person,and on the other we despise him. We are often told to be humble, to know what we can and cannot do. So, either we are ambitious to achieve what we nwo we can do, and so we are not ambitious at all, or we are ambitious to obtain what we know we cannot, and so we upset people. Ambition overrides common sense, because ambition is always aimed at the future. This is why ambition is helpful for us to produce great and excellent works, because such a task is to aim to achieve something which is beyond the norm. If everything is beautiful, then an excellent beauty is beyond all that is beautiful. Thus, ambition is often comparative and relative - what seems ambitions to a peasant is nothing to a nobleman, in its form. However, if we seek to view not the physical achievement of, say, a good meal or a sturdy shelter, and instead try to see the point and purpose of the ambition, we will find that the peasant and the prince are much the same. Ambition is not the lot of every person in this life, but it is something which many of us have in common. We are not a humble race. It remains to see if we can have an honest and excellent race. 

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