Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/191

country is the safety valve which prevents the powerful individuals of the nation from causing destructive explosions. If we study the psychology of the professional politicians in all those countries with a representative form of government, we will find that the compelling force which drives them into public life, is the necessity for a larger space in which the growth and activity of their Ego can continue without restraint. This is called ambition. I have nothing to say against this term if it is defined correctly. What is ambition? Is it what the German word for it, Ehrgeiz, honor greed, represents, a craving for external titles of honor? This motive may influence some grocer who has found a fortune in his coffee-sacks and is now trying to get into office. But it plays no role in the life-career of a Disraeli, a Kossuth, a La Salle or a Gambetta. Such men as these do not care for the respectful greetings of self-important or obtrusive nonentities on the street, nor to wear gay uniforms, nor to have reporters, biographers and artists on illustrated weeklies, at their heels continually, nor for the notes from pupils in the young ladies' seminaries, begging for their autographs. Merely for the sake of these petty gratifications of their vanity they would never have assumed the terrible burden of public life, which repeats in the midst of our culture and civilization all the conditions of prehistoric existence. In public, political life there is no rest nor peace possible, every one is either fighting, hiding in ambush, lying, listening, hunting for trails, or removing the trace of his own, sleeping with one eye open and his gun in his hand, looking upon every one he meets as an enemy, his hand against everybody and everybody's hand against him, slandered, traduced, badgered, provoked and wounded—in short, he must live like a red skin on the warpath in the trackless forest. The so-called ambition