This Passion indeed, like all others, is frequently perverted to evil and ignoble Purposes; so that we may account for many of the Excellencies and Follies of Life upon the same innate Principle, to wit, the Desire of being remarkable:  For this, as it has been differently cultivated by Education, Study and Converse, will bring forth suitable Effects as it falls in with an [ingenuous] [1] Disposition, or a corrupt Mind; it does accordingly express itself in Acts of Magnanimity or selfish Cunning, as it meets with a good or a weak Understanding.  As it has been employed in embellishing the Mind, or adorning the Outside, it renders the Man eminently Praise-worthy or ridiculous.  Ambition therefore is not to be confined only to one Passion or Pursuit; for as the same Humours, in Constitutions otherwise different, affect the Body after different Manners, so the same aspiring Principle within us sometimes breaks forth upon one Object, sometimes upon another.

It cannot be doubted, but that there is as great Desire of Glory in a Ring of Wrestlers or Cudgel-Players, as in any other more refined Competition for Superiority.  No Man that could avoid it, would ever suffer his Head to be broken but out of a Principle of Honour.  This is the secret Spring that pushes them forward; and the Superiority which they gain above the undistinguish’d many, does more than repair those Wounds they have received in the Combat.  Tis Mr. Waller’s Opinion, that Julius Caesar, had he not been Master of the Roman Empire, would in all Probability have made an excellent Wrestler.

Great Julius on the Mountains bred, A Flock perhaps or Herd had led; He that the World subdued, had been But the best Wrestler on the Green. [2]

That he subdued the World, was owing to the Accidents of Art and Knowledge; had he not met with those Advantages, the same Sparks of Emulation would have kindled within him, and prompted him to distinguish himself in some Enterprize of a lower Nature.  Since therefore no Man’s Lot is so unalterably fixed in this Life, but that a thousand Accidents may either forward or disappoint his Advancement, it is, methinks, a pleasant and inoffensive Speculation, to consider a great Man as divested of all the adventitious Circumstances of Fortune, and to bring him down in ones Imagination to that low Station of Life, the Nature of which bears some distant Resemblance to that high one he is at present possessed of.  Thus one may view him exercising in Miniature those Talents of Nature, which being drawn out by Education to their full Length, enable him for the Discharge of some important Employment.  On the other Hand, one may raise uneducated Merit to such a Pitch of Greatness as may seem equal to the possible Extent of his improved Capacity.