It is the “last infirmity of noble minds,” if it be an infirmity at all, and few of the greatest of the earth have been without it. All of us would regard it as the mark of a superior mind to wish to be something of imperishable worth, but, social beings as we are, we can hardly separate this wish from that for social recognition of the worth. The alleged “vanity” of the desire for fame is vanity only in the sense that all idealism is empty for those who can see the real only in the tangible.
And yet it would be a finer thing to “desire the immortal” without requiring it to be stained with the color of our own mortality.
CHAPTER XII
THE COMPETITIVE SPIRIT
ADVANTAGES OF COMPETITION—WHY MODERN CIVILIZATION DOES NOT ENERVATE—COMPETITION AND SYMPATHY—HIGHER AND LOWER COMPETITIVE SPIRIT—THE PECUNIARY MOTIVE—IS EMULATION IN SERVICE PRACTICABLE?—LOWER MOTIVES INEFFICIENT—THE “ECONOMIC MAN”
There used to be much condemnation of our present state of society based on the idea that competition is a bad thing in itself, a state of war where we want a state of peace, generating hostile passions where we need sympathy and love. It seems, however, that we are coming to recognize that all life is struggle, that any system which is alive and progressive must be, in some sense, competitive, and that the real question at issue is that of the kind of competition, whether it is free, just, kindly, governed by good rules and worthy objects, or the reverse.
The diffusion of personal opportunity, and of the competition through which alone it can be realized, has a remarkable effect in awakening energy and inciting ambition. In so far as a man can and does live without any exacting test of himself he fails to achieve significant character and self-reliant manhood. It is by permitting this and so relaxing the tissue of personal character that static societies and classes have decayed in the past. On the contrary, one who has made his way in a competitive society has learned to choose his course, to select and develop one class of influences and reject others, to measure the result in practice, and so to gain self-knowledge and an effective will. The simplest workman, accustomed to make his way, becomes something of a diplomatist, a student of character, a man of the world.
It has been thought rather a mystery that modern civilization does not enervate men as the ancient is believed to have done. In the case of the Roman and earlier empires the natural course of things, apparently, was for a vigorous nation, after a career of conquest, to become rich, luxurious, degenerate, and finally to be conquered by tribes emerging from savagery and hardihood to follow a similar course. In our days it seems that a people may remain civilized for centuries without loss of their militant energy, and, roughly speaking, the nations who have advanced most in the arts of peace display also the most prowess in war.
The main reason for this I take to be that modern civilization preserves within itself that element of conflict which gives the training in courage and hardihood that was formerly possible only in a savage state. The ancient civilizations were in their nature repressive; they could achieve order and industry over wide areas only by imposing a mechanical and coercive discipline, which left little room for individual development and accustomed the mass of men to routine and servility. Thus we read, regarding Rome, that “The despotic imperial administration upheld for a long while the Roman Empire, and not without renown; but it corrupted, enervated, and impoverished the Roman populations, and left them, after five centuries, as incapable of defending themselves as they were of governing.”[[32]]
Much has been said of the need of a moral equivalent for war, in order that we may dispense with the latter without losing our virile traits; but it may well be thought that as a sphere for individual combativeness, for daring, resolution, self-reliance and pertinacity, our civil life is, on the whole, far superior to war, which requires a strict and somewhat mechanical type of discipline, putting only a limited responsibility on the soldier. Indeed the attractiveness to the imagination of military service lies largely in this very fact, that it is non-competitive, that it promises to take one out of the turmoil of individualistic struggle and give him a moral rest. It offers the repose of subordination, the “peace of the yoke,” and many have enlisted, very much as many others have sought the cloister, to escape from harassing responsibilities and live under rule.
The idea that competition is always destructive of sympathy will not bear examination. It may be destructive or it may not, depending, among other things, on whether it is fair, whether the rules are well understood and enforced, whether the objects striven for are ennobling or otherwise, and whether the competitor has been properly trained to run his course. Injustice, lack of standards, low aims and unfitness generate bad feeling, because the individual has not the sense of doing his part in a worthy whole. A good kind of competition will be felt to be also a kind of co-operation, a working out, through selection, of one’s special function in the common enterprise.