“Here,” said I, and I threw the papers across to him. “It’s all Idleness. To do nothing is to be receptive of everything. I’ve been doing nothing.”
XXI
THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION
XXI
THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION
Not a few are there to applaud this spirit of competition, this modern endeavour to do things well, not because they are worth doing, but from the desire to do them better than other people.
Yet it is a canker that eats its way into the heart of everything. Bellwattle, in her happiest mood of distinction, would call it one of the laws of God. But whether it be a law of God or of Nature; whether, in fact, it be a law at all and not simply one of these fungoid growths of civilisation, it is a deceptive matter whichever way you look at it.
You would imagine, whether you were Jesuit or not, that the end would justify the means in such a question as this. You might believe that, so long as the thing were done well, it would matter little, if at all, the motive which prompted its well-doing. Yet this is just where the subtle poison of it lurks. For it is not of necessity doing a thing well, to do it better than any one else. The moment you begin to work like this, you create a false standard, lowering the value of everything you do. It is not the spirit of charity to give more than your next door neighbour. That is the spirit of competition. The spirit of charity it is to give the last penny you can spare. The widow’s mite is charity. The millionaire’s thousand is bombast.