"No competition! I won't have it. It makes the chap at the top of the
class a prig, and gives the poor chap at the bottom an inferiority
complex. No, we want to encourage not competition but co-operation.
Competition leads naturally to another world war, as competition
between British and American capital is doing now."
Then Duncan floored me.
"And would you discourage football because it introduces the idea of
competition?" he asked.
"Of course not," I replied
"Then why discourage it in arithmetic?" he asked.
It was an arresting question, and I had to grope for an answer that
would convince not only Duncan but myself. That every healthy boy
likes to try his strength against his fellows is a fact that we cannot
ignore. Mr. Arthur Balfour's desire to beat his golfing partner and
Jock Broon's desire to spit farther than Jake Tosh are fundamentally
the same desire, the desire for self-assertion. And I see that the man
who comes in last in the quarter-mile race is in the same position of
inferiority as the boy who is always at the bottom of the class. Yet I
condemn competition in school-work while I appreciate competition in
games. Why?
I think I should leave it to the children. Obviously they like to
compete in games and races, but they have no natural desire to compete
in lessons. It appears that some things naturally lend themselves to
competition--racing, boxing, billiards, jumping, football and so on.
Other things do not encourage competition. Bernard Shaw and G. K.
Chesterton do not compete in the output of books; Freud and Jung do not
struggle to publish the record number of analysis cases; George Robey
and Little Tich do not appear together on the stage of the Palladium
and try to prove which is the funnier. Rivalry there always is, but it
remains only rivalry until _The Daily Mail_ offers a prize for the
biggest cabbage or sweet-pea, and then competition seizes suburbia.
I should therefore leave the children to discover for themselves what
interests lend themselves to competition, and what interests do not. I
know beforehand that of their own accord they will not introduce it
into school subjects. This is in accord with my views on the authority
question. I insist that the teacher will impose nothing; that his task
is to watch the children find their own solution.
* * * * *
I must write down a wise saying that came from Dauvit. A rambling and
ill-informed discussion of Bolshevism arose in his shop to-night.
Dauvit took no part in it, but when we rose to go he said: "Tak' my
word for it, Bolshevism is wrong."
"How do you make that out, Dauvit?" I asked.
"Because it's a success," he said shortly.
* * * * *
To-night the Rev. Mr. Smith, the U.F. minister, came in. He is one of
the unco' guid, and to him all pleasures are sinful. It happened that
I was telling Macdonald the Freudian theory of dreams when he entered,
and when Mac told him what the conversation had been about, he begged
me to continue. It was evident that he had never heard of dream
interpretation, and he was surprised.
"And every dream has a meaning?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I had a dream last night," he began, but I held up a warning hand.
"You shouldn't tell your dreams in public," I said hastily; "they may
give things away that you don't want others to know."
He laughed.
"I don't mind that," he said, "I'll take the risk. Last night I dreamt
that I was in a public-house among a lot of men who were telling most
obscene stories. According to Freud every dream is the fulfilment of a
wish. Do you mean to tell me that I wish to be in such a company?"
I explained that the dream as told is not the dream in reality, the
meaning lies behind the symbolism, and it can be got at by the method
of free association. I also explained that I did not believe the Freud
theory, that the dream is always a wish, and suggested that Jung was a
surer guide.
"According to Jung," I said, "the dream is often compensatory. In your
own case you are consciously living the higher life, but there is
another side of life that you are ignoring, and that is the vulgar pub
side. Your dream is a hint that the vulgar side of life cannot be
ignored. You may ignore it consciously, but your unconscious will seek
the other side in your dreams."
This seemed to make him think.
"But the saints and martyrs!" he cried. "Think of the thousands who
crucified the flesh so that they might win the everlasting crown! Do
you tell me that they were all wrong?"