THE HIGHER EMULATION
GENERAL CONDITIONS OF A HIGHER EMULATION—SUPPORT BY A GROUP SPIRIT—A
SENSE OF SECURITY—SELF-EXPRESSION—CONCLUSION
The condition under which human nature will be ruled by emulation in
service is, in general, simple. It is that one be immersed in a group
spirit and organization of which such emulation is a part. If we have
this, no unusual virtue is required to call out devotion and sacrifice,
only the ordinary traits of loyalty and suggestibility. In college
athletics or in a regiment a man is surrounded by good fellows with whom
he is in ardent sympathy, all whose thoughts are bent upon the success
of the group. It is not only that he knows he has his own glory or shame
at stake, but more than this, the spirit of the whole flows in upon him
and submerges his separate personality, until that spirit really is
himself. He does not count the cost but lives and acts in the larger
life. It is said of one of the national armies, “each man is for his
company, each company is for its regiment, each regiment is for the
army, and the army is for the collective honor of them all.”
The complete merging of self-consciousness is for times of special
enthusiasm, but if the intimate group is lasting it forms a habit of
thought and feeling that dominates the ambition and conscience of the
individual, so that what would otherwise be a selfish struggle for power
is raised to emulation in the service of the group. The man of science
toiling in his laboratory is ennobled and supported by the sense of a
great whole in which he is working, and of other men, his comrades and
rivals, whose opinions will reward and immortalize his discoveries. So
it is with the various branches of literature, with the fine arts, and
with all the true professions. Indeed this is just the distinguishing
trait of a true profession, that it should have a continuing spirit and
tradition capable of moulding to high issues the minds of its members.
And we might say that the aim of reform, as regards motivation, is to
make every social function a true profession. It would seem that there
is no function so distasteful that it might not conceivably be ennobled
in this way. What could be more repellent at first view than much of the
work of the surgeon or the nurse? Yet we see how it is transformed by
group consciousness and pride.
The existence of a group spirit and tradition implies several things
whose power to raise and animate the individual mind are manifest. Among
these are social emotion, standards of merit, and a certain sense of
security.
We all know how hard it is to get up steam if each of us has to build a
little fire of his own and cannot draw from any general reservoir of
heat. Few men can go ahead under such conditions, and those few do it at
a great expense of effort. On the other hand, nearly all of us delight
in sharing an emulative excitement, and a man who, from pure lethargy,
is almost worthless when working alone may easily prove efficient in a
group. I once employed to cut and pile wood a man whom I had seen doing
wonders in a gang, but I found that it was only in a gang that he would
do anything at all. The power to work energetically by oneself is a high
quality which we need to cultivate, but it exists only in limited
quantity, and even so is usually dependent upon imaginative contact with
a group.
As to standards, it is in the nature of the continuing thought of a
group to cherish heroes, to set up ideals and models of achievement, and
to impress these upon the members. The Christian Church has its central
Example and its noble army of saints and martyrs for the emulation of
the faithful, and every live organization, down to the gang of bad boys
in the alley, has something of the same sort.
These aims and symbols need to be high, definite, and appealing, in
order that they may instigate imagination and effort; and to bring them
to this condition requires time and co-operative endeavor in the group
as a whole. Contemporary life in almost every department is weak at this
point; even where there is the most ardent good-will it is apt to fail
of results because of crude and uncompelling standards.
By a sense of security I mean the feeling that there is a larger and
more enduring life surrounding, appreciating, upholding the individual,
and guaranteeing that his efforts and sacrifice will not be in vain. I
might almost say that it is a sense of immortality; if not that, it is
something akin to and looking toward it, something that relieves the
precariousness of the merely private self. It is rare that human nature
sustains a high standard of behavior without the consciousness of
opinions and sympathies that illuminate the standard and make it seem
worth while. It lies deep in the social nature of our minds that ideals
can hardly seem real without such corroboration.
In a still more tangible sense I mean a reasonable economic security. A
man can hardly have a good spirit if he feels that the ground is unsure
beneath his feet, that his social world may disown and forget him
to-morrow. There is scarcely anything more appalling to the human spirit
than this feeling, or more destructive of all generous impulses. It is
an old observation that fear shrinks the soul; and there is no fear like
this. The soldier who knows that he may be killed at any moment may yet
be perfectly secure in a psychological sense; secure of his duty and of
the sympathy of his fellows, his mind quite at peace; but this treachery
of the ground we stand on is like a bad dream. As one will shrink from
attaching himself in love and service to a person whom he feels he
cannot trust, so he will from giving his loyalty to an insecure
position. It is impossible that such tenure of function as now chiefly
prevails in the industrial world should not induce selfishness,
restlessness, and a service only mercenary.
The member of a professional group or of a labor-union gets security
largely from his standing in the group, which insures that if he is
unjustly ousted from one position he can rely upon getting another. It
is natural, however, that where this is the case his loyalty will be to
the group rather than to the employer. If the latter treats men as
machines he will get mechanical service. Moreover, it is not to be
expected that a man will give his full loyalty and service to an
employer merely as such, as the source of his pay. To enlist his higher
spirit he must feel that the work itself is honorable, that he is
serving his country, humanity, and God.
A nation can hardly preserve that interest and loyalty which makes it
truly strong unless it can so order things that the individual feels the
nation’s care for him, its eye upon his virtues and failings, its
appreciation of what he has done, and readiness to stand by him in
undeserved trouble. Well-devised systems of education, assistance in
finding work, protection against injustice, advice and temporary relief
in difficulties, insurance against sickness, accident, and old
age—measures of this kind, supplementing, but not supplanting, his own
efforts, will go far to make him a real patriot. An intricate society
calls for many helps which would formerly have been thought paternal.
The position of a university teacher, under prevalent conditions,
illustrates fairly well the benefits of a reasonable security. After a
period of probation, intended to be exacting, he is given a permanent
appointment which is understood to be forfeitable only by misconduct,
although his promotion, which is gradual and extends over a long period,
depends upon the degree of his achievement. An equal inducement to exert
himself is the hope of service, in teaching and research, and of the
appreciation of this by students and colleagues, a hope which is almost
certain to be realized if he does his part. He has reason, also, to
anticipate considerate treatment in sickness or other trouble, and is
often assured of a pension in old age. The plan seems to work well in
leading men to labor faithfully and in calling forth a higher quality of
service than would be elicited by more stringent treatment. One feels
that he has the duty and opportunity to put his very self into his
function—his faith, his aspiration, his originality, if he has any.
Whatever inefficiency may be found is to be attributed, I should say,
not to the principles of motivation, but either to defects in the
process by which men are chosen, or perhaps to the lack, in some lines
of teaching, of high and clear standards of achievement. The favorable
effect of a secure and yet animating environment is beyond question.
While it is not indispensable, in order to secure emulation in service,
that the work should allow of self-expression and so be attractive in
itself, yet in so far as we can make it self-expressive we release fresh
energies of the human mind. The ideal condition is to have something of
the spirit of art in every task, a sense of joyous individual creation.
We are formed for development, and an endless, hopeless repetition is
justly abhorrent. No matter how humble a man’s work, he will do it
better and in a better spirit if he sees that he can improve upon it and
hope to pass beyond it.
Judged by such standards, our present order is inefficient, because its
tasks are so largely narrow, drudging, meaningless, unhuman. An English
writer has described the pernicious influence of what he calls “the
resentful employee,” “the class of people who, without explanation,
adequate preparation, or any chance, have been shoved at an early age
into uncongenial work and never given a chance to escape.” “He becomes
an employee between thirteen and fifteen; he is made to do work he does
not like for no other purpose, so far as he can see, except the profit
and glory of a fortunate person called his employer, behind whom stand
church and state blessing and upholding the relationship.... He feels
put upon and cheated out of life.”[36]
We do not help the individual to feel that he is contributing, in his
own way, to an interesting whole. It seems that for this, as for so many
other reasons, we must aim at a greater sense of solidarity, to make the
common life more real and attractive, and the individual more conscious
of his part in it. The idea of freedom as developed in our present
institutions is somewhat empty, because negative; we are apt to give a
man the choice between drudgery and anarchy, and when we find that we
have more of the latter than other nations we think it is because we are
so free.
We need, then, a system of social groups, corresponding to the system of
functions in society, each group having _esprit de corps_, emulation and
standards within itself, and all animated with a spirit of loyalty and
service to the whole. To achieve this would call for no change in human
nature, but only in the instigation and direction of its impulses; it
would mean chiefly firmer association and clearer ideals of merit among
those pursuing the several functions. Pecuniary inducement would play a
large part in it, but would be dethroned from the sole and all-sufficing
position assigned to it in the prevalent economic philosophy. Freedom,
self-expression, and the competitive spirit would be cherished, but
could not degenerate into irresponsible individualism.
Much of our higher life is already organized in harmony with this ideal,
and we see it applied, in part at least, to many private undertakings
and to public enterprises like the building of the Panama Canal. I
believe that the principle of emulation in service is one whose
operation can gradually be extended so as to take in the great body of
productive activity.