Emulation

EMULATION. - Psychologically it is the feeling that drives one to equal and even to surpass others in the possession of a good or of a personal quality (wealth, praise, honor, professional or social advantage, virtue). It has as its root and principle a sentiment of honor and of praiseworthy self-love, which provokes generous efforts toward a praiseworthy end; it entails imitation and surpassing of others, but without infringing in any way upon their rights; it maintains a certain chivalry in the choice of means and takes upon itself every burden, without in the least weighing upon others; if anything, indeed, it helps and cooperates in provoking a noble contest, which serves as a stimulus to do always more and always better. In this the e. is distinguished from envy, from jealousy, from unhealthy rivalry, from class hatred, which are all deviations from genuine e. Emulators, in fact, walk together; the envious and the jealous rise up one against the other; the former nourish esteem for their competitors, aim only at surpassing them without crushing them, wish to merit by their effort the good success for which they yearn; the latter, instead, fight one another, hold one another in contempt and act as adversaries, trip one another up, attempt to arrive first at the goal by any means, so long as they arrive.

It appears at once from what has been hinted at here how education can find and has always found in e. an active and energetic stimulus to effort and a character, so to speak, made of generosity and nobility together; so much so as to proclaim e. a necessity, as water vapor is necessary to move certain mechanisms. Such a necessity has always been recognized and adequately exploited in all fields. It suffices to mention the Greeks, who in gymnastic and literary contests saw a means to increase in the body suppleness, harmony of proportions and beauty; and to spur the arts and letters to an ever greater degree of perfection; Christian ascetics find in the example of others the stimulus to abandon evil and to give themselves over utterly to good and to holiness (cf. the: "if this one, why not I?" of St. Augustine, Confess., VIII, 11, 27); teachers find in it the instrument for obtaining from pupils greater application and greater profit. It suffices to observe the constant use made of it in the "ratio studiorum" of the Jesuits (v.), with the annual public academies of poetry and short poems; with the division of individual classes into two antagonistic camps with offices (generally taken from Roman history; emperors, consuls, praetors, etc.) assigned to the best and with distinct places; with the assignment made by each pupil of an emulator; with written examinations and the distribution of prizes to the most deserving.

Only on one side Jansenism and on the other the philosophical Puritanism of Kant and of Rousseau wished to combat e. as an anti-educational means. The Jansenists, starting from the theory that human nature is essentially evil, and therefore every natural inclination evil, banished e. from their schools of Port-Royal, because it seconded one of the many natural inclinations; Kant excludes it because of his absolute morality, which is founded on pure respect for reason and admits no other interest; Rousseau condemns it in the name of his optimistic conception of nature, which must develop of itself and would therefore find in e. a dangerous passion, which would corrupt self-love, which is sympathy, lowering it to the level of self-interest, which is pure egoism.

But e. corresponds so fully to human nature that its adversaries, in practice, had to abandon their positions, and it continues down to our own days in all the fields of the arts, of letters, of the sciences (scholarships, exemption from school fees) and also of labor (so-called Stakhanovism).

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