Emulation

EMULATION. - Psychologically, it is the feeling that impels one to equal and even surpass others in the possession of a good or personal quality (wealth, praise, honor, professional or social advantage, virtue). At its root it is a feeling of honor and 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 preserves a certain chivalry in the choice of means and takes on every burden without imposing any burden at all upon others; indeed, if anything, it helps and cooperates in provoking a noble contest, which serves as a stimulus to do ever more and ever better. In this respect e. is distinguished from envy, jealousy, unhealthy rivalry, and class hatred, all of which are deviations from genuine e. Those who emulate one another, in fact, advance together; the envious and the jealous set themselves against one another; the former esteem their competitors, aim only to surpass them without crushing them, and wish by their efforts to prove themselves deserving of the success they long for; the latter, on the other hand, fight one another, regard and act toward one another as adversaries, trip each other up, and try to reach the finish first by any means, provided they arrive.

It is immediately apparent from what has been indicated here how education could, and has always been able to, find in e. an active and vigorous stimulus to effort and a character, so to speak, at once generous and noble; so much so as to lead people to proclaim e. a necessity, just as water vapor is necessary to move certain mechanisms. This necessity has always been recognized and appropriately exploited in every field. It is enough to mention the Greeks, who in gymnastic and literary contests saw a means of increasing bodily suppleness, harmony of proportions, and beauty, and of advancing the arts and literature toward an ever higher degree of perfection; Christian ascetics found in the example of others a stimulus to abandon evil and devote themselves completely to goodness and holiness (cf. St. Augustine’s “if this man can, why cannot I?” Confess., VIII, 11, 27); teachers found in it an instrument for obtaining from pupils greater application and better results. It is enough to observe the constant use made of it in the Jesuits’ “ratio studiorum” (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 pupils and with distinct positions; with each pupil being assigned an emulus; with written examinations and the distribution of prizes to the most deserving.

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

But e. corresponds so fully to human nature that its opponents were, in practice, obliged to abandon their positions, and it continues to exist to the present day in every field of the arts, literature, and the sciences (scholarships, exemption from school fees), as well as in work (the so-called Stakhanovism).