the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community. Therefore the school and the teacher must guard against employing the easy method of creating individual ambition in order to induce to pupils to diligent work.
Darwin’s theory of the struggle for existence and the selectivty connected with it has by many people been cited as authorization of the encouragement of the spirit of competition. Some people also in such a way have tried to prove pseudo-scientifically the necessity of the destructive economic struggle of competition between individuals. But this is wrong, because man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact that he is a socially living animal. As little as a battle between single ants of an anthill is essential for survival, just so little is this the case with the individual members of a human community.
Therefore, one should guard against preaching to the young man success in the customary sense as the aim of life.
On Education