An Unwise Measuring
"But they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise" -- 2 Cor. 10:12
It is measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, that makes men conceited. Here is a business man who goes out among other business men, and when he measures himself by them he finds that he out-measures them. He is a shrewder and more skilful trader, and can get more business and more profit out of the business he gets. And so he thinks himself very superior. When a man compares himself with men smaller than he is, he always comes to have a high opinion of himself.
What a man needs in order to get a proper measurement of himself, is to come into contact with larger men. It is not good for any man to live always among people who are his inferiors. This, some men deliberately choose to do. As some one has said, "They would rather be big men among small men than small men among big men."
Such men are unwise. It is not good for a man in business to have dealings only with men whose business ability is inferior to his own. He may hold his advantage over them, but he will miss the challenge to a better and bigger business that would come to him through dealing with men ahead of him in business ability and achievement. The same principle applies in one’s intellectual and moral life. It is not wise for any man to associate continually with men who are intellectually and
morally beneath him. To do so will deprive him of the incentive and stimulus that comes from contact with better and greater men. Comparing himself only with his inferiors, he will come to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.
He was a wise man who said, "If I could choose a young man’s companions, some of them should be weaker than himself, that he might learn patience and charity; many should be as nearly as possible his equals, that he might have the full freedom of friendship but most of them should be stronger than he, that he might ever be thinking humbly of himself and be tempted to higher things.:
