And there should be awakened in the subscriber a desire for knowledge and a taste for study which will send him with enthusiasm into other fields of science and literature.
24. Purpose of so very many years aao the common notion was that the aim of educa tion was the advancement of learning, but it is now beginning to be seen that mere learning cannot justify the social and financial cost of our schools and colleges. Many a learned man has not been of the slightest use in this world.
Some educators hold ;that the highest function of the college is to train character and so make its stu dents real men. Now character is the finest thing on earth. It is a far more beautiful thing than culture. By character we mean the will to endure, the will to do that which is disagreeable if we ought to do it, and the will not to do that which is agreeable if we ought not to do it. This great thing, character, can be earned only by hard work, by endurance, by self-de nial._ It is not a product of lectures or of sermons.
But the primary and important aim of education is not character building, nor learning, nor culture, but the development of the power to understand and of the knowledge that understanding must precede wise action. The country is full of social quack doctors with nostrums for all imaginable social diseases and evils. Their active, insistent, cocksure ignorance is the third rail against which society needs protection, and it is to the trained, the educated business man, humbly aware bow little be knows, but keenly alive to the fact that a problem must be understood before it can be solved, that society must look for deliverance from peril.
Speaking of the fallacious idea that there is not enough work to go around and that laboring men should therefore restrict production, Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip said recently before the American Bank- ers' Association: However natural it may be to feel impatient with the man who honestly bolds such views, impatience is useless. .As long as he holds these views, he will act upon them as you or I act upon our views. His opinion is a fact to be dealt with. It is as real as a mountain where you want to build a road way. In the case of the mountain, we do not get impatient, but we endeavor to survey it and find a way over or thru it. Fortunately, erroneous opinions, however stubbornly held, are more like an ice-bank than a mountain. They will even tually melt away and disappear before the truth—if not in one generation, in another. Understanding of economic laws seems to me almost the greatest need of our day. No body of men will act contrary to their own interests when they know what their interests are. The spread of a sound comprehension of economic laws seems to me, therefore, one of the greatest duties that go with the responsibilities of bankers.
25. Business and life.—The aim of the Institute is service. That, indeed, is the aim of all legitimate busines;. The founders of the Institute would be disappointed if its subscribers were content merely to increase their money-getting abilities. Business, money, profits, are not ends in themselves, but are the means by which men live. Man is on the earth to live, not merely to make a living. The subscriber who de votes all the days and years of his life to business and becomes so engrossed in it or so eager for larger gains that he has no time for the joys and duties of life and no will for the responsibilities of citizenship and par enthood, may die worth many million dollars and be rated a business success, but as a man he will be a failure.
A man who devotes most of his time to a single kind of activity or interest does not really live. His un used faculties actually die or atrophy. This is true of the farmer who toils from sunrise to sundown until old age brings him to the grave. It is equally true of the musician or artist who knows but one source of pleasure, and it is certainly true of the man who gives all his life and energy to business in order that he may amass a fortune. A violinist cannot get music out of his instrument )if he keeps his bow forever on one string. Alan is an instrument of myriad strings. If he would really live he must play on them all.
Business has given to modern civilization conveni ences and luxuries unknown to the Greeks and Romans. It has made living easier and more com fortable. But business men as a class have not in the past always so ordered their own lives as to win the unqualified respect and confidence of other classes of society. The word "commercial" in popular opinion is now losing its taint, but it will not have unques tioned place in the ethical "blue book" until business men have proved by their lives, as well as by their donations, their unselfish interest in social welfare, in religion, in education, in the improvement of labor conditions, in the abolition of poverty, and in the sta bility of law and government with equal rights and im partial justice for all.
The army of Alexander Hamilton Institute sub scribers is growing rapidly ; tbey are in almost every town and city in the United States and in Canada, and in many foreign countries, including Japan, China and South America. The mission of the Insti tute is world-wide. It will have rendered its highest service if these men prove by their lives that they have not only learned from the Alexander Hamilton Insti tute the scientific principles of business, but have also got from it aspirations toward all-round manhood and citizenship.