Ascher paused. I had nothing to say for a moment. Business principles as he explained them were not the business principles I was accustomed to, certainly not the business principles on which Gorman acted. After a minute’s silence Ascher went on.
“The mistake which is most often made in business,” he said, “is to suppose that we grow rich by taking riches from other men, or that nations prosper by depriving other nations of prosperity. That would be true if riches consisted of money, and if there were just so much money and no more in the world. Then business and finance would be a scramble, in which the roughest and strongest scrambler would get most. But that is not so.”
“Isn’t it?” I said. “I should have thought that business just is a scramble.”
“No,” said Ascher, “it is not. Nations grow rich, that is to say, get comfort, ease, and even luxury, only when other nations are growing rich too, only because other nations are growing rich.”
“The way to grow rich,” I said, “is to make other people rich. Is that it? It sounds rather like one of the--what do you call them?--counsels of perfection in the Gospel.”
“Perhaps it is a religious truth too,” said Ascher. “I don’t know. I have never studied religion. Some day I think I shall. There must be a great deal that is very interesting in the New Testament.”
“Confound you, Ascher! Is there anything in heaven or earth that you don’t look at from the outside, as if you were some kind of superior epicurean god?”
“I beg your pardon. I ought not to have spoken in that way. You are, no doubt, a Christian.”
“I have often thought,” said Ascher slowly, “that I should like to be. But from the little I know of that religion----”
“I expect you know as much as I do,” I said.
“It must be,” said Ascher, “very hard to be a Christian.”
I was not going to discuss that point with Ascher. It was bad enough to have an artistic soul awakened in me by Mrs. Ascher. I could not possibly allow her husband to lead me to the discovery that I had the other kind of soul. Nor was it any business of mine to work out harmonies between Christian ethics and the principles of modern banking. I detest puzzles of all kinds. It is far better, at all events far more comfortable, to take life as one finds it, a straightforward, commonplace affair. I have the greatest respect for Christianity of a moderate, sensible kind and I subscribe to the funds of the Church of Ireland. But when it comes to practical matters I find myself in agreement with Wordsworth’s “Rob Roy”,