The manufacturer did not reply, and the professor, after a preliminary hemming, held his peace. It was the banker who took the word: “Well, so far as business is concerned, they were right. It is no use to pretend that there is any relation between business and the higher education. There is no business man who will pretend that there is not often an actual incompatibility if he is honest. I know that when we get together at a commercial or financial dinner we talk as if great merchants and great financiers were beneficent geniuses, who evoked the prosperity of mankind by their schemes from the conditions that would otherwise have remained barren. Well, very likely they are, but we must all confess that they do not know it at the time. What they are consciously looking out for then is the main chance. If general prosperity follows, all well and good; they are willing to be given the credit for it. But, as I said, with business as business, the ‘education of a gentleman’ has nothing to do. That education is always putting the old Ciceronian question: whether the fellow arriving at a starving city with a cargo of grain is bound to tell the people before he squeezes them that there are half a dozen other fellows with grain just below the horizon. As a gentleman he would have to tell them, because he could not take advantage of their necessities; but, as a business man, he would think it bad business to tell them, or no business at all. The principle goes all through; I say, business is business; and I am not going to pretend that business will ever be anything else. In our business battles we don’t take off our hats to the other side and say, ‘Gentlemen of the French Guard, have the goodness to fire.’ That may be war, but it is not business. We seize all the advantages we can; very few of us would actually deceive; but if a fellow believes a thing, and we know he is wrong, we do not usually take the trouble to set him right, if we are going to lose anything by undeceiving him. That would not be business. I suppose you think that is dreadful?” He turned smilingly to the minister. “I wish--I wish,” said the minister, gently, “it could be otherwise.” “Well, I wish so, too,” returned the banker. “But it isn’t. Am I right or am I wrong?” he demanded of the manufacturer, who laughed. “I am not conducting this discussion. I will not deprive you of the floor.”