“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.”
“Of course I am—in—in a general way.”
“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.