The criticism was really based on the doctrine of consistency fatal to all business enterprise.

Suppose an amalgamation was contemplated one day I would be a buyer of another bank, and if by next week this plan had fallen through I would be strongly in favour of selling to a bigger bank.  “But you are inconsistent,” said my colleagues.  My answer is that what the business needed was life and movement at all costs, and that buying or selling, consistency or inconsistency were neither here nor there.

The prominent capitalist is often open to this particular charge.  On Wednesday, says the adversary, he was all for this great scheme; on Friday he has forgotten all about it and has another one.  This is perfectly true—­but then between Wednesday and Friday the weather has changed completely.  Is the barometer fickle or inconsistent because it registers an alteration of weather?

Nevertheless, the men of affairs who follow facts to success rather than consistency to failure must expect to pay the penalty.  Or at least, if they are to avoid the punishment for being right they must take enormous precautions.

The principle penalty is the prompt criticism that although the successful business man plays the game with vigour, nerve, and sinew, yet he plays it according to his own rules.  The truth is that there is no other way in which to play the game.  Fluidity of judgment, adversely described as fickleness and inconsistency, is the essence of success.

But the criticism is damaging.  There are only two ways of combating it, the wrong one and the right one.  The wrong method is that of hypocrisy—­claiming a consistency which does not exist.  The right one is to cultivate the art of pleasing, so that inconsistency may be forgiven.  Friends may thus be retained though business policies vary.  This is the highest art of financial diplomacy.

Those who by some misfortune of character or upbringing are incapable of this practice must make up their minds to face the abuse which their successful practice of inconsistency will entail.  They will not, if they are wise, cultivate hypocrisy, not because the practice will damage them in the esteem of their colleagues and neighbours, for, on the contrary, it will enhance their repute, but because it will damage their own self-respect.  They would know that they were right in following fact and fortune, and yet would be making a public admission that they were wrong.

XIII

PREJUDICE

The most common, and, perhaps, the most serious of vices is prejudice.  It is a thing imbibed with one’s mother’s milk, fortified by all one’s youthful surroundings, and only broken through, if at all, by experience of the world and a deliberate mental effort.