This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... law of soils may easily be a million times more important than to revolutionize the art of cutting gems; to increase by a fraction the efficiency of every man who lays brick or shovels earth may mean a greater national service than many of our presidents have achieved. The man of affairs should take care to ...
Read More
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... law of soils may easily be a million times more important than to revolutionize the art of cutting gems; to increase by a fraction the efficiency of every man who lays brick or shovels earth may mean a greater national service than many of our presidents have achieved. The man of affairs should take care to prevent himself from falling into the habit of thinking that neglected things have no problems worth considering, or that what is familiar is thoroughly understood. He must beware of assuming that knowledge comes only through the kind of experience he has had, or that the outsider can give him no suggestions for improving the conduct of his business. The intensely "practical" mind tends to conceive experience too much as action and not enough as thinking, too much as the doings of individual men and not enough as the expression of the basic talents and motives of human nature, too much as a static present and not enough as the continuous evolution of the past into the future. By so doing it unduly restricts the times, places, subjects, and persons from which stimulus and guidance may originate and come to it. Follow The Lead Of The Subject-matter The observations of the untrained mind are imperfect; a little is actually seen, by far the greater part is inferred. In customary action things are hastily identified by a few signs, and what is observed is supplemented by bald assumptions and carelessly formed theories. Says Baldwin: Half of what we see and hear never comes in througii our senses at all, but is made up outright--suggested by scraps and hints that do come in through our eyes and ears. In a foreign land, when the mind is not so ready to fill in the gaps in the unfamiliar language we hear, one begins to appreciate how largely, in our...
Read Less
