The Psychology ot the Business Man 297 



the ingenious variety of philanthropical causes which masquer- 

 ade about the streets under the pretense of business advantage, 

 while of course against every legitimate business proposition 

 he has to maintain, behind all the social forms of good nature, 

 a guarded suspicion, until he can assuredly see his own advan- 

 tage in the deal. 



Finally, from a bird's eye position as a psychological ob- 

 server, one comes to find that the combination of all the men- 

 tal and bodily traits make together a splendid example of the 

 law of mental causation, as against the old metaphysical doc- 

 trine of free will. For, the more one gets into view the men- 

 tal components of the business man, the more one can see how 

 his past conduct has been caused and how^ his future action 

 will work out. Not but that he feels himself a free man; no 

 one questions that. But that, in spite of this freedom from 

 outward compulsion and his consciousness of doing "just as he 

 wants to," his hereditary tendencies and acquired habits of 

 feeling, thinking and acting give us a more complete casual 

 analysis of his past life and a provision into his future. So 

 that our residuum of uncertainty as to what he will want and 

 'Svill" to do, which residum further lessons with our more inti- 

 mate knowledge of each man, is far more reasonably charged 

 up to our remaining ignorance of some of his mental compo- 

 nents than to a separate and different kernel of metaphysical 

 "Free Will.'' To be sure, even the business man's restricted 

 round of life is the resultant of a conflicting lot of hereditary 

 and environment components focusing into one body and head. 

 But he must nevertheless be classed at the top of other com- 

 plicated products of nature and art, as a human machine, and 

 as a machine that has been developed evolutionally into won- 

 <lerful efficiency for the environment in which he exists. May 

 the future changes in his business environment give less ne- 

 cessity for his fighting nature and better play for his nobler 

 self! "^ 



Summary : 



1. The business man's intellectual life thru his sense percep- 

 tions, attention, memory, imitation, and reasoning, is 

 unusually keen and efficient as far as concerns his busi- 

 ness ; much rnore than the over-worked and slower 

 working man and probably more efficient than the pro- 



