JOSEPH WHARTON, ScD, LL.D. Ixxv 



and he was enamored with the career of Cortez in Mexico. The 

 field of his endeavor happened to He in storing, not discovering 

 gold, and his pursuits were peaceful; but the mind that kept on the 

 frontier of knowledge and used the instruments of nature and busi- 

 ness to conquer its purposes, was necessarily a mind given to specula- 

 tive thought. He was not an inductive thinker, he did not pass 

 from the small to the great by laborious stages ; he liked to reach out 

 into the unknown and shape his destiny with the light he could 

 snatch. 



So it was that economics employed much of his leisure. His 

 dual quality led him to see from the business platform the uses of 

 the tariff in building up the private fortune as well as the national 

 wealth and independence. He was an ardent advocate of the 

 theories of his friend Carey; but he was much more, he was a 

 practical worker in the tariff toil. He formed one tariff almost 

 single-handed, and had a hand in many others. He fought for the 

 principle valiantly in speech and in print ; but he also worked behind 

 the guns. His speculative talents supported his " business head " 

 and he demonstrated in this, as in all his other enterprises, the truth 

 of the axiom that " knowledge is power." 



It was the perception of this old but too often ignored principle 

 that led him to suggest and endow The Wharton School of Finance 

 and Commerce. He knew, as few nowadays do, the intellectual 

 hiatus in the business life; and he thought that this form of inocula- 

 tion might introduce the essence of technical knowledge, along with 

 the humanities, into the one-sided development of the prevailing 

 young business man. He was a good deal disappointed in his 

 expectations, perhaps because the teacher of such courses is neces- 

 sarily a theorist ; but his example has been followed in other colleges 

 and in other lands, and his principle was a genuine one that it was 

 wise to exploit. 



Then, too, his bias for speculative analysis, as well as his sturdy 

 independence of thought, was shown in his knowledge of the Bible, 

 and of the wide literature which modern criticism has produced in 

 exploration of its origins. He spoke German and French fami- 

 liarly, and these two forces had been made to serve in both his 

 business and his intellectual advancement; but he "had little Latin 



