Page:(Commercial character) The Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered at the University of Adelaide (IA commercialcharac00jessrich).pdf/8

4 the conviction that the most important principle underlying all others in a national educational system is the teaching of the teachers, the instillation of the delicate art of adapting the seed to the soil; and I venture to prophecy that there will be no more vital science in the future than the science of pedagogy. This is especially true of commercial education, for commerce is, and must be for many a day, the universal king. Now having consented to make my debut as a lecturer, I pondered the subject, and the result was "character," giving myself, however, the license, which an amateur may fairly claim, of wandering into such byeways as seemed attractive. Did you ever see a counterfeit presentment of a portrait of Carlyle by James McNeil Whistler. It is in the Luxembourg. A strange rugged figure, with a rough hewn head, a granitic shell covering a mighty brain, that studied the world through eyes that saw far deeper into things than those of most men. They made him Rector of Edinburgh University, and young and old may well study his address to the students. One extract as bearing on my subject I will venture to give for the benefit of those whose minds, yet impressionable, may mayhap find some help in it. He quotes from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Three of the wisest men that can be got are met to consider what is the function which transcends all others in importance to build up the young generation. The eldest of the three says, "There is one thing that no child brings into the world with it and without which all other things are of no use. Wilhelm asks what is that? The answer is, reverence, Ehrfurcht, reverence!