106 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-MASTERY
be designed by a graphics artist familiar with all the necessary steps for
production. You would handle showing the estate and selling it to your prospective
buyers, and the fine points of the deal could be hammered out by an attorney. You
would all be united behind a common purpose, dedicating your special skills to
the task of making the sale. But who would have truly been responsible for making
the sale happen? You, since you were the one who assembled the team that got
the job done.There are many learned people who could easily entangle Ford,
theoretically, with a maze of questions, none of which he, personally,
could answer. But Ford could turn right around and wage a battle in
industry or finance that would exterminate those same people, with
all of their knowledge and all of their wisdom.
Ford could not go into his chemical laboratory and separate water
into its component atoms of hydrogen and oxygen and then recombine
these atoms in their former order, but he knows how to surround
himself with chemists who can do this for him if he wants it done.
The person who can intelligently use the knowledge possessed by
another is as much, or more, a person of education as the one who
merely has the knowledge but does not know what to do with it.
The president of a well-known college inherited a large tract of very
poor land. This land had no timber of commercial value, no minerals or
other valuable appurtenances, therefore it was nothing but a source of
expense to him, for he had to pay taxes on it. The state built a highway
through the land. An "uneducated" man who was driving his automobile
over this road observed that this poor land was on top of a mountain
that commanded a wonderful view for many miles in all directions.
He (the ignorant one) also observed that the land was covered with a
growth of small pines and other saplings.
This man bought fifty acres of the land for $10 an acre. Near the
public highway he built a unique log house to which he attached a large
dining room. Near the house he put in a gasoline filling station. Next