Page:Liberalism (1919).djvu/255

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Pelmanism as an Intellectual and Social Factor.


IT is occasionally urged that in the announcements of the Pelman Institute the business element is predominant, and that other aspects of Mind Training receive less consideration than they are entitled to.

The reason for this is fairly obvious. Business or professional progress is, in this workaday world, a subject which the average man or woman has very much at heart. Consequently, the financial value of Pelmanism is the point of primary attraction for probably 60 per cent, of those who enrol; but this circumstance does not in any degree dispossess Pelmanism of its supreme importance as an educational and intellectual factor. Instead of a few pages of explanation, a fairly lengthy volume would be required to do justice to this theme—the higher values of Pelmanism.

Far-seeing readers will be quick to appreciate this, and will recognise that a system which has proved of such signal value to the business and the professional brain-worker must perforce be of at least equal value to those whose occupation is mainly intellectual or social. If assurance were needed upon this point, it is abundantly supplied by the large number of complimentary letters received from those who have enrolled for the Course from other than pecuniary motives: the amateur and leisured classes being well represented on the Registers of the Institute.

In many cases, those whose motive originally was material advancement of some kind have been quick to discover the deeper meanings and higher