undles of hay, because he could not make up
his mind which bundle to turn to first. And in that he was not unlike many
human beings. There was an eighteenth-century statesman, for example, who
used to find it so difficult to make a choice that he would stand at his
door looking up the street and down the street, and finally go inside
again, because he couldn't decide whether to go up or down. He would stay
indoors all the morning considering whether he should ride out or walk out,
and he would spend all the afternoon regretting that he had done neither
one nor the other.

I have always had a great deal of sympathy with that personage, for I share
his temperamental indecision. I hate making up my mind. If I go into a shop
to choose a pair of trousers my infirmity of purpose grows with every new
sample that is shown me, and finally I choose the wrong thing in a fit of
desperation. If the question is a place for a holiday, all the artifices of
my family cannot extract from me a decided preference for any place in
particular. Bournemouth? Certainly. How jolly that walk along the sands by
Poole Harbour to Studland and over the hills to Swanage. But think of the
Lake District ... and North Wales ... and Devon ... and Cornwall ... and
... I do not so much make decisions as drift into them or fall into them. I
am what you might call an Eleventh Hour Man. I take a header just as the
clock is about to strike for the last time.

This common failing of indecision is not necessarily due to intellectual
laziness. It may be due, as in the case of Goschen, to too clear a vision
of all the aspects of a subject. "Goschen," said a famous First Sea Lord,
"was the cleverest man we ever had at the Admiralty, and the worst
administrator. He saw so many sides to a question that we could never get
anything done." A sense of responsibility, too, is a severe check on
action. I doubt whether any one who has dealt with affairs ever made up his
mind with more painful questionings than Lord Morley. I have heard him say
how burdensome he found the India Office, because day by day he had to make
irrevocable decisions. A certain adventurous recklessness is necessary for
the man of affairs. Joseph Chamberlain had that quality. Mr. Churchill has
it to-day. If it is controlled by high motives and a wide vision it is an
incomparable gift. If it is a mere passion for having one's own way it is
only the gift of the gambler.

But, you ask, what has this to do