ul under all conditions. Such a view
is manifestly untrue.

The mind of man is shut off into separate compartments, often capable of
acting quite independently of each other. No one would dream of
measuring the capacity of the individual for domestic affection by that
of his power for oratory, or his spirituality by his business instinct.
And what is true of the larger distinctions of the soul is also true of
that particular part of the mind which is devoted to practical success.
Specialised aptitude for one particular branch of activity is the
exception rather than the rule. The contrary opinion may, indeed, easily
lead to grave error in the judgment of men, and therefore in the
management of affairs. There is no art in which either the barrister,
the politician, or, for that matter, the journalist excels so much as in
the rapid grasp of a logical position, the power of assimilating great
masses of material against it or for it, and of putting out the results
of this research again in a lucid and convincing form. Anyone listening
to such an exposition would be tempted to believe that here was a man of
such high general ability that he would be perfectly capable of handling
in practice, and with superb ability, the affairs he has been
explaining. And yet such a judgment would be wrong. The expositor would
be a failure as an active agent. It would not be difficult to find the
exact converse to the case. The greatest of all the editors of big
London newspapers will fail entirely to appreciate a careful and logical
statement of a situation when it is subjected to him. But place before
him the raw material and the implements of his own profession, and his
infallible instinct for news will enable him to produce a newspaper far
transcending that which his more logical critic could have achieved.

Leaving aside a few strange exceptions, a musician is not a soldier, a
barrister not a stockbroker, a poet not a man of business, or a
politician a great organiser. Anyone who had strayed in youth to the
wrong profession and failed might yet prove himself an immense success
in another, and these broad distinctions at the top ramify downwards
until the general truth is equally applicable to all the subdivisions of
business and even to all the administrative sections of particular
firms.

To take a single practical instance, there is the department of
salesmanship and the department of finance. Salesmanship requires, above
all, the