he
shone supreme. Once more, since his days at the commercial bar, he had
found the real field for his talents.

From the Law Courts he has journeyed to a position of great
responsibility in India. Some voices are already acclaiming the success
of the new Viceroy. It will be wiser to wait until it is clear whether
his versatile genius will find successful play in its new environment.

But the moral of Lord Reading's career is plain. Do not despair over
initial failure. Seek a new opening more suited to your talents. Fight
on in the certain hope that a career waits for every man.

XII

CONSISTENCY

Nothing is so bad as consistency. There exists no more terrible person
than the man who remarks: "Well, you may say what you like, but at any
rate I have been consistent." This argument is generally advanced as the
palliation for some notorious failure. And this is natural For the man
who is consistent must be out of touch with reality. There is no
consistency in the course of events, in history, in the weather, or in
the mental attitude of one's fellow-men. The consistent man means that
he intends to apply a single foot-rule to all the chances and changes of
the universe.

This mental standpoint must of necessity be founded on error. To adopt
it is to sacrifice judgment, to cast away experience, and to treat
knowledge as of no account. The man who prides himself on his
consistency means that facts are nothing compared to his superior sense
of intellectual virtue. But to attack consistency is quite a different
thing from elevating inconsistency to the rank of an ideal. The man who
was proud of being inconsistent, not from necessity but from choice,
would be as much of a fool as his opposite. Life, in a word, can never
be lived by a theory.

The politicians are the most prominent victims of the doctrine of
consistency. They practice an art which, above all others, depends for
success on opportunism--on dealing adequately with the chances and
changes of circumstances and personalities. And yet the politician more
than anyone else has to consider how far he dare do the right thing
to-day in view of what he said yesterday. The policy of a great nation
is often diverted into wrong channels by the memories of old speeches,
and statesmen fear men who mole in Hansard.

Again, I do not recommend inconsistency as a good thing in itself. If a
politician believes in some great general economic policy such as Free
Trade