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 spirit of optimism.  That same spirit carried into the sphere of finance might ruin a firm.  The success in one branch might therefore well be the failure in the other, and vice versa.  No young man, therefore, has failed until he has succeeded.

If I had to choose one single and celebrated instance of this doctrine I should find it in the career of Lord Reading, Viceroy of India.

It may be objected that, as he is of the Jewish race and religion, his is not a fair test case by which to try the abilities and aptitudes of the young men of Great Britain.  I do not accept the distinction.  The powers and mental aptitudes of the Jews are exactly the same as ours, except that they come to full flower earlier.  The precocity of this maturity is interpreted as a special genius for affairs—­which it is not.