mediocrity stretches out before him. He admits a failure, and by that
very act of admission he has failed. The waters of despair close above
his head, and the consequence may be ruin.

Such mistakes spring from a wrong conception of the nature of the human
mind. We are too apt to believe in a kind of abstraction called "general
ability," which is expected to exhibit itself under any and every
condition. According to this doctrine, if a man is clever at one thing
or successful under one set of circumstances, he must be equally clever
at everything and equally successful 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