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 or Protection, he will only be justified in changing his mind
under the irresistible pressure of a change of circumstance. He will be
slow, and rightly, to change his standpoint until the evidence carries
absolute conviction.

In business consistency of mental attitude is a terrible vice, for a
simple and obvious reason. By an inevitable process like the swaying of
the solstice the business world alternates between periods of boom and
periods of depression. The wheel is always revolving, fast or slow,
round the full cycle of over-or under-production. It is clear that a