he Thought, that probably the majority of men
who have been watching Mr. Burleson for seven years wasting fifty-three
thousand Post Offices, and all the fifty-three thousand Post Offices
could do for him to make a successful man out of him, will go down to
their offices next Monday morning, and instead of worming criticism out
of everybody in sight, instead of using their business and everybody who
approaches them in the business to produce goods, will use the business
to produce the impression that they are perfect and that nobody can tell
them anything--will just sit there all glazed over with complacency
cemented down into their self-defending minds, imperious, impervious, as
hard to give good advice to, as hard to make a dent in as beautiful
shining porcelain-lined bathtubs.

* * * * *

It would be only fair and would save a good deal of time in business for
some of us who like to try new ideas, if there were some way of telling
these men--if some warning could be given to us not to bother with
them--if these men with brilliantly non-porous minds, could be fitted up
so that one could tell them at sight--by their heads looking the way they
are--by their being bald--by their having brilliantly non-porous
heads--just nice perfectly plain shiny knobs of not-thinking.

One could tell them across a room.

But the man with the most refreshingly eager mind toward new ideas, I
know, the mind the most brilliantly open--which fairly glistens inside
with eagerness, glistens outside, too.

The only thing there is to go by, in telling a man with a non-porous
mind, is to try gently--changing it, and see what happens.

XXIV

MACHINE-MINDEDNESS

The various forms I have mentioned of the malady of being fooled by
oneself, all practically boil down to one in the end--one cause which we
have to recognize and avoid--automatism, the lack of conscious control of
the mind--letting oneself be rolled under the little wheels in one's
head.

The main central cause operating with people when they are being fooled
about themselves, is machine-mindedness.

A man's body being a great storehouse of psycho-mechanical processes and
habits makes his mind react automatically, and when some one calls him a
fool or acts with him as if possibly he might have moments of being
fooled about himself, the man's whole nature like a spring snaps his mind
back into self-defense, and instead of being gra