rors of Downing Street" describes Lord
Northcliffe's mind as "discontinuous." If I had never talked to
Lord Northcliffe I should be led to suppose that his mind resembled
Mr. Baruch's. But the British journalist's mental operations are a
model of order and continuity compared to those of the former
American War Industries Chairman. Like the heroes of the ancient
poems Mr. Baruch's mind has the faculty of invisibility. You see it
here; a moment later you see it there, and for the life of you
cannot tell how it got from here to there, a gift of incalculability
which must have been of great service in Wall Street, but which does
not promote understanding nor communication. And the more Mr. Baruch
tries to give you the connecting links between here and there the
worse off you are, both of you.

The ordinary mind is logical and is confined within the three
dimensions of the syllogism. You watch it readily enough shut in
its little cage whose walls are the major premise, the minor
premise, and the conclusion. There is no escape as we say, from the
conclusion. There is no escape anywhere.

But Mr. Baruch's mind escapes easily. It possesses the secret of
some fourth mental dimension, known only to the naive and the
illogical, or perhaps supralogical. He has brilliant intuitions,
hunches, premonitions, the acute perceptions of some two or three
extra senses that have been bred or schooled out of other men.

Perhaps he is like Lloyd George, who is not logical but achieves
his successes through two or three senses which ordinary men have
not; however, unlike Lloyd George, he cannot simulate logic and,
after jumping to his conclusions, reduce them to the understanding
of the three-dimensional mind. It is a grief to him that he cannot;
for if he could make a speech, that is to say, translate himself,
that figure of Disraeli would, he thinks, be less remote. But when
your mental operations are a succession of miracles, you may have
brilliant intuitions and extraordinary prevision about the mineral
supplies necessary to win the war,--which he had--you may have
wonder, like the naive and the poets, about that extraordinary
thing yourself, or about that still more extraordinary thing which
is life or destiny, but you cannot move the masses.

Still there are compensations. A perfectly logical mind would have
explained all the wonder away, reduced the miracle of personality
to a stolid operation of cause and effect, quite self-approb