Of course we are all human and know how it is, in a way. We know that the first thought that would come to Mr. Burleson as to any man when he finds he is being criticized--that people in fifty-three thousand Post Offices are criticizing him and acting with him as if he were fooled about himself, is the automatic thought of self-defense. The second thought, which is what one would hope for from a General, even a Postmaster General, is that one resents it in oneself, that in an important opening for a man like being called foolish, one stops all one's thinking-works, and slumps ingloriously, automatically and without a quaver into self-defense. One would think a man who could get to be a Postmaster General would have the presence of mind when he says "Ouch!" to a nation that steps on his toes, to fix his face quick, smile and say, "Thank you! Thank you! I will see what there is in this!" Why should a man when God is blessing him as he does Mr. Burleson, even out of the mouths of his enemies, butt in in the way he does and interrupt truths with enough juice in them to make one Burleson, even one Burleson into twenty great men before a nation's eyes? A whole Cabinet--at least a whole Democratic Cabinet--could have been made time and time again out of the great-man-juice, the truth-pepsin great men are made out of, this country has wasted on Burleson in the past seven years. XVIII CAUSES OF BEING FOOLED ABOUT ONESELF I would like to give a diagnosis of this quite common disease, touch on the causes and see how they can be removed. There seem to be, speaking roughly and as far as my own observation of psychology goes, six main ways in which the average man is fooled about himself and needs to change his mind about himself. He is possessed with loco-mindedness or spotty-mindedness, sees things as they look to one kind or group of people--sees things in spotlights of personality, of place or time--all the rest black. Or he suffers from what one might call Lost-Mindedness--is always getting lost in anything he does, somewhere between the end and the means. He either loses the means in contemplating with unholy contemplation the end, like an idealist, or he loses the end in contemplating the means. The Habit of Flat-Thinking--of not thinking things out in four dimensions. The Habit of Evaporated Thinking. If I were to generalize in what I have to say about men who are fooled by themselves instead of rounding my idea out with some particular man everybody knows, like Mr. Burleson for instance, it would be evaporated thinking. The Habit of Not Having any Habits--leaving out standardized elements in things and not being machine-minded enough. Automatism, or Machine-Mindedness. These six forms of being fooled by oneself all boil down in the end--in their final cause, I suspect to the last one, to automatism or lack of conscious control of the mind. XIX LOCO-MINDEDNESS