A clear, cheerful and reasonable mind, such as brings a man happiness, is dependent on the relation established between his intellect and his will—­a relation in which the intellect is predominant.  But genius and a great mind depend on the relation between a man’s intellect and that of other people—­a relation in which his intellect must exceed theirs, and at the same time his will may also be proportionately stronger.  That is the reason why genius and happiness need not necessarily exist together.

When the individual is distraught by cares or pleasantry, or tortured by the violence of his wishes and desires, the genius in him is enchained and cannot move.  It is only when care and desire are silent that the air is free enough for genius to live in it.  It is then that the bonds of matter are cast aside, and the pure spirit—­the pure, knowing subject—­remains.  Hence, if a man has any genius, let him guard himself from pain, keep care at a distance, and limit his desires; but those of them which he cannot suppress let him satisfy to the full.  This is the only way in which he will make the best use of his rare existence, to his own pleasure and the world’s profit.

To fight with need and care or desires, the satisfaction of which is refused and forbidden, is good enough work for those who, were they free of would have to fight with boredom, and so take to bad practices; but not for the man whose time, if well used, will bear fruit for centuries to come.  As Diderot says, he is not merely a moral being.

Mechanical laws do not apply in the sphere of chemistry, nor do chemical laws in the sphere in which organic life is kindled.  In the same way, the rules which avail for ordinary men will not do for the exceptions, nor will their pleasures either.

It is a persistent, uninterrupted activity that constitutes the superior mind.  The object to which this activity is directed is a matter of subordinate importance; it has no essential bearing on the superiority in question, but only on the individual who possesses it.  All that education can do is to determine the direction which this activity shall take; and that is the reason why a man’s nature is so much more important than his education.  For education is to natural faculty what a wax nose is to a real one; or what the moon and the planets are to the sun.  In virtue of his education a man says, not what he thinks himself, but what others have thought and he has learned as a matter of training; and what he does is not what he wants, but what he has been accustomed to do.

The lower animals perform many intelligent functions much better than man; for instance, the finding of their way back to the place from which they came, the recognition of individuals, and so on.  In the same way, there are many occasions in real life to which the genius is incomparably less equal and fitted than the ordinary man.  Nay more:  just as animals never commit a folly in the strict sense of the word, so the average man is not exposed to folly in the same degree as the genius.