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Mere experience can as little as reading take the place of thought.  Mere empiricism bears the same relation to thinking as eating to digestion and assimilation.  When experience boasts that it alone, by its discoveries, has advanced human knowledge, it is as though the mouth boasted that it was its work alone to maintain the body.

The works of all really capable minds are distinguished from all other works by a character of decision and definiteness, and, in consequence, of lucidity and clearness.  This is because minds like these know definitely and clearly what they wish to express—­whether it be in prose, in verse, or in music.  Other minds are wanting in this decision and clearness, and therefore may be instantly recognised.

The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest standard is the directness of its judgment.  Everything it utters is the result of thinking for itself; this is shown everywhere in the way it gives expression to its thoughts.  Therefore it is, like a prince, an imperial director in the realm of intellect.  All other minds are mere delegates, as may be seen by their style, which has no stamp of its own.

Hence every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognises nobody above him.  His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself.  He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorised it.  On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.

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The people who are so eager and impatient to settle disputed questions, by bringing forward authorities, are really glad when they can place the understanding and insight of some one else in the field in place of their own, which are deficient.  Their number is legion.  For, as Seneca says, “Unusquisque mavult credere, quam judicare.”

The weapon they commonly use in their controversies is that of authorities:  they strike each other with it, and whoever is drawn into the fray will do well not to defend himself with reason and arguments; for against a weapon of this kind they are like horned Siegfrieds, immersed in a flood of incapacity for thinking and judging.  They will bring forward their authorities as an argumentum ad verecundiam and then cry victoria.

* * * * *

In the realm of reality, however fair, happy, and pleasant it may prove to be, we always move controlled by the law of gravity, which we must be unceasingly overcoming.  While in the realm of thought we are disembodied spirits, uncontrolled by the law of gravity and free from penury.

This is why there is no happiness on earth like that which at the propitious moment a fine and fruitful mind finds in itself.