Some minds are brighter than others, and you want yours to be bright and strong. You want to think of many ideas and to think them well. You want to think all round any subject of your consideration, not only on one side of it, as prejudiced or timid thinkers do. While you are making the mind bright, however, care must be taken to avoid the danger that besets brilliant minds everywhere. The quick thinker who is about to write upon some social subject, such as that of prison reform or education, will find thoughts rapidly rising in his mind, and very often he will be carried away by some of the first that come, and he will follow them up and write brilliantly along the lines of thought to which they lead. But probably he will miss something of great importance to the understanding of the matter, because he has left the central subject of thought before he has considered it from every point of view. As an example of this, a chess player, captivated by some daring plan of his own, will sometimes forget to look to his defences, and will find himself the subject of sudden disaster. Sometimes a duller mind, or at any rate a slower one, will be more balanced and will at last come nearer to the truth. So, while you do want a quick mind, not one that is hard to warm up like a cheap motor-car engine on a cold winter’s morning, you do not want one that will start with a leap and run away with you, but one that will dwell long enough on a chosen subject to see it from every point of view, before it begins the varied explorations of thought in connection with it that it should make upon different lines.
