Intelligence is not an exclusive monopoly of genius; it is an attribute of all
men, and the differences are only a matter of degree. If conditions of
existence are destructive to genius, they are destructive to every man, each in
proportion to his intelligence. If genius is penalized, so is the faculty of
intelligence in every other man. There is only this difference: the average man
does not possess the genius’s power of self-confident resistance, and will
break much faster; he will give up his mind, in hopeless bewilderment, under
the first touch of pressure.