This page has been validated.
A TALE OF THE FUTURE.
69

a great mind absorbs all it hears, and reads, and sees, giving out nothing in the same words or form in which it had been absorbed. When a great mind speaks or writes, it expresses something original, influenced no doubt by the stored knowledge, but it comes out in a new and a bright garb that is most refreshing.

"But inferior minds can only shine in quoting the sayings or in relating the doings of others. These are of the parrot type; they amuse for a time, but when their store of quotations is exhausted they are like the water tank that has run dry, and has to await refilling. They can create nothing fresh or new. So it is, and so it must remain. That cry about equality that has so often made a noise in the world is a snare and a delusion. Human intelligence cannot be equal, and so the inevitable must remain. 'Tis the will of the Creator, and we cannot, with our poor intellectual power, alter it even if it were desirable to do so."

We had by this time passed through a door in the outer wall that surrounded the courts