Bernard Edmonds
“My judgment is quite content merely to protect itself from confusion and unruliness: as for its weakness, it willingly acknowledges it and avows it.”
Michel de Montaigne, On Solitude
R: Perfection of the Mind
According to Rene Descartes the perfection of the mind is found in three things:
1. Promptitude of thought– Thought that reacts to the immediate situation, that can be formed and dismissed without any great hesitation, that can be analytical and critical and yet at the same time be vulnerable to the spontaneity that only great minds can offer.
2. Clearness and distinctness of imagination – Not strictly speaking originality but the ability to think beyond that which is presented to you, beyond the tangible answers and things of pure clarity. To be able to ask those questions which are most vital, even if they are questions of nonsense and banality–for sometimes it is a question that seems so simple, so plain, so uninspired and unproviding, that can reward us with the most breadth and depth of understanding (given we pursue the ends of such questions with such fervor and depth, given we overturn every possibility, and glance up every tree and down every root, branch, and leaf, given we sleep not in the search for such answers. given we have resolve enough to see the question through whatever unexpected, obstructing paths and discoveries that are to be hand, that we have resolve enough to reach the ultimate resolution untainted by cowardice or indecision.)
3. Fullness and readiness of memory – To be able to recall that which has happened, to be able to retain more, and then to be able to exert and extract the fundamental lessons provided at the core of each memory.
This is what makes a great mind.