Common sense is, generally speaking, merely a dislike of complications, and a consequent refusal on the part of the individual to discover them.

People of vivid imagination delight in magnifying the difficulties of life by supposing themselves the centre of much scheming, plotting, and cheap fiction.

They cheerfully give their time and their powers to the study of social diplomacy.

It is reserved for people intellectually very high or very low in the scale to lead a really simple life.

The average mind of the world is terribly muddled on most points, and altogether beside itself as regards its individual existence; for a union of much imagination, unbounded vanity, and unfathomable ignorance can never take the place of an intellect, while such a combination cannot fail to destroy the blessed _vis inertiae_ of the primitive fool, who only sees what is visible, instead of evolving the phantoms of an airy unreality from the bottomless abyss of his own so-called consciousness.