Text 5 [A] Defining genius. [B] Bias attacked. [C] Truly great mind is born, not made. [D] The line between the exceptional and the ordinary blurs. [E] Brain steers, labor facilitates. [F] Great lesson from a great character. The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means, and the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life of every day, with its cares, necessities, and duties, afford ample opportunity for acquiring experience of the best kind; and its most beaten paths provide the true worker with abundant scope for effort and room for self-improvement. The road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful. ______ Locked, Helvetius, and Diderot believed that all men have an equal aptitude for genius. But while admitting to the fullest extent the wonderful achievements of labor, and recognizing the fact that men of the most distinguished genius have invariably been found the most indefatigable workers, it must nevertheless be sufficiently obvious that, without the original endowment of heart and brain, no amount of labor, however well applied, could have produced a Shakespeare, a Newton, a Beethoven, or a Michelangelo.