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TWO TYPES OF THINKER: It is wrong to assume that a man obsessed with thought is necessarily a thinker, a philosopher, a genius. For when a man is compelled to think out of habit from fear of not thinking, of not appearing to be enough of a thinker in his own eyes, there is a reasonable chance that he is less a philosopher than a dupe of his own illusions, a slave of a mentality which assumes it necessary for a thinker to think as much as possible, regardless of the subject or context, if he is to remain a philosopher and not degenerate into an average mind. The idea of thinking, in such a head, is ultimately more important than what is actually being thought about.

For it must be admitted, from the converse standpoint, that a genuine thinker - a man, in other words, who thinks not merely for the sake of flattering his ego or filling a vacuum but, more importantly, in order to discover something new about the world he lives in and the best methods of adjusting himself to it - will always stop himself thinking beyond a certain length of time simply because experience and common sense will have taught him that that is the best course to follow if he is to remain relatively natural, sane, perceptive, lucid, and mentally resilient. As a thinker, in this context, he will know that his chief duty is towards himself, and not only for himself but inevitably for the sake of other people as well; that his intelligence should therefore be used to his advantage - as, unfortunately, is rarely the case with the other type of thinker, a type who, obsessed by the urge to think, is essentially a pathological phenomenon, scarcely a man of wisdom. For philosophy should have earnest connections, after all, with the art of living wisely.