But the average person is of very great importance.

The greatest share in the work of the world is probably done by "average" people, not only for the obvious reason that there are more of them, but also because they are more accessible, more reliable, and more available for all kinds of responsibility than those who have made themselves useless by want of principle, or those whose genius carries them away from the ordinary line.

They are accessible because their fellow-creatures are not afraid of them; they are not too fine for ordinary wear, nor too original to be able to follow a line laid down for them, and if they take a line of their own it is usually intelligible to others.
To these valuable "average" persons the importance of some study of the elements of philosophy is very great.

They can hardly go through an elementary course of mental science without wishing to learn more, and being lifted to a higher plane.

The weak point in the average person is a tendency to sink into the commonplace, because the consciousness of not being brilliant induces timidity, and timidity leads to giving up effort and accepting a fancied impossibility of development which from being supposed, assumed, and not disturbed, becomes in the end real.
On the other hand the strong point of the average person is very often common sense, that singular, priceless gift which gives a touch of likeness among those who possess it in all classes, high or low--in the sovereign, the judge, the ploughman, or the washerwoman, a likeness that is somewhat like a common language among them and makes them almost like a class apart.