They are the choicest gifts of Heaven's prodigality, a fertile genius, a profound intellect, a pleasant and refined taste. To think well is good, to think right is better... To think aright is the fruit of a reasonable nature... In the meantime good taste seasons the whole of life.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The truly exceptional person combines three gifts that rarely come together: a fertile mind that generates ideas, a deep intellect that judges them soundly, and a refined taste that seasons everything with discernment. The three are distinct and each is incomplete without the others. To think abundantly is good, but to think rightly is better, and thinking rightly is the fruit of a sound judging nature, not mere cleverness. Taste is the third and often underrated element, the discernment that flavours a whole life and lifts competence into quality. Most capable people have one or two of these; the prodigy has all three working together. The counsel is both a standard for recognising real excellence and a map for your own development: cultivate not just fertility of mind but soundness of judgment and refinement of taste, because the rare combination is what greatness is made of.
Practice
- Develop all three, not just one: the fertile mind that generates, the deep judgment that thinks rightly, and the refined taste that discerns (maxim 296's noble qualities in the mind).
- Prize thinking rightly over merely thinking much; abundance of ideas without sound judgment is the lesser half.
- Do not underrate taste; the discernment that seasons the whole of life is what lifts competence into quality.
Use this when
- Use this as a map for your own development; find which of the three you are short on and build it, rather than leaning only on your strong one.
- Use it as a standard for recognising real excellence; the rare combination of all three is what marks the genuinely exceptional.
Ignore this when
- Don't expect all three fully in most people; even one or two well developed is valuable, and the full set is rare by definition (maxim 203 calibrates rarity).
- Don't chase fertility of ideas alone; without judgment and taste it produces much that is not good (maxim 283 pairs discovery with sound means).
A picture of it
Overflowing with ideas but weak in judging them, an entrepreneur generates ten ventures for every one worth pursuing, and keeps chasing the fertile-but-unfiltered stream into trouble. Recognising that a fertile mind is only one of the three gifts, he deliberately builds the other two: the judgment to tell the right idea from the merely clever one, and the taste to refine what he keeps. As the judgment and discernment catch up to the fertility, his hit rate transforms, because the ideas are now filtered by a mind that thinks rightly and seasoned by a taste that discerns. The generation had never been his problem; the missing two-thirds of the prodigy's stack had been.
A fertile mind, a deep judgment, a refined taste: the exceptional need all three. Cultivate the two you lack, because greatness is the rare full set.