Consider, again, this most frequent observation. A boy will distinguish himself greatly in the high school, and perhaps in the first half of his college course. He seizes with avidity upon the elementary notions of mathematics, for instance; he revels in problems and "originals." But on approaching the steeper ascents, he finds his steps falter and his senses reel. The subtler theories and processes more and more elude his grasp; the more highly developed concepts become more and more unmanageable. Let him be never so thoroughly familiar with the mid-regions, the heights remain forever inaccessible. In such a case the honest teacher and the honest student will both admit that further pursuit would be well-nigh profitless; while something may still be learned in a way, yet real mastery is out of the question, and original work as impossible as flight to the moon. The limits of native power have been reached, and all attempts to transcend them are idle. In music, in plastic art, in literature, in all higher forms of mental activity, even in the professions and in business, the same state of case is present. The mere technique may indeed be learned step by step, and it is by no means profitless or unimportant. But not all the "stages of culture" conceivable could ever arm the most persistent student with "faculty" to produce the Appassionata, or the Last Judgement, or Hamlet, or even a Wall Street corner in stocks. On the other hand, the inborn "faculty" speeds swiftly and easily through all such preparatory "stages of culture," or even flanks them altogether, boldly breaking new paths through unexplored regions. Nor needs it that these preliminaries should have been traversed by the ancestors of the richly endowed, who may have had no artistic or scientific experience whatever. At every point, then, this Waitzian notion of "faculty," as the efflux of culture, is seen to be an extreme distortion of the truth.