If, as has been said, intelligence begins with the ability to marvel, it also follows that the more the notion of normality spreads, the more difficult it is for intelligence to manifest itself. In other words: starting with the universe, passing through nature, through society and culminating in the details of everyday life, looking at all of this and seeing it as natural, ordinary, instead of being amazed at the extraordinary succession of factors necessary to generate it, is actually restraining the manifestation of intellect.