The reason: tremendous public disapproval. He was considered a freak, and constantly tormented by his peers.

Contrary to what you may have believed, intelligence is not popular, and this is why most people have learned how to dumb down their own.

Thus, it is not nature that has deprived us of expressing our own natural brilliance, but history and society.

We have been brought up to believe that we are not that bright. And this belief is a historical legacy, because high intelligence has never been very popular. A highly intelligent population is not the ideal of religious and political forces, and since the beginning of recorded history, human intelligence has been suppressed.

Today, with our tremendous explosion of knowledge, we are finding it increasingly necessary to open our minds to our mental potential. Although, of course, the same compressive social forces are still hard at work. For example, our modern day schools still use the model of industrial age training, despite the tremendous breakthroughs in accelerated learning psychology clearly demonstrated by people like Georgi Lozanov, Tony Buzan, and Win Wenger.

Or, here's another example. Take radio and television. These two mediums are capable of giving every listener or viewer a first class university education. But what are they used to do? Negative news footage, social banter, and silly shows and movies. Anything deep is considered controversial.

You may, of course, argue, that William Sidis, had wonderful genes, because both his parents were brilliant as well; but, the fact remains, that even if one cannot be as brilliant as a known genius, your neurology is capable of tremendous feats, much more than you have ever known.

However, when you study the history of known geniuses, you find for the most part that they became geniuses because of how they were raised. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, they found allies, usually intelligent parents or mentors, that sheltered them from social conditioning about what they were capable of doing. Thus, they overcame the social forces that compel most people to develop mediocre minds.

In other words, the biological equipment is there for anyone to be highly intelligent. It just has never been used much. In many cases, it has been actively suppressed by negative environmental conditioning.

You are much brighter than you think.

Imagine what would happen if you were to start a program of mental cultivation? For example, each day, you can decide to be more creative with one aspect of your life.