Intellectual power

“ Mill tells us, “intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth ”

“ The intellectual Power, through words and things,
Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way! ”

“ And besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit. ”

“ For the intellectual power within a person, which operates with will, being one, will perform interchangeable actions. Through it, one acquires wisdom and skills, and with it, one tears, sews, conceals, builds, and many other such opposite or interchangeable actions. ”

“ It is the business of the critical power, as I said in the words already quoted, "in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is." Thus it tends, at last, to make an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail. ”

“ When, on the contrary, the love of intellectual power has been exercised on its noblest objects, in discovering and in contemplating the properties of created forms and in applying them to useful and benevolent purposes, in developing and admiring the laws of the eternal Intelligence, the destinies of the sentient principle are of a nobler kind, it rises to a higher planetary world. ”

“ You should establish it as a practical truth in your mind, that, with a strong will, the intellectual powers may be turned into every imaginable direction, and lead to excellence in one as surely as in another. ”

“ They wish to place themselves in a position of intellectual power by using all opportunities offered to them to secure an understanding of the principles as well as of the practice of the work in which they are engaged. ”

“ For a knowledge of the world therefore the investigation of our own intellectual powers is as necessary as that of the external world. The investigation of the first is, however, the duty of philosophy ”

“ That is, the fixed degree of intellectual power being granted, the degree of respect which we pay to its particular manifestation depends upon our sympathy with the cause which directed that manifestation. Thus, every one will grant that it is a noble thing to win successive battles ”

“ It results from this doctrine of the mind's growth, that success in all the departments of life over which intellect holds dominion depends, not merely on an outside knowledge of the facts and laws connected with each department, but on the assimilation of that knowledge into instinctive intelligence and active power. Take the good farmer, and you will find that ideas in him are endowed with will, and can work. Take the good general, and you will find that the principles of his profession are inwrought into the substance of his nature, and act with the velocity of instincts. ”

“ It is eminently the fact in regard to this class that "knowledge is power." The public promulgation of a philosophy profoundly intellectual, sufficient to train an already highly developed intellect, and to draw the allegiance of a lofty mind, cannot injure any. ”

“ And yet by his extraordinary intellectual activity and the concentration of all his faculties upon certain problems, he succeeded in preserving an example, and though not a unique yet an almost unsurpassable example, of the power which belongs to the man of one idea. ”

“ To strengthen the intellectual powers, whether for art or for science, whether it be the powers of observation or those of induction and deduction, is, when circumstances allow of their being made available for social purposes, of greater and more extensive importance, than all physical, and, a fortiori than all material improvements. But we know from the fundamental principle laid down in the first chapter of119 this work, that moral progress has even more to do with our well-being than intellectual progress. ”

“ It is not sufficient that man acknowledge the possession of his intellectual powers, it is also necessary that these powers should be developed, and their force directed to the discovery of correct principle, and the useful application of it to social life ”

“ Their intellectual powers are very limited, as they enter into no abstruse meditations, or abstract ideas; but what they know in the narrow range of supplying their wants, and combating with their fellow men, they know thoroughly, and are thereby led to consider themselves the standard of excellence. ”

“ To understand, we have analyzed the intellectual world into two classes, good and evil; and to discover the members of each class, we fix their qualities, not by the hypothetick, but the practical mode of reasoning. ”

“ The law that human intellects will seek their own intellectual level, providing the person is sound in principle, had worked out in her case, and, once she had made her decision, she clung to it with all the steadfastness of a strong and passionate nature. ”

“ The moral faculties are generally esteemed, and with justice, as of higher value than the intellectual powers. But we should always bear in mind that the activity of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental though secondary bases of conscience. This fact affords the strongest argument for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual faculties of every human being. ”

“ The greatest contrast is between what belongs to intelligence, and what belongs to the feelings and the will. The more strictly intellectual department comprises Mechanical Art, Language, the Sensible World, the Sciences, Fine Art ”

“ And when I turn to the history of philosophies, of religions, of the fine arts, or of the mechanical arts, I find everywhere traces of the force of individual genius, of the direct intervention of individual wills, and of the power of men to cause new systems of thought and action to come into existence, and to create new objects of admiration or utility. ”

“ Such contemplations as these Materialism, and the popular philosophy of mind and matter, alike forbid: they are only consistent with the Intellectual System.... The view of Life presented by the most refined deductions of the Intellectual Philosophy is that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived. ”

“ Now, can you establish any such difference between man's intellectual and moral powers, as will justify you, while acknowledging that you must use the one, in neglecting the other? Can you give any reason why you need not use the faculty which undoubtedly you possess of distinguishing between right and wrong, and the faculty, let us say, of "using the imagination in matters of science." ”

“ The phases of human intellect 30 harmonized the whole system of rule, and men acknowledged in time the one great axiom, that “Knowledge is power.”
As language, writing, and writing-materials are all, more or less, connected with any subject identified with the welfare, the interest, and honor of a nation, as well as of mankind, they will not be considered out of place if alluded to here in connection with the subject of this work. ”

“ For what purpose did God create rational and intellectual natures? for activity certainly. But rational and intellectual liberty is indispensible to rational and intellectual action.—For what purpose has God distributed among men talents so various, and manifold? ”

“ Knowledge merely gathered together, whether in books or in brains, is devoid of power, unless quickened into life by the thoughts and reflections of some practical worker. But when this is supplied knowledge becomes an engine of power. ”

“ If we are to work to good purpose we must take our stand, with the great thinkers and educators, on the broad field of man's nature, and act in the light of the only true ideal of education,—that its end is wisdom, virtue, knowledge, power, reverence, faith, health, behavior, hope, and love; in a word, whatever powers and capacities make for intelligence, for conduct, for character, for completeness of life. ”

“ To diffuse useful information, to further intellectual refinement, sure forerunner of moral improvement, to hasten the coming of the great day, when the dawn of general knowledge shall chase away the lazy, lingering mists of ignorance and error, even from the base of the great social pyramid, is indeed a high calling, in which the most splendid talents and consummate virtue may well press onward, eager to bear a part. ”

“ But, gentlemen, the exclusive devotion to mental and moral philosophy as contradistinguished from physical science, Exclusive devotion to Philosophy. and without sufficient subjection to the discipline of severer studies, such as logic, mathematics and science—is apt to develop the very faults to which your mental constitution is prone. The imaginative faculties rise and spread so as to overshadow the reason; the idealistic power flourishes so excessively as to draw the vigour away from the realistic faculties. ”

“ Let us eliminate the intellectual and moral qualities characteristic of each group, which establish notable differences between them, and let us consider only their inventive capacity as applied to practical life. ”

“ He can hardly deny, that when we set ourselves to enumerate the powers which go to the building up of human life, and say that they are the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social life and manners,—he can hardly deny that this scheme, though drawn in rough and plain lines enough, and 102 not pretending to scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly true representation of the matter. ”

“ Become a popular truth the idea returns, as it were, to its source and exerts an influence on the upper classes of a nation. In the long run it is intelligence that shapes the destiny of the world, but very indirectly. The philosophers who evolve ideas have long since returned to dust, when, as the result of the process I have just described, the fruit of their reflection ends by triumphing.
3. PRESTIGE Great power is given to ideas propagated by affirmation, repetition, and contagion by the circumstance that they acquire in time that mysterious force known as prestige. ”

“ And if the necessity of this connection be admitted, then the question arises, "How far is any man justified or not justified in adopting in intellectual matters the doctrine that the end justifies the means? ”

“ In this age, the intellectual forces shall still retain all their dominion and supremacy over the physical world, but the moral shall preside over the intellectual, and move them as God moves the stars, bringing them out of chaos, and wheeling them in circuits of unimaginable grandeur, and for purposes of beneficence yet inconceivable. ”

“ I am heart and soul with the Progressive as to the ultimate remedial powers of education. Moral advancement depends absolutely on the humanising influences of intellectual advancement. The foreseeing of consequences is a question of intelligence. ”

“ But that his natural means are feebler and fewer we cannot believe; for the exercise of his understanding, in a variety of ways which no brute intelligence can reach, is the greatest of his natural means,—and that power enables him to subdue all things to his use. ”

“ The character of the philosophy to which they were thus led, was determined by this want of courage and originality. There are various 229 antagonist principles of opinion, which seem alike to have their root in the intellectual constitution of man, and which are maintained and developed by opposing sects, when the intellect is in vigorous action. ”

“ There is no better definition of education than that of Pestalozzi—“the generation of power.” But what kind of power? Not merely power to think abstractly, to speculate, to moralize, to philosophize, but power to act intelligently. And the power to act intelligently involves the exertion, in greater or less degree, of all the powers, both mental and physical. ”

“ Nor can any lack of final verbal correction much diminish the intellectual value which many of the more thoughtful passages of the present work derive from a long, keen, and practical study of political phenomena, guided by personal experience of public life, and enlightened by a large, instinctive knowledge of the human heart. ”

“ As far as the material things of this world are concerned, and the material needs of the individual, the intellect is generally and properly acknowledged as the sovereign master. The rule of reason in private life; and the rule of science in civilization have become more and more the accepted standards of the world in which we live. ”

“ All intellectual arts, of whose excellencies, the understanding and the taste, cloathed with an equal degree of authority are judges, have their points, or zenith of perfection, which when they are once arrived at, he who attempts to advance them, commonly occasions their decline, and puts them in a train, which leads to their destruction. ”

“ It must equally in the sphere of science as of literature enlarge the mind, give it an organizing power and a philosophic habit by which each new acquirement is measured in relation to the whole, and made to take its place in a system. It must give a love of knowledge for its own sake, and the loftiness and independence of character which extensive knowledge should produce. ”

“ The world is ruled by ideas, by abstract thought. Society, literature, art, politics, in any given age are what the prevailing system of philosophy makes them. We recognize this clearly in studying any past period. ”

“ Culture, we are told, is reading, but reading with a purpose to guide it and with system. The purpose, it is presumed, is attainment, but what is the system? We are to have knowledge, and not only knowledge but right tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves by and with judgment. ”