Intellectual superiority

“ For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. ”

“ There is, however, ground to recognise a slight intellectual superiority in the upper social class, apart from environment, and so great is the significance for civilisation of quality that even when the difference seems slight it must not be regarded as negligible. ”

“ I know there are illustrious exceptions to the truth of this statement; but do we not rightly esteem the Elizabeths and Somervilles that occasionally challenge our admiration of their intellectual strength, as exceptions to the ordinary female mind? Ascribe this difference, if you please, to the neglect of their education, say that man is only the superior, because of his higher advantages of culture, still must not the fact of his present mental superiority be conceded? ”

“ By way of providing a substitute for real—I mean intellectual—superiority, which is seldom to be met with, and intolerable when it is found, society has capriciously adopted a false kind of superiority, conventional in its character, and resting upon arbitrary principles,—a tradition, as it were, handed down in the higher circles, and, like a password, subject to alteration ”

“ To such persons nothing appears of any moment but the indulgence of a domineering intellectual superiority, to the disregard and discomfiture of their own and everybody else’s comfort. Mounted on an abstract proposition, they trample on every courtesy and decency of behaviour ”

“ Up to the point which their organization permits, they possess and exercise faculties akin to those of man. But it is in the degree and perfection to which these faculties attain that the superiority of man is evident; and here the difference is vast indeed. The intellectual superiority of an ordinary man over the most sagacious animal, which nevertheless can scarcely be taught the simplest relation of numbers, is too vast to be readily comprehended ”

“ The free and full possession of his faculties gives him power to turn himself to whatever may be demanded of him, whether it be to govern wisely, or to counsel judiciously, or to write gracefully, or to plead eloquently. Whatever course in life he may take, whatever line of thought or investigation he may pursue, his intellectual culture will give him superiority over men who, with equal or greater talents, lack his education ”

“ The one shall never feel the want of intellectual resources, because he can back his opinions with his person; the other shall lose the advantages of mental superiority, seek to anticipate contempt by giving offence, court mortification in despair of popularity, and even in the midst of public and private admiration, extorted slowly by incontrovertible proofs of genius, shall never get rid of the awkward, uneasy sense of personal weakness and insignificance, contracted by early and long-continued habit. ”

“ But the facts, about which there is no dispute, instead of being the result of generic distinctions, are the effects of a much later cause—superior intellectual culture. Not that the rangers of those days were highly educated men, in the ordinary acceptation of the term; but any degree in the scale of civilization, by the providence of God, possesses measureless advantages—in all the pursuits of life—over every lower grade. And, though these were decidedly ignorant men, their evident superiority over their enemies—without contradiction in terms—was the fruit of their intelligence. ”

“ The superiority of intellectual, to sensual pleasures, consists rather, in their filling up more time, in their having a larger range, and in their being less liable to satiety, than in their being more real and essential. ”

“ In what this disparity consists it may not be easy to state with precision. But from an observation of many years, I venture to suggest that the chief natural superiority manifested by the favored few over their competitors in the intellectual conflict is to be found in the facility with which their attention is directed and confined to its proper subjects. That youth may be regarded as fortunate indeed [165] who in early life can restrain his wandering thoughts and tie down his mind at will to the contemplation of whatever he wishes to comprehend and to make his own. ”

“ In so far as differences of cultural level are associated with differences of level of innate [Pg 120] intellectual and moral qualities, cultural superiority must be regarded as the effect, rather than the cause, of innate mental superiority. ”

“ His conscious superiority lends force to his suspicion that he is a worthy object for the opposing powers to contend for, a conclusion verified by the inward strifes he feels, as well as by the trials of life to which he is exposed. ”

“ Given a man with a moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of intellectual mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? ”

“ Shall inferior beings, merely by the power of instinct qualities, show more care and prudence in rearing their tender offspring, than proud man, with all his lordly and boasted superiority of human reason? ”

“ Is it, then, that superior abilities, which enable a man to gain prestige and to impress his ideas and sentiments upon his fellow men and so to influence public opinion, are commonly combined with a natural superiority of moral sentiment, with a love of right and a hatred of injustice? ”

“ If you began emphasizing interest instead of drudgery, you might find yourself calling into question the sincerity of those “impersonal intellectual interests.” If you emphasized efficiency instead of knowledge, you might make uncomfortably evident the unreality of much of what passes for culture in society to-day. ”

“ And with the ever-growing vastness of what there is to be known, and the awful specialty now required of the knower, it appears more and more as if the only superiority which the so-called “liberally” educated man can have over others, is just the possession of this background, which narrowly educated men have perforce to go without. ”

“ Such words are vague and such ideas are inadequate, but their meaning is unmistakable. What the colleges—teaching humanities by examples which may be special, but which must be typical and pregnant—should at least try to give us, is a general sense of what, under various disguises, superiority has always signified and may still signify. The feeling for a good human job anywhere, the admiration of the really admirable, the disesteem of what is cheap and trashy and impermanent,—this is what we call the critical sense, the sense for ideal values. It is the better part of what men know as wisdom. ”

“ In order to reach such particular knowledge we must study separate types of superiority and inferiority, and we must master the special features of their formation, which in proportion to their definiteness of course lose generality of application. ”

“ Should I therefore consider myself as become by this lot essentially your superior, and of a higher order of being than the rest of my fellow-creatures; should I foolishly imagine myself without wisdom superior to the wise, without knowledge to the learned, without courage to the brave, and without goodness and virtue to the good and virtuous ”

“ It may be remarked, that they whose condition has not afforded them the light of moral or religious instruction, and who collect all their ideas by their own eyes, and digest them by their own understandings, seem to consider those who are placed in ranks of remote superiority, as almost another and higher species of beings. ”

“ Their selection of abnormal and detestable subjects is a distinct indication of intellectual weakness instead of vigor; supreme genius alone perceives the beauty and dignity of human nature and human life in their common conditions, and can bring to the surface of vulgar, every-day existence the hidden glory that lies beneath it. ”

“ What novelty is worth the sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?—George Eliot.
The truth is, that most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.—Sydney Smith. ”

“ If this man felt the pride of conscious superiority, it was scarcely to be condemned when accompanied with such laudable exertions to render himself, through that superiority, a benefactor to society. ”

“ No doubt the consciousness of superiority is favourable to the cultivation of certain virtues—the virtues of the patron; just as the consciousness of inferiority is favourable to the cultivation of certain other virtues—the virtues of the patronized. ”

“ There is hardly any situation more unfavorable to the maintenance of elevation of character or force of intellect, than to live in the society, and seek by preference the sympathy, of inferiors in mental endowments. Why is it that we constantly see in life 19 so much of intellectual and moral promise followed by such inadequate performance, but because the aspirant has compared himself only with those below himself, and has not sought improvement or stimulus from measuring himself with his equals or superiors? ”

“ What, after all, was the use of genius except as a stepping-stone to the solid good things of the earth? Where lay the advantage of superiority to ordinary men, if it could not be employed as a lever with which to raise oneself? ”

“ Now I believe it may be affirmed, that although there has been much literature in former ages which was both vigorous and undisciplined, still when an age presents, as ours does, living examples of perfect intellectual discipline, whoever falls below them in this respect contents himself with the very kind of inferiority which of all inferiorities is the easiest to avoid. ”

“ And that those, who have gained the esteem and veneration of the world, by their knowledge or their genius, are by no means exempt from the solicitude which any other kind of dignity produces, may be conjectured from the innumerable artifices which they make use of to degrade a superior, to repress a rival, or obstruct a follower; artifices so gross and mean, as to prove evidently how much a man may excel, in learning, without being either more wise or more virtuous than those whose ignorance he pities or despises. ”

“ The mere acquisition of knowledge, or the simple development of the intellect alone, may be of little value. Many who have received such imperfect or one-sided education, have proved to be but ciphers in the world; while, again, intellectual giants have sometimes been found to be but intellectual demons. Indeed, some of the worst characters in history have been men of scholarly ability and of rare academic attainments. ”

“ Among those, whose hopes of distinction, or riches, arise from an opinion of their intellectual attainments, it has been, from age to age, an established custom to complain of the ingratitude of mankind to their instructors, and the discouragement which men of genius and study suffer from avarice and ignorance, from the prevalence of false taste, and the encroachment of barbarity. ”

“ The prejudice against our intellectual superiors, which leads us to take their well-meant endeavors in our behalf as of the nature of personal insults, is matched by the equally irrational repulsion which many superior people have for their inferiors. ”

“ We sometimes meet with individuals who have formed their whole character on this maxim, and who ridiculously affect a decided and dogmatical tone of superiority over others, from an uncommon degree both of natural and artificial stupidity. ”

“ Distinctly gives the patronizing interest, as somewhat gives the contemptuous indifference, with which a superior person is to be conceived surveying life; and context too often reveals that the superiority is imaginary. ”

“ The first of these reasons which have influenced writers may be dismissed with the remark, that the position of superiority which man has held, and more than ever holds, depends, not entirely upon his powers of mind, but upon a combination of faculties, physical, mental, moral, and, above all, spiritual ”

“ Because that deplorable profession of unbelief supposes an uncommon understanding, strength, and superiority of mind, and a singularity which is pleasing and flattering; on the contrary, that the passions infer only licentiousness and debauchery, of which all men are capable, though they are not so of that wonderful superiority attributed to itself by impiety. ”

“ How far the mentally-superior may, with a balance of benefit to society, shield the mentally-inferior from the evil results of their inferiority, is a question too involved to be here discussed at length. ”

“ One sees on every hand to-day persons occupying positions of importance who have been taken through all the motions of education, from the bottom to the top, but who always belong to the intellectual lower classes whatever their positions may be, because they are not masters. They are clumsy and futile with knowledge. Their culture has not been made over into them—selves. ”

“ Especially is this the case where the superiority consists, not in mental or moral endowments and attainments, but in adventitious circumstances, such as beauty or strength of person, station in society, wealth, or the accident of birth—circumstances which imply no necessary worth in the possessor, no real and inherent superiority to those on whom he looks down. ”

“ But then ascendant is to be gained by degrees, and by those arts only which experience and the knowledge of the world teaches; for few are mean enough to be bullied, though most are weak enough to be bubbled. I have often seen people of superior, governed by people of much inferior parts, without knowing or even suspecting that they were so governed. This can only happen when those people of inferior parts have more worldly dexterity and experience, than those they govern. ”