Intellectual vigor

“ 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 objective mind, it will therefore be seen, is potentially selective, that is to say, the measure of its quality is its capacity to select at will intellectual nourishment from the whole range of humanity and nature, free from the oppression of its psychic environment. ”

“ How could aught but failure in solving the problems of mental philosophy be expected from a system, even though that system were sustained by surpassing intellectual force, that ignored the instrument, brain, by which the result, mind, is evolved? ”

“ But, while it seems to me that nothing can be more conducive to vigorous mental habits and intellectual self-reliance than the study which trains us to apply the analysis of thought to the every-day affairs of life, and to see in constantly changing phenomena the evidence of unchanging law; which leads us to distinguish the real from the apparent, and to mark, beneath the seething eddies of interest, passion, and prejudice, the great currents of our times—it is not on such incentives that I wish to dwell. ”

“ The higher intellectual powers of man, such as those of ratiocination, abstraction, self-consciousness, etc., probably follow from the continued improvement and exercise of the other mental faculties. ”

“ For, in real life, we ever start with certain general intellectual-emotive schemes and critical principles, as so many draw-nets and receptacles for the capture and sorting out of reality and of our experience of it. ”

“ Such a power is the result of a scientific formation of mind; it is an acquired faculty of judgment, of clear-sightedness, of sagacity, of wisdom, of philosophical reach of mind, and of intellectual self-possession and repose,—qualities which do not come of mere acquirement. ”

“ EDUCATION COMPLETE. Thus have we sketched, on a small scale, a complete scheme of education. How to live?—that is the question. How to use all your powers to the glory of God and the greatest advantage to yourselves and others—how to live completely? The intellectual part of your nature is superior to the physical; the moral higher than the intellectual ”

“ This is the mode in which we ordinarily reason, dealing with things directly, and as they stand, one by one, in the concrete, with an intrinsic and personal power, not a conscious adoption of an artificial instrument or expedient; and it is especially exemplified both in uneducated men, and in men of genius,—in those who know nothing of intellectual aids and rules, and in those who care nothing for them,—in those who are either without or above mental discipline. ”

“ Obeying the instinctive tendency of the mind, which impels to thought, keeping its laws, we gain satisfaction for the intellectual desires. One after another the faculties come into action, grow up to maturity, and intellectual welfare is complete with no miracle, but by obedience to the laws of mind. ”

“ I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought that it had consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the faculties, now seemed to me of primary importance. The cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let the world see that with informed heads you have reformed hearts, and that your intellectual training has been no one-sided system which has done all that is possible to be done for the mind, while it has left untended and untrained the heart, whence are the very issues of moral life. Good example is a language all can understand. ”

“ 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 love of novelty, the vanity of learning, the fascination of ceremony, the contagion of example, veneration for what appears above his immediate comprehension, and the innate activity of man's intellectual faculties, which, spurred by curiosity, prompts him to the acquisition of knowledge, whether true or false--all conspire to make him embrace a system of belief and scheme of instruction in which there is nothing that militates against prejudices already imbibed. ”

“ There must be, to begin with, a developing sense and feeling for truth and for duty as something distinct and occasionally conflicting with immediate impulse and desire, and there must be certain clear intellectual elements established already almost impregnably in the mind, certain primary distinctions and classifications. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And as he aspires to exhibit models of education, possessing higher excellencies than mechanical dexterity or mere intellectual acuteness; his anxious aim will be to make instruction in art and science, the culture of the understanding, and of the physical powers, subservient to the nobler intention of fostering and maturing the virtues of the heart. ”

“ Upon quickness of perception, power of analysis and combination, perseverance and endurance, depend our intellectual faculties, both in their degree and their kind; and are not they blunted or otherwise modified in a morbid state of the body? ”

“ The philosophical habit of mind is entirely absent—one-sided judgments, crude opinions make up the intellectual furniture of such undisciplined minds, and all the worst features of a superficial and unsubstantial education are certain sooner or later to develop themselves. ”

“ But the formation of new intellectual habits in men liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those larger fruits in the advancement and culture of learning which, in 'the hour-glass' of that first movement, could be, as yet, only prophecy and anticipation. ”

“ We have an illustration of this progress in the fact of continual occurrence, that conceptions which prove inadmissible to the minds of one generation in consequence either of their want of intellectual power to apprehend them or of their preoccupation by other habits of thought, subsequently find a universal acceptance, and even come to be approved as "self-evident." ”

“ Then intellectual attainments, though calculated to satisfy the wants of the perceptive and reasoning faculties, cannot still the cravings of the conscience, cannot meet the demands of the moral and religious emotions. ”

“ The rational, spiritual, or even physical elements, which may enter and compose this, his summum bonum, represent those intellectual interests which may be termed ultimate, for the very reason, that they relate to what the thinker deems his beatitude. These ultimate intellectual interests possess an absolute sanction, for the lack of which whatever lies outside of them tends to adjudge itself vain. ”

“ And we may regard the intelligence driving at those ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, the ardent sense for all the new and changing combinations of them which man's development brings with it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them perfectly, as another force. ”

“ He must study the nature of the effect that he is to produce, and of the materials upon which he is to work, and adopt, after mature deliberation, a plan to accomplish his purpose founded upon the principles which ought always to regulate the action of mind upon mind, and adapted to produce the intellectual effect which he wishes to accomplish. ”

“ It is an effort of prime importance to trace exhaustively the inducements and allurements to intellectual exertion. What are the intrinsic charms of knowledge, whether in pursuit or in possession? The difficulty of the answer is increased rather than diminished by the flow of fifty years' rhetoric. ”

“ As he carves out his path to this or that goal, in accordance with his spiritual interests and in compliance with the contingencies of life, he will avail himself of this initial instruction, use it to further his progress towards this or that end, good or evil as the case may be. For intellectual instruction, it is argued, can be made subservient either to noble impulses or to base motives. ”

“ The desire, the duty, the necessity of the age in which we live is education, or that culture which developes, enlarges, and enriches each individual intelligence, according to the measure of its capacity, by familiarizing it with the facts and laws of nature and human life. But, in this rage for information, we too often overlook the mental constitution of the being we would inform,--detaching the apprehensive from the active powers, weakening character by overloading memory, and reaping a harvest of imbeciles after we may have flattered ourselves we had sown a crop of geniuses. ”

“ We are attempting generalization about a class of remarkably peculiar and difficult persons. They are persons either of great intellectual power or simply of great imaginative power, whose bias and quality it is to apply these exceptional powers not directly and simply to their personal advancement and enrichment, but primarily through philosophical, scientific, or artistic channels, to the increase of knowledge or of wisdom or of both. ”

“ The education of which I speak is expansion and discipline of mind rather than learning; and its tendency is not so much to form profound dogmatists, or erudite canonists, or acute casuists, as to cultivate a habit of mind, which, for want of a better word, may be called philosophical; to enlarge the intellect, to strengthen and supple its faculties, to enable it to take connected views of things and their relations, and to see clear amid the mazes of human error and through the mists of human passion. ”

“ There are, also, interior senses, apprehensive powers of the mind, which equally crave culture, and which depend for their precision and force on careful education and diligent use. Mere observation, experience, or study, cannot give knowledge that will be of any avail. ”

“ Ideals, it is true, are attained but seldom, and with you as with us all, mental training is far from perfect, and zeal for knowledge far from pure. Yet we trust that in no inconsiderable measure you have a sense of the dignity of wisdom a sense of your own need of it, and a power at the same time of gathering it henceforward for yourselves. Thus you are complete with the completeness of a seed. ”

“ It was so in my training. We seek to silence all opinions, all half-truths, all thinking, in fact, in order to Know. We postulate, of course, a center of Spontaneous Knowledge, or Genius, above the mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay: and though whatever capacity of this sort I attained, was due to the fact that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was most perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that the school logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments of this drilling. ”

“ You are no doubt aware that the Almighty, desiring to lead us to perfection and to improve our state of society, has revealed to us laws which are to regulate our actions. These laws, however, presuppose an advanced state of intellectual culture. We must first form a conception of the Existence of the Creator according to our capabilities; that is, we must have a knowledge of Metaphysics. But this discipline can only be approached after the study of Physics; ”

“ The mind thinks with what it knows; and, if you alter the knowledge in any one whit, you alter the thinking instrumentality in proportion. Our whole practice of education is based on this idea, and yet somehow the idea is allowed to lurk. ”

“ He should feel in some measure the power of that group of studies which have to do with mental and moral processes considered apart from the world of outward phenomena, psychology, ethics, philosophy, religion. He needs to relate his individual activity to the larger life of the whole by some genuine grasp of fundamentals in his thinking. ”