Intellectuality

“ As, throughout life, not what we are, but what we shall be thought, is the question; so in education, the question is, not the intrinsic value of knowledge, so much as its extrinsic effects on others. ”

“ No less admirable are, on the one hand, his synthetic skill and the logic of his arguments, and, on the other, his subtle and discriminating analyses, which weigh the finest shades of thought and dissect each subject with all the accuracy of science. ”

“ Let us now ask: "What is the dominant note in intellectual life today?" Is it not a greater care to determine the truth? Is it not the investigating spirit? Is it not that spirit which we may designate generically as the scientific spirit? ”

“ The reaction from intellectualism, which is, in my opinion, the predominant characteristic of contemporary philosophy, will act as our guide in the study of the prevailing tone of present-day thought touching the theory of knowledge. ”

“ Trained by tradition, reason is called common sense. Trained by personal experience to the knowledge of principles, reason is called science. Trained by the contemplation of principles to the perfection of the intellect, reason is called wisdom. ”

“ And the range of topics is very wide; it embraces science and art, history and philosophy; above all, the knowledge of human nature that teaches how the mind he addresses is to be convinced and persuaded, and how a willing ear is to be won to his discourse. ”

“ How the understanding is best conducted to the knowledge of science, by what steps it is to be led forwards in its pursuit, how it is to be cured of its defects, and habituated to new studies, has been the inquiry of many acute and learned men, whose observations I shall not either adopt or censure; my purpose being to consider the moral discipline of the mind, and to promote the increase of virtue rather than of learning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The number of these ideas is the measure of our knowledge; exactness of thought depends on their clearness and precision; the art of comparing them one with another is called human reason. Thus what I call the reasoning of the senses, or the reasoning of the child, consists in the formation of simple ideas through the associated experience of several sensations; what I call the reasoning of the intellect, consists in the formation, of complex ideas through the association of several simple ideas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A cultivated mind—I do not mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties—finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it; in the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind past and present, and their prospects in the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am not able to find such a term;—talent, ability, genius, belong distinctly to the raw material, which is the subject-matter, not to that excellence which is the result of exercise and training. When we turn, indeed, to the particular kinds of intellectual perfection, words are forthcoming for our purpose, as, for instance, judgment, taste, and skill; yet even these belong, for the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon practice or upon art, and not to any perfect condition of the intellect, considered in itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But what the interested learners ask of idealistic teachers to-day is, as you are all aware, a more explicit statement as to just how Thought and Purpose, Idea and Will, and above all finite thought and will, and absolute thought and will, are, by any idealist, to be conceived as related to each other. ”

“ But that which par excellence is termed knowledge, bears the impress of judgment and reason, in the exercise of which there will be rational cognitions alone, applying purely to objects of thought, and resulting from the bare energy of the soul. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Those Things that relate to Science, and Discipline, such as the Ideas of the Mind, Virtues, Vices, Manners, and the like, are illustrated by being explained; but no one will say, that by being explained they are imitated. ”

“ I am convinced that such among you as may intend to hereafter prosecute your speculative researches in a profound and zealous spirit, and to study philosophy both in itself and in its history,—I am convinced that you must build your labours upon the distinction now brought before you. ”

“ The philosophic critic, at least, will value, even in works of imagination, seemingly the most intuitive, the power of the understanding in them, their logical process of construction, the spectacle of a supreme intellectual dexterity which they afford. ”

“ For the rest, how it is necessary to distinguish between discourse and intellect, and science and art, and prudence and wisdom, belongs rather partly to the physical, and partly to the ethical theory. ”

“ Now, therefore, let us, who understand each other, learn some logic together, and write so that the world shall understand something of which you have caught a glimpse, and which you know to be part of the scientific framework round which must be organised anything which could claim the right to describe itself as an organic art of thinking. ”

“ Every one is overwhelmed by the compass of the achievement of this intellect. As to the transcendent value of the works on Logic, Metaphysics, Psychology, Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics, and Poetry, the world of scholarship has long been practically at one. ”

“ Are they not rife with all the useful reasoning—the philosophic intelligence—the happiness of application, that cultivated man could devise for the assistance of untutored intellect?
From the logic of the sage we learn, by a spirit of imitation natural to human beings, to quicken our own powers of reasoning. The perspicuity of arrangement and expression, so admirable in our master, becomes gradually a part of our own style. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men of the profoundest learning, of the sublimest genius, and of the purest integrity, after devoting their lives to the research, finally differed in their ideas upon many great points, both of doctrine and discipline. ”

“ Special studies carried on without regard for the encyclopædic principles which determine the relative value of knowledge, and its bearing on human life, will be condemned by all men of right feeling and good sense. ”

“ Suppose, however, that the intellectual and vital principle differs in the most marked and essential manner from all other known substances; that they have all some resemblance between themselves which it in no degree participates. ”

“ Precisely as you and I were philosophers before the exigencies of life put a constraint upon the natural movements of the mind, so human knowledge was philosophical before it was "scientific," and became divided into highly specialized branches, each with a technique and plan of its own. ”

“ Moral philosophers ought, he said, to set themselves vigorously to work for the purpose of discovering what are the actual effects produced on the human character by particular modes of education, by the indulgence of particular habits, by the study of particular books, by society, by emulation, by imitation. ”

“ By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally acquires the idea of SCIENCE,—that is, of a system of knowledge in harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The scientific theory of Knowledge results from analysis of the Concept, and constitutes psychology or Critical Realism, as opposed to all forms of transcendental or Critical Idealism. The scientific theory of Conduct results from analysis of the Word, and constitutes anthroponomy (including ethics, politics, and art in its widest sense) , sociology, or Ethical Realism, as opposed to all forms of Ethical Idealism. ”

“ The biography of philosophy, hence, reveals it to have the same possibilities and the same fate that all other ideas have. Today ideas are the patent of our humanity, the stuff and form of intelligence, the differentiæ between us and the beasts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If considered as a mere receptacle for Latin and Greek, Mathematics and Metaphysics, Science and Literature, we may, without moral turpitude or virtue, abstractly considered, follow our own inclinations; but the Understanding will all the time be growing either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, whether we study them or whether we let them alone. This action of the Understanding cannot go on without influencing the Affections. ”

“ And we hope that the thoughtful readers of these pages will see in our intention, an earnest, honest purpose and belief, and that, without affectation of science or pretense of superior knowledge, we base all our efforts upon nature and common sense. ”

“ Not in the vast field of logic, of empirical psychology, in questions concerning the essence of bodies and their forces, in matters of mere history of philosophy; but in questions of views of the world and life, in metaphysics and ethics, it does. These, the highest questions, bearing on the direction and pursuit of human life, matters that most occupy the human mind, are at the same time subjects of revelation ”

“ These are the physical and the mental, or, as they are sometimes called, the moral sciences. The proper subjects of the first are the properties of matter; those of the second are the sensations, faculties, and habits of the human mind. ”

“ I hold that a proper education results, not in laboriously acquired symmetry of phrases and language, but in a healthy condition of mind, I mean a mind that has understanding and true opinions about things good and evil, honourable and base. ”

“ In these four sciences of Logic, Morals, Criticism, and Politics, is comprehended almost everything, which it can any way import us to be acquainted with, or which can tend either to the improvement or ornament of the human mind. ”

“ In order to escape the necessity of concerning itself with personality and particular circumstances in questions of truth and error, Intellectualism appeals to Logic, which it conceives as a purely formal science and its impregnable citadel. ”

“ What they receive under this condition they absorb immediately and show that they know by that test of knowledge which applies to us all, that is, they can tell it with power, clearness, vivacity and charm. ”

“ No doubt it seemed to simplify the problem to suppose that the functioning of the intellect could be studied as a thing apart, and unrelated to the general context of the vital functions. Again, it was to simplify to assume that thought could be considered apart from the personality of the human thinker. ”

“ It demonstrated to the public the force and extent of his talents, the accuracy and range of his knowledge, the depth of his [129] philosophy, which though yet more theoretical in several doctrines and opinions, than is consistent with fact and practice, manifested on the whole, that strength of discrimination, completeness of comprehension, boldness of conception, and fertility of invention, which when matured by experience, becomes soaring genius, guided by beneficial wisdom. ”