Intelligence

“ 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. ”

“ How knowledge becomes possible for any intelligence, is in fact the problem how are we to think, under one of its aspects, the relation between individual consciousness and the wider sphere of reality? ”

“ Are literary productions and the acquisition of laurels reliable tests of intelligence? Is this man a doctor because he is more intelligent, and that man a hospital attendant because he is less intelligent? ”

“ To make this clear, it is necessary to define intelligence a little more closely, so as to discover the mental habits which it requires. For this purpose I shall consider only the aptitude for acquiring knowledge, not the store of actual knowledge which might legitimately be included in the definition of intelligence. ”

“ But he will have to add the thought of an Intelligence, for which the Thing is to be; while, on the contrary, the Intelligence is self-sufficient and requires no additional thought. By thinking it as the Intelligence you include already that for which it is to be. ”

“ You thus perceive that the question regarding our competency to attain to absolute truth resolves itself into the new question, Is there in the mind of man a universal part—that is, a part which in all intelligences is essentially of the same character? Intelligence itself seems to constrain us to answer this question in the affirmative. ”

“ And does the intelligence consist, in degree or in kind, in nothing but a repetition of the same experiences as those through which his progenitors were carried, or is there a something in him to which his individual experiences contribute the mental food by which the mind is nourished and by the assimilation of which its individual intellectual growth becomes possible? ”

“ Intelligence works by experience, and is wholly dependent on individual experience for the wisdom of its actions.—Wisdom in this case is a product of two factors, intelligence and individual experience. ”

“ Since he who rises to the contemplation of the intelligible world, and who conceives the beauty of true intelligence, can also, as we have pointed out, by intuition grasp the superior Principle,203 the Father of Intelligence, let us, so far as our strength allows us, try to understand and explain to ourselves how it is possible to contemplate the beauty of Intelligence and of the intelligible world. ”

“ His frequent references to history, his allusions to various kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and nature, with his observations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it. ”

“ They have the foundation, and they can improve and add knowledge to knowledge, wisdom to wisdom, light to light, and intelligence to intelligence. This power to increase in wisdom and intelligence so that we can know things for ourselves is within every one of us. ”

“ The above view of the function of intelligence, and of the synthetic character of the conscious process may be further defined in certain aspects by comparison with the view of Professor Fite, who likewise develops the significance of consciousness and particularly of intelligence for our ethical concepts and social program. ”

“ I am old enough now to look back with some capacity of observation for forty years, and I can see in the progress of society a most marked evidence of the higher general intelligence, the greater aptitude for looking at things as they are, and for not allowing strange, absurd notions to take possession of the mind ”

“ By another power or faculty of Intelligence (mind) it can perceive, as connected with the things that sense perceives, something that cannot be taken in by sense perception; that is to say, Intelligence can generalize. ”

“ Believing that they acted in the name of pure reason, they were really subject to mystic, affective, and collective influences, incomprehensible to them, and which we are only to-day beginning to understand.
Intelligence has progressed in the course of the ages, and has opened a marvellous outlook to man, although his character, the real foundation of his mind, and the sure motive of his actions, has scarcely changed. ”

“ "What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe—why, intelligence never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances. ”

“ Our systems of science, our conclusions in philosophy, our intuitions into first truths and laws, and all the confidence with which we accept truth in all these great realms of mental life, rest back on the observations, reasonings and conclusions for whose reality and order consciousness is our most fundamental voucher. To its tests and verifications all the processes of knowing must submit. No truth is even visible except in the light in which consciousness holds all our acts and forms of intelligence. ”

“ Seen by the mental eye of Intelligence, which, like the bodily one, moves in every direction and focuses to all distances, thereby informing us of the proportions and relations of whatever is not ourself, and following step by step the actions which are not our own. ”

“ It is not the optic nerve alone that gives the knowledge of surrounding objects to the mind, but it is that which God has placed in man—a system of intelligence that attracts knowledge, as light cleaves to light, intelligence to intelligence, and truth to truth. ”

“ This gives warrant to the logic, and shows how short the steps by which we attribute all creations and all changes, which we regard as beyond our own power and beyond that of other embodied intelligences known to us, to a superior intelligence, with the same powers which we possess and use to create and change, increased, I will not say infinitely, but to a degree corresponding to the effects which we see and ascribe to them. ”

“ Again, the first question is, what do we mean by intelligence? In the usual sense of the word intelligence implies the exercise of the various intellectual faculties, and gathers up into one word the ideas of perception, comparison, memory, judgment, and so on. ”

“ The answer lies in the fact that the technique of intelligence is to be found precisely in the details of the operations of nature and of human conduct from which an aristocratic intelligence is always in large measure shut off. Intelligence cannot operate fruitfully in a vacuum. ”

“ And if the outer world is the vast dictionary and grammar of thought we speak of, then it is also an organ throughout of intelligence. Whose intelligence? By this question we are set directly confronting God, the universal Author; no more to hunt for him by curious arguments and subtle deductions, if haply we may find Him; but He stands expressed everywhere, so that, turn whichsoever way we please, we behold the outlooking of His intelligence. ”

“ It may be defined as the power by which Intelligence knows its own acts and states. It is an awareness of the mind. By reason of it an Intelligence, when dwelling in a body—as we best know it (man) —knows itself as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching; also as searching, and finding; as inquiring and answering; as active or at rest; as loving or hating; as contented or restless; as advancing or receding; as gaining or loosing, and so following in all the activities in which Intelligences, as men, engage. ”

“ On this fundamental point, see lecture 3, in this vol.—2d Series, vol. i., lecture 5, p. 97. "The peculiarity of intelligence is not the power of knowing, but knowing in fact. On what condition is there intelligence for us? It is not enough that there should be in us a principle of intelligence; this principle must be developed and exercised, and take itself as the object of its intelligence. The necessary condition of intelligence is consciousness—that is to say, difference. ”

“ We can understand something of the mysterious exercise of human intelligence in its earliest development from this habit of symbolizing and presenting in an outward form an abstract conception, thus giving a concrete meaning and material expression to the external fact. ”

“ The word Intelligence in the passage quoted is governed as to its meaning by "Man" in the sentence—"Man was also in the beginning with God:" and now, "Intelligence," [the intelligent entity in man, in the race—and surely the Intelligence in each man is a complete and separate entity] "was not created or made, neither indeed can be." ”

“ Gradually the thinker is led on from the first naive position of intelligence to the conclusion that the whole varied contents of external experience are nothing and can be nothing but Vorstellungen, determined modes of intelligence. ”

“ But, again, as man learned more of these—the fixed laws which they obey—the confined paths in which they move, and, in learning this, learned more of himself—he recognized in conscious Intelligence and the overruling Will something greater than wind or fire. ”

“ The Art of the Story.—However abstract the thinking of civilized man may become, "all our intelligence," to quote Ladd's "Outlines of Physiological Psychology," "is intelligence about something or other, ... ”

“ The demand is everywhere for Knowledge of the soul. Facts there are in abundance, but how far these facts are demonstrated, so as to constitute a basis of exact science, and how to classify and systematize them, the average intelligence does not know. ”

“ but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence." ”

“ If intelligence is arbitrarily limited to actions performed by conscious processes, then intelligence becomes a mere question of terms. [130] 241There arises also the practical difficulty that certain types of behavior, which by common assent and common sense are regarded as purely automatic and unintelligent, must be termed intelligent because guided by consciousness. I cannot help thinking that “intelligence” is a pragmatic question, not a biological or psychological one. ”

“ Why then should we suppose that intelligence is the only thing which {103} is an exception—the only thing of which we have the whole? why suppose that all these adaptations have been made, so wonderfully, without a controlling mind? ”

“ There are differences in the type of intelligence, which need to be acknowledged. And there are differences resulting from the variety of natural contexts of practical life, which we need to consider. ”

“ Intelligence, in the limited sphere in which the unlearned man applies it, in the things he knows, may be more powerful, more penetrating, comprehensive, and quick, in him, than in the technically educated man ”

“ 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 ”

“ This need and principle, I am convinced, is the necessity of a deliberate control of policies by the method of intelligence, an intelligence which is not the faculty68 of intellect honored in text-books and neglected elsewhere, but which is the sum-total of impulses, habits, emotions, records, and discoveries which forecast what is desirable and undesirable in future possibilities, and which contrive ingeniously in behalf of imagined good. ”

“ Intelligence becomes ours in the degree in which we use it and accept responsibility for consequences. It is not ours originally or by production. "It thinks" is a truer psychological statement than "I think." ”

“ Are there men of intelligence in the nations? Yes, as to the world's intelligence—as to the intelligence associated with the arts and sciences, natural philosophy, and mechanism, they are as intelligent as any that can be found, without God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It relates to all the intelligence which we derive from any other source than our own personal observation:—for example, to all that we receive through the historian, the traveller, the naturalist, or the astronomer. ”

“ But let me take a concrete measure of high general intelligence—for example, the general intelligence of a town noted for its large proportion of scientific and professional men, its graded schools, its satisfactory school attendance, and its low percentage of illiteracy. ”

“ Think of the mental quality of a world in which each day the thought and research of a great host of intelligences turns more and more the opaque and confused riddles of yesteryear into transparent lucidity. ”

“ We, however, find no rudiment of force in these incipient creations of our own, and, hence, they furnish us with no logical ground for attributing it to similar and more perfect creations of a Superior Intelligence. ”

“ The intellect and intelligence of man are manifested through the organs of the brain, and from these, consciousness, will memory, judgment, thought, volition, and passion, the functions of the mind, do proceed. ”