Intelligent being

“ A fuller intelligence will render all the mysteries and miseries of life intelligible. For whatever is in the past, you are, with others, responsible. Now waste no more brain-substance in grief, shame or wrath, but conserve all your nervous force for your work. Assume the motherhood which you presumed upon. Your mind is crowded with artificial distinctions. A few simple principles, held to amiably, will make all your life sweet and intelligent, even now.
“You love purity. ”

“ What Sort of Man is the Most Intelligent?—Straightway, a first serious objection suggests itself: What sort of persons are the most intelligent? Are they really those who have attained the higher academic degrees and the most eminent social positions? ”

“ This is for want of intelligence in the intelligent beings that are upon the earth. If they understood the object of the creation of this earth and the inhabitants upon it, these matters would be an easy and pleasing theme to their understandings; they would become natural principles to them, easy to be understood. ”

“ In the opinion of many persons the man who has received a book education—whatever his natural abilities—must be a highly intelligent person. For my part, I think different; and I have adopted my belief, from an extensive experience of mankind. ”

“ Nor can it be said that while man is a soul (or intelligent being) beasts are without this soul-quality or intelligence, thought, feeling. On the contrary, both man and beast have soul-quality or intelligent, conscious being. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But for the “Common People,” the average intelligent student, for whom Science and the pursuit of Knowledge is not a Profession, but a desire to know, and to understand, in order to be able to use wisely and well, it is of far less importance to know what others think or believe, deny or affirm, on the subject of Psychology, than to realize what are the faculties, capacities, and powers of their own souls. ”

“ Availing myself, therefore, of this innate spirit of emulation—this boundless thirst of knowledge, I left her mind free in the election of its studies, while I only threw within its power of acquisition, that which could tend to render her a rational, and consequently a benevolent being; for I have always conceived an informed, intelligent, and enlightened mind, to be the best security for a good heart ”

“ Yes, he is intelligent. But we must be more intelligent. We must be so intelligent that he does not suspect us of being intelligent at all.” ”

“ He thus raises the question as to the power of matter, and also as to that of intelligent beings; at least of beings of no higher grade than man. It is not very clear whether or not he denies all intelligent power. ”

“ Do we not all of us know hundreds of practical men who are in the highest degree intelligent, but in whom the rational, analytic faculty is but little developed? Is it any injustice to the brutes to contend that their inferences are of the same order as those of these excellent practical folk? ”

“ But I raise this question merely to ask another—When the wise man brings his list of our genuine admirations, will intelligence be one of them? We might seem to be well within the old ideal of modesty if we claimed the virtue of intelligence. But before we claim the virtue, are we convinced that it is a virtue, not a peril? ”

“ Like most men with a vision, a plan, a program or a remedy, he fondly imagined people to be intelligent enough to accept a good thing when it was offered to them, which was conclusive evidence that he knew little about the human race. ”

“ I mean that, as people grow more intelligent, or more people grow intelligent at all, we shall discover other opportunities for exercising intellectual energy and for obtaining the thrill and uplift of intellectual prowess. ”

“ But what he did was to persuade men for the future that the intelligent, patient, persevering cross-examination of things, and the thoughts about them, was the only, and was the successful road to know. ”

“ The significant distinction is no longer between the knower and the world; it is between different ways of being in and of the movement of things; between a brute physical way and a purposive, intelligent way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Varying degrees of intelligence, then, among the Intelligences, as also varying degrees of greatness and nobility of soul and of moral quality are established; and doubtless the variation in the pre-earth existence is as great as it is in earth life.
2. The "One" More Intelligent Than All—God: When it is conceded that among Intelligences there are varying degrees of intelligence, and greatness and nobility and moral quality, then it follows that there may be One who is the most intelligent of all, greatest, noblest, best; most wise and most powerful. ”

“ Then, the qualities of all things, whether external or internal, the subtle or the coarse, will be apprehended, and the mind, in its entire substance and its relations to things, will be perfectly intelligent. ”

“ The second important characteristic of intelligence is that it considers either other means of reaching a given end, or other ends, and by working out the consequences of these also has the basis for deliberation and choice. The method of "multiple working hypotheses," urged as highly important in scientific investigation, is no less essential in the moral field. To bring several ends into the field of consideration is the characteristic of the intelligent, or as we often say, the open-minded man. ”

“ IF a wise man should ask, What are the modern virtues? and should answer his own question by a summary of the things we admire; if he should discard as irrelevant the ideals which by tradition we profess, but which are not found outside of the tradition or the profession—ideals like meekness, humility, the renunciation of this world; if he should include only those excellences to which our hearts are daily given, and by which our conduct is motived,—in such an inventory what virtues would he name? ”

“ As a matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils. ”

“ Now, if we can take the low and degraded and elevate them in their feelings, language and manners; if we can impart to them the sciences that are in the world, teach them all that books contain, and in addition to all this, teach them principles that are eternal, and calculated to make them a beautiful community, lovely in their appearance, intelligent in every sense of the word, would you not say that our system is praiseworthy and possesses great merit? ”

“ It surprises me sometimes to think how much we do know and how intelligent we are. ”

“ Yet, however noble his desires, and however intelligent and comprehensive his plans and purposes, it is only as he develops a volitional personality, or determination of character which impels toward the attainment of these noble ends through intelligent plans, that man can be said to live the truly efficient life. ”

“ The Master said, 'He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh, are successful, may be called intelligent indeed. ”

“ Intelligence unites us with mankind, by leading us in sympathy to other times, other places, other customs; but first the prejudiced roots of affection must be pulled up. These are the old pangs of intelligence, which still comes to set a man at variance against his father, saying, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me."
Yet, if intelligence begins in a pang, it proceeds to a vision. Through measureless time its office has been to make of life an opportunity, to make goodness articulate, to make virtue a fact. ”

“ I do most fully believe that some true proposition of the form ‘Intelligence is good and intelligence alone is good’ can be found; if none could be found, our definition of the good would be impossible. ”

“ All intelligent actions, except perhaps those which are merely imitative, must in the first instance be either instinctive or rational, the habitual coming later through the transformation of the others by repetition and memory ”

“ I will give a chapter here to explaining how man may receive health from the Supreme. By the Supreme I mean the Thinking Substance from which all things are made, and which is in all and through all, seeking more complete expression and fuller life. This Intelligent Substance, in a perfectly fluid state, permeates and penetrates all things, and is in touch with all minds. ”

“ Appeal to him on any plain subject, and you find him gifted with quick perception, possessed with ready judgment, and with his mind sparkling with intelligence. Now, mix a dozen such men together, and intellect instantly begins to coagulate ”

“ Those who are wise in mind have a certain attribute of nature peculiar to themselves; and they who have shown themselves capable, receive from the Supreme Wisdom a spirit of perception in double measure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the Lord God of Hosts, and you derived your intelligence from the same source. Where did any man that exists or breathes the breath of life throughout this whole universe get any intelligence he has? ”

“ May your bright intelligence ever be increased!
May your bright intelligence become perfect,
High and brilliant, leading to a good end!
That good end has (now) its beginning:—
The personators of your ancestors announced it in their blessing. ”

“ Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect constructive. Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or construction. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and boundaries of that transparent essence? ”

“ Intelligence turns to whichever side the light comes from, adjusting itself, in discursive, often desultory fashion, to all manner of directions and distances, comparing and measuring with unabashed slovenliness, extracting the qualities which strike it and hastening on to connect them with something it was struck by before. Being thus rapidly responsive, Intelligence may often, I admit, seem on the pounce, and more so than politeness warrants. ”

“ The moment he comes in contact with the stern and stubborn realities which frown on his entrance into practical life, he will find that power is the soul of knowledge, and character the condition of intelligence. ”

“ Slight them by preoccupation of mind,—slight them, as you can well afford to do, by high and universal aims, and they instantly feel that you have right, and that it is in lower places that they must shine. They also feel your right; for they, with you, are open to the influx of the all-knowing spirit, which annihilates before its broad noon the little shades and gradations of intelligence in the compositions we call wiser and wisest. ”

“ At every age, in every country and climate, and under every circumstance, we find that in the highest qualities of mind, of reason, judgment, genius, inventive power, capacity for acquiring and utilizing knowledge, man stands preeminent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How admirable at once the solidity and the eloquence of a mind which comprehended not only the most abstruse sciences, the most profound and varied knowledge, but which displayed the graceful acquirements of an accomplished gentleman. ”

“ The first who came for intelligence about himself was a philosopher, renowned for his virtues, and for the number and probity of his disciples. He said the study of his life had been to know himself, and he believed that nothing remained for him to discover, but he had come to have his judgment confirmed. I desired him to stand before the mirror, in which he would immediately see his whole character. "But," said he, "how am I to distinguish the qualities of my mind by the eye? I can reason about them, but I know not any one of [363] them by sight. How can a virtue have shape or colour?" ”

“ 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. ”