Nature and Actuality of the Intellect

Chapter III — The Intellect

Article 1. Nature and Actuality of the Intellect

The present Chapter discusses the existence, nature, operation, and object of the human mind, intellect, or understanding. It explains the origin and the expression of ideas or concepts which are the elements of all intellectual activity. The Chapter is divided into the following Articles:

Article 1. Nature and Actuality of the Intellect
Article 2. Operation and Object of the Intellect
Article 3. Origin and Expression of Ideas

a) Meaning of Intellect

The word intellect is from the Latin intus “within; inwardly,” and legere “to read.” The name indicates a faculty or power for getting at the inner meaning of things. Intellect is a faculty for delving beneath appearances and laying hold of essences. It is a knowing-power or cognitive faculty which pierces through the accidentals presented to knowledge by the senses, and grasps the essential reality which is clothed, so to speak, in these accidental trappings.

Intellect may be defined as the supra-organic faculty which knows things in an essential and nonmaterial way. To explain this definition:

1. Intellect is a faculty. That is to say, it is a capacity or power for vital activity. Further, it is a knowing or cognitive faculty, a power for knowing.

2. The intellect is a supra-organic faculty. In other words, it is a supra-sentient or spiritual faculty. It is a faculty of man, but it belongs to man’s spiritual soul. It is not a bodily faculty like the senses; it has no organ to use as the instrument of its operation. The brain is not the organ of the intellect. The brain is the organ of the interior senses (central sense, sentient memory, imagination, instinct) and it is also the central seat of the exterior senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch). Thus sensation,—that is, the action and the fruit of sense-operation,—is focussed, so to speak, in the brain. From the findings of the sense, thus focussed, the intellect works out its ideas. Once it has ideas, the intellect goes on to perform its operations of judging and reasoning. Thus we find the beginnings of intellectual activity in the action of the intellect upon sense-findings, and we say, “There is nothing in the mind or intellect that has not some ground and beginning in the findings of the senses.” And since the findings of the senses are centralized or focussed in the brain, the intellect may be said to begin its work there. So we come to speak of thoughts as “drain children”; and we say that a man “uses his head” in thinking, and that a person of keen intellect is “brainy.” But we must take care not to be misled by these loose expressions into the erroneous opinion that the brain is the organ of the mind or intellect. For the intellectual operations are simply beyond the capacity of any bodily organ. The intellect has no organ. It is supra-organic. For man, by his intellect (mindunderstanding), knows things which have no materiality about them, things such as spirit, soul, God, angel; things such as honesty, goodness, unity, truth, beauty, virtue, heroism, honor, etc. Now, a faculty which is essentially dependent upon an organ, upon a specially constructed bodily part suited for one specific kind of vital action, has no capacity for apprehending such things as those enumerated. An organ or bodily part can grasp only bodily things. But the intellect grasps things which are entirely non-bodily, and it grasps even bodily things in a non-bodily way, as, for example, it understands solidity or size in general. Therefore the intellect is not essentially dependent upon an organ or bodily part; it is nonorganic; it has no organ. It is quite true that in this present life in which soul-and-body constitute man as a living bodily creature, man is dependent upon the senses and their organs to give him the grounds and beginning of all the knowledge that it is possible for him here to possess. In this sense, and in this sense only, the intellect,—which is a soul-faculty, as we shall see in a moment,—may be said to depend upon the senses and their organs. But this is a dependence that is extrinsic to the intellect itself. In itself the intellect requires no organ for its function; in itself and for itself the intellect possesses no organ. The intellect, we repeat, is non-organic. Presently we shall discuss the operation of the intellect, and we shall see (as indeed we have already seen) that the intellect is not only _non-_organic, but supra-organic: for its action is of a higher and more wondrous character than organic action. One further point: the intellect, being non-organic, is in no sense a body-faculty, for the faculties proper to the living body as such are necessarily organic faculties. But there are no human faculties except faculties of the living body, and faculties proper to the soul. The intellect is therefore a faculty proper to the soul. Now, the soul is spiritual, and is served by faculties proper to its own essential character. Hence we rightly say that the human intellect is a spiritual faculty. The intellect is not a spiritual substance, of course, for faculties are powers resident in substance; they are not substances themselves, nor are they, in any creature, identified with the substance which possesses them; in themselves they are accidents, not substances. Hence when we call the soul a spiritual faculty we mean that it is a power or capacity possessed and exercised by the spiritual substance called the soul.

5. The intellect is a faculty for knowing things in a non-material way. All knowledge, even that of the senses, is rooted and based in “non-materiality.” There is a vast difference between the mutual contact of bodily things,—such, for instance, as that of wax and a signet,—and the contact of a sense with its object. Contact between two bodily things involves the physical impinging of one on the other, a striking together, a union and joining, at least momentarily, at the point of contact. But a sense lays hold of its object while leaving it where it is, in its objective otherness. To bring wax and signet together is to produce a third thing (a tertium quid) which is not merely wax nor merely seal, but figured wax. To see an object, however, is not to produce a tertium quid. One sees the object as the object; the seeing-faculty is not configured to the object physically as wax is configured to the shape of the seal; there is no resultant figured vision. Even the sense of touch, in its perception of resistance as it apprehends a solid body, is not shaped or figured; the bodily member which comes in contact with the solid is shaped and figured (as the finger-tip would be if pressed firmly on the signet), but the faculty or sense of touch is not figured. The organ of touch is indeed physically impressed but the sense of touch is in no wise “shaped” and configured to the physical impression. The sense of touch perceives the object, knows it, is aware of it. In a word, the senses, even that of touch, know their objects in a trans-subjective manner; the senses leave objects “in their objective otherness” and do not join them physically to themselves. The union of bodies in contact is composite joining; the union of sense with its object is objective knowing. Thus the senses are not subject to the limitations which mark non-sentient bodies in physical contact; in so far the senses are removed from the limitations of “materiality”; and this is what we mean by saying that all knowledge, even that of the senses, is rooted in “non-materiality.” Now, if the senses be essentially nonmaterial in their operation,—which is the apprehending of material things with all the limitations that attach to concreteness and individuality,—it is at once apparent that the intellect is, by a far greater reason, non-material, for the intellect is capable of laying hold of things which are not material and of grasping material things in an abstract and universal way far superior to the mode of operation which characterizes the senses. This point receives clarification in the paragraph which immediately follows.

4. The intellect is a faculty for knowing things in an essential way. By the senses I know the sensiles that fall within their range here and now, as concrete and individual objects. If I look at a tree, for example, I see this one tree, or if I look at a copse or stretch of forest, I see these trees. But by my intellect I know what tree means,—not just this tree or these trees, but tree in general, tree as such; I know what a tree means,—any tree, every possible tree. That is to say, I know the essence of tree; I know what makes a tree a tree. Thus we discover that the non-materiality of intellectual knowledge is of a much higher and more striking kind than that of sense-knowledge. Notice that the intellectual knowledge is not only higher in degree than that of the senses; it is a specifically different and superior kind of knowledge. This is a most important point to ponder and comprehend; nearly all the errors that have confused philosophers in their studies of the mind and its functions and the value of knowledge, have come from a failure to grasp clearly the essential difference between sensation (sense-knowledge) and intellection (intellectual knowledge).

The intellect is called by a variety of names according to its various uses. It is one faculty but has a plurality of names for a plurality of functions. Somewhat similarly, one has a single pair of feet, which perform various actions,—walking, running, skipping, dancing, kicking, etc. We here briefly examine the implications of the names most commonly used for the various functions of intellect.

1. The mind. This is the Latin mens, the Greek nous. In our use of the term, it is perfectly synonymous with intellect. Many modern writers use the term mind in a wide sense, applying it to all conscious life. Such writers speak of the mind of animals; we do not. We keep the word within the strict and ancient limits which make it one in meaning with intellect.

2. Intelligence. This is intellect inasmuch as it recognizes self-evident truths and makes immediate inferences. Here again casual usage extends the term, and we hear people speak of “intelligent” animals,— dogs, horses, cats, parrots. But non-human animals are never intelligent. They piay be very alert and wondrously responsive in sentient activity, but they cannot be intelligent because they cannot be intellectual. As we have proved in another place, brutes have sentiency but they lack intelligence.

5. Reason. This is intellect inasmuch as it works out and recognizes truths that are not self-evident. By intelligence I know that a totality is greater than any of its parts; but I must use reason to “figure out” the knowledge that the sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to 180°. The relation of “part” to “whole” is a self-evident relation; one needs but to know what the terms mean to understand that the whole is greater than its part, and that this cannot be otherwise. But the truth about the sum of the angles of a triangle is not self-evident, as any harassed young pupil in elementary geometry will testify; it has to be worked out, studied out, by successive and connected steps of reasoning. Intelligence understands “right off”; reason understands by studious effort, linking truth to truth to reach its conclusion.

4. Understanding. This is another simple synonym for intellect or mind. Often, in casual speech, the term is used to indicate, not the faculty of intellect, but the objective grasp of meaning achieved or achievable by the intellect. Thus a person may say, “Let me explain the matter; let me give you a clearer understanding of it.” But we use the term here as a synonym for intellect.

5. Consciousness (that is, intellectual consciousness). This is the mind or intellect inasmuch as it is aware of itself, of its states, of its operations. There is a sentient consciousness which animals (brutes and men) possess; it is the awareness of sense-activity and of sense-objects proper to sentient life; we call it the common sense or the central sense, and list it as one of the four interior senses. When a man (or a brute animal) sees an object, he is sentiently aware that he sees. This awareness is not from vision, for the eye does not see itself seeing; it is from sentient consciousness.—The consciousness of which we speak in the present study is an awareness of meaning, and indeed of essential meaning. A boy and his dog may see a pictured triangle or a line of written words; both are sentiently conscious of what falls under the grasp of vision. But only the boy, and not his dog, knows that the picture is a triangle (or can know it); only the boy, and not the dog, can know the meaning of the written words; the boy can know these things and be aware that he knows them. The awareness of intellectual knowledge is intellectual consciousness. And intellectual consciousness extends, in a manner, to include even the objects of sentient consciousness, but in a superior way. The boy and his dog may both enjoy a run across fields; both have sentient consciousness of enjoyable experience; but the boy alone, and not the dog, can have also a reflective mental (i. e., intellectual) consciousness of the enjoyment as such.—Intellect, inasmuch as it is an awareness that one understands an object or situation, whether this be in itself a sentient or a purely intellectual reality, is called intellectual consciousness. Thus a man may be conscious of a duty, of a meaning in words, signs, events; of appreciation of beauty, heroism, etc., and, in these instances, his consciousness is intellectual; it is an activity of his intellect; it is his intellect in a special function.

6, Conscience. This is intellect inasmuch as it reasons out the moral implications of a situation and renders judgment upon them. Conscience is the intellectual consciousness or reasoned awareness of right or wrong in a situation here and now to be judged. Conscience is no sentiment, no “still small voice” within the heart, no “little spark of celestial fire,” no “sense of fitness in things,” no “sense of values.” All these phrases suggest something sentient, and, indeed, blindly sentient. But conscience is not a sense. It is the same cold reason with which we work out a problem in mathematics,—only, to be entitled to the name conscience, it must be engaged upon issues of right and wrong, good and bad, and not upon mathematical quantities. The judgment of conscience is always a reasoned judgment. When a person has passed the stage of infancy he comes to understand (not reflexly at first, but directly) that there is an order in things, an order that must be conserved and not upset. The child begins to realize, for instance, that parents must be obeyed, quite apart from the question of punishment for disobedience. So the child comes to understand that there is something bad in a lie, or in a theft, quite apart from the possibility of being found out. Education or instruction helps the child to come readily to the realization of good to be done and evil to be avoided, but the realization is, after all, a reasoned realization, and, in a normal person, would be ultimately reached even in the absence of any instruction bearing directly upon the point. In every situation where obvious moral issues are involved even a child of seven will make a reasoned judgment about the course of duty, whether he actually follows that course or its opposite. What is true of the child is more manifestly true of the adult. Now, the judgment of reason that something here and now to be decided upon is good and to be done (or at least permitted) or evil and to be avoided, is called conscience. As a faculty, therefore, conscience is one with reason, and reason is one with intellect. Conscience is intellect in a special function or service.

7. Memory (that is, intellectual memory). This is the intellect inasmuch as it retains and recalls and recognizes as of the past the things it has once understood, the past states and operations of mind and will, and the sentient experiences of the past. By intellectual memory a person recalls what has once been learned,—not, indeed, everything that has been once learned, nor perfectly in every instance of recollection, for the intellect is a limited faculty and may grasp a thing imperfectly or ineptly and later forget it. By this memory a person also remembers the past states, conditions, opinions, convictions, of the intellect itself, and the acts and decisions of the will. Further, intellectual memory recalls and recognizes under standingly the sentient experiences of the past, or many of them. Man has a senient memory, as we have seen, and it is operative to recognize sense-images recalled to imagination. In man, intellectual memory and sentient memory concur, with greater or lesser perfection, and intellect (as memory) regularly reads meanings into past sentient experiences re-depicted in imagination and recognized by sense-memory.—Intellect is a faculty capable of education and training, and it is strikingly so as memory. The best means of acquiring a “good memory” is to be found in careful attention, close study, orderly procedure, the enlisting of sentiently-grasped circumstances as an aid to understanding and remembrance. Nearly all the methods of “memory training” have as their fundamental prescription the forming of vivid images in imagination of objects to be remembered, together with a piercingly close attention of sense and mind to these objects when first experienced. Thus imagination can be of great service to intellectual memory; it forms clear points of “association” which stir the intellectual memory to recall the past; conversely, a clear intellect is a splendid aid to sentient memory, and to imagination which holds its images.—But the point we make here is this: intellectual memory is the intellect in a special function.

b) Existence of Intellect

We have learned what is meant by intellect. Now the question arises, does man actually possess this faculty which we have defined and described ?

We must recognize the actual existence of the special supra-organic faculty called intellect if man has knowledge which is essentially beyond the grasp of the senses. Now, as a fact, man has such knowledge. Therefore, the faculty necessary for such knowledge,—that is, the intellect,—actually exists.

Many a psychologist is content to befog his view of human knowing, and to suppose, without adequate analysis of the facts in the case, that all our cognition is a matter of nerves and muscles and organs. In criticism of this unscientific position and postulate, it will be sufficient to indicate, in the briefest manner, some points of truth, already discussed in our study, about the nature of intellectual knowledge. We need only to show that man has, as a fact, knowledge that is essentially outside the reach of the senses.

A sense is a power for grasping (i. e., for apprehending or knowing) individual and material objects. By the sense of sight, I know those colored objects which here and now lie within range of my vision, under due conditions of light, size, vividness, and distance. Suppose I look upon a grassy hill. I see this hill, but not the thousands of other hills which lie beyond the very narrow limits of my present angle of vision. But I know those other hills, although I do not now see them, and may never have seen them or be destined to see them in time to come. I know what they are. For I know what hill is; I know what the term means, I know what the actuality must be in its essence. I do not know how many hills there are (although I expect momentarily to have some newspaper statistician report the number for me), nor how high they are, nor how steep or rugged. But I know them as hills, for I know what hill as such is.. In a word, I have a knowledge of hill which leaves out of account the individual marks and material conditions of this or that or these particular hills; this knowledge of hill is at once abstract and universal. It is abstract because it abstracts from, prescinds from, neglects to consider as of fundamental import, the marks and material circumstances which make each hill recognizable as this hill, and focusses upon that which makes each hill a hill. And this knowledge is universal because that which it represents is one thing (unum) —for what makes a hill a hill is precisely the same in each and every case, no matter how hills differ individually in height, ruggedness, location, etc.,—and this one thing stands in the mind as representatively related (versus) to the realities in nature which we know as individual hills (alia). From the terms unum-versus-alia (one thing considered as “over against” others; one mental grasp as representatively apprehending things other than itself) comes the term universal, The common, casual meaning of universal, as all-inclusive, having no exceptions, is justified also in our present use of the term. For intellectual knowledge of a reality embraces every such reality; intellectual knowledge of hill, for example, includes each and every hill,—actual and possible,—without exception. Now, knowledge that is abstract and universal is manifestly knowledge that is essentially beyond the grasp of any sense or group of senses. My senses do not, and cannnot, show me hill, but only this hill or these hills. The very marks and characteristics which make a hill the object of sensation are set aside by the mind, and left out of account, in the intellectual realization of what a hill as such is. Sense deals with the concrete, the individual, the accidentally circumstanced; but I am aware of knowledge within me that rises above these limits and takes hold on reality in a manner that is abstract, universal, essential. I am inescapably aware of intellectual knowledge within me, and that means but one thing: I have an intellect.

The senses know only bodily things,—and these, as we have seen, in a concrete and individual way through the grasp of accidentals. Yet I have knowledge of things that are not bodily. I know what is meant by spirit, even if I am a rank Materialist and deny that such things as spirits exist. I know what is meant by unity, goodness, truth, beauty, perfection, religion, devotion, virtue, vice, diligence, love, poetry, artistic “values,” plans, careers, ambitions, and hundreds of other realities which have no weight, measure, color, shape, or size. And, in addition to these things, I have, as we have noted, an abstract understanding of bodily things like hill. Further, I have an abstract and universal grasp of qualities which, while they characterize and limit bodies, have no independent existence, normally speaking, apart from bodies; yet I understand them apart from bodies; I know what they are in themselves: and thus I know, for example, what whiteness is, and roundness, and height, and solidity, and movement. It is manifest that no organ of sense can lay hold of any of these things; yet I certainly know them. I am driven to conclude that I have a supra-sensuous, a supra-organic faculty for knowing things. In other words, I possess an intellect.

Again: the senses do not and cannot know themselves or their operations. They are not reflective. The i eye does not see itself seeing, nor does the ear hear itself hearing. Sense-consciousness (the central or common sense) does indeed give one an awareness of the senses and their operations, but no sense senses itself. But the mind or intellect, being a spiritual faculty, is reflective; it has a reflex action by which it knows itself knowing, and can make itself and its states and operations the object of its own observation and study. Now, I am aware that I possess such reflex knowledge. Presently we shall take up the study of the “Operation of the Intellect,” and we shall find nothing odd or unnatural in the thought of such a study; we shall quite calmly begin to study our study, to know our knowing. Manifestly no sense or group of senses is capable of such reflex action; their bodily limitation stands in the way of it; to conceive of reflective organic action would be to conceive something as absurd as the girl in Andersen’s Fairy Tales who had the amazing ability “to walk under herself.” Yet, as an indubitable fact, I have reflex knowledge. It follows that I have the supra-organic faculty for it. I possess an intellect. The intellect exists.

Summary of the Article

This Article has taught us the meaning of intellect, the spiritual or supra-organic faculty by which man knows things, bodily and non-bodily, in an abstract and universal and essential manner. We have learned the implications of the definition of intellect, and have contrasted intellectual knowledge and sentient knowledge. We have noticed the various names by which intellect is known in its various functions or services: mind, intelligence, reason, understanding, consciousness, conscience, memory. We have proved that man actually possesses an intellect.