The Intellect

Existence of the Intellect

Daily experience teaches us that we have in us a power of apprehending things that do not fall within the sphere of sense-knowledge. If we had no knowing power but the senses, how could we grasp such things as unity, goodness, truth, being, duty, virtue?

How could we know the meaning of these terms?

How could we write their definitions ? By what sense can these things be apprehended? Who has seen truth, or touched goodness, or heard unity, or tasted virtue? The internal senses deal only with what the external senses present to them: it is the finding of the external senses that consciousness is aware of, that imagination reproduces, that memory recognizes as of the past, that instinct apprehends as useful or harmful. In neither external nor internal senseknowledge have we the explanation of our grasp of the things we have named.

Not only do we know things that the senses cannot grasp, but we know even sense-objects in a way that surpasses the form or mode of sensation. Take, for example, our knowledge of so material and sensible a thing as a body. Not only do we see the body (say, a tree), not only do we know it as this material thing, here present to vision; we know it also as an instance, as one exemplification, of body in general.

For we know what body is, not merely this body or these bodies. We know what a body is, what any and every body must be, to be a body at all. Now, the senses have given us knowledge of comparatively few individual bodies. Of trees, for example, we have seen very few indeed when we consider the number of trees that have existed, do exist, will exist, or could exist. Yet we know exactly what is meant by tree; we know what every one of the trees of the past, present, or future, what every possible tree must be. And similarly, we know what every actual and possible body is and must be. Our sense experience of a body is always singular, concrete, indiINTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE 65 vidual. But our knowledge of body as such is abstracted from singularity; it is universal. Hence, we have something more than percepts of a certain number of bodily things. We have a concept of what any and every bodily thing is. We have a grasp of the essence of body. And what we say of body is to be said of every other object of knowledge. We have not only sense to give us individual and concrete experience; we have also a power by which we form universal concepts or universal ideas of the things which our senses experience. More: this power enables us to form universal ideas of things that lie beyond the reach of the senses (as we have mentioned above), and we rise from sense-data to the realm of supra-sensible reality. This power of apprehending abstract reality, and of grasping objects of sense in a manner superior to that of the senses, is called the intellect.

The intellect is defined as a supra-sensuous cognitive faculty, which apprehends non-material things, and apprehends material things in a manner free from the limitations of sense-cognition. In a word, the intellect is a supra-sensuous faculty which apprehends reality in a non-material manner.

The intellect is supra-sensuous in its ideas or concepts, for these represent essences in universal. The intellect is supra-sensuous also in its judgments, or pronouncements upon the agreement or disagreement of ideas, for judgments are often universal, and, even when particular or singular, they involve ideas which are fundamentally universal. The intellect is supra-sensuous furthermore in its act of reflection, by which it is aware of itself and adverts to its acts and states, for no sense is capable of reflecting back upon itself. The intellect is supra-sensuous in its reasonings, for reasonings are processes which involve ideas and judgments, and these, as we have seen, are supra-sensuous.

We have said that sense cannot reflect. To reflect means “to bend back.” The intellect can bend back upon itself, making itself the object of its cognition.

Sense cannot do this. The eye cannot see itself seeing; the ear cannot hear itself hearing; but the intellect can think of itself thinking, can know itself knowing, can understand that it is understanding.

The intellect is, therefore, truly supra-sensuous, that is, it is a faculty of a higher and more subtle power than sense, for it is free from the limitation to singularity and concreteness which marks sense and its function. Now, a faculty that is suprasensuous is a spiritual faculty, that is, it is a faculty of a spiritual being, of a spiritual substance. The action of a faculty is a sure index of the nature which exercises the faculty, for “function follows essence.”

The intellect is free from the limitations of materiality in its action; therefore, the nature which exercises the intellect is non-material. Man, indeed, is a material substance, but it is not as a body that INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE 6 7 man exercises intellect; it is because he has a soul that he can exercise a non-material faculty, and the faculty indicates the non-material or spiritual character of the soul. The intellect is a soul-faculty, not a body-faculty. Not being bodily, it does not depend upon a special bodily part or organ for its functioning; it is not an organic faculty, but an anorganic faculty. Of course, the intellect depends upon the body and its organs (that is, the senses) for its materials, for the sense-data from which it rises to the formation of universal concepts. But this fact is not explained by the nature of intellect itself, but by man’s nature in this present worldly existence. Man is composed of body and soul; he is a single being, not a double one; soul and body are compounded in one substance; and while this substance endures, the only contacts that man has with outer reality are the senses; it is from sense-data that the intellect must abstract its concepts. We shall speak more of this in another place.

Here we must notice the clear distinction that exists between the brain and the mind or intellect.

The brain is a bodily organ; the intellect is not organic. The brain is the seat of the internal senses, and it is the necessary central portion of the external sense-system. The point that must be stressed is this: the brain is not the seat of the intellect. But since the brain is the seat of internal sensation, and the focal point of external sensation, and since the intellect takes the data of sensation as its materials for the formation of ideas, it is usual to say that we “use our head” in thinking, and to call a person “brainy” when we wish to compliment him upon clarity or quickness of thought.

A further point for notice: we have said several times that the intellect “forms” ideas. But the action of the intellect is in no sense creative. The intellect abstracts its ideas from sense-data, and it is justified by reality. The ideas of the intellect are solidly grounded upon the findings of sense, and are legitimately derived therefrom. Hence it is clear that, in any discussion of the validity of human knowledge (a subject that will engage our attention in a later portion of this manual), the basic fact to be established is the validity of sense-knowledge.

Various Names of the Intellect

The intellect is often called the mind or the understanding (although many moderns use the term mind for any form of conscious life), and in its special acts the intellect is called intelligence, reason, conscience, consciousness. A word in explanation of these names: i. Intellect (from Latin intus, “within,” and legere, “to gather, to read,” or perhaps from inter, “between,” and legere, “to read”) is the name of the supra-sensuous power by which man reads within the experience of sense to find essential reality; it is the power by which man reads “between the lines” of sense-data and knows essences. 2. Mind is synonymous with intellect. In our use of this term we maintain this precise meaning. We do not identify mind with sense-consciousness. We do not speak of the “mind” of animals. 3. Intelligence (a name with the same etymological origin as intellect) is the intellect, inasmuch as it recognizes self-evident truths, or makes immediate inferences. The act of mind by which we recognize such inevitable truths as that of the proposition, “I exist,” is an act of intelligence. By intelligence we recognize the truth of the proposition, “A totality is greater than any one of its component parts.” In casual daily speech we often use the term intelligence loosely and improperly. We say, “The dog is an intelligent creature.” But, as a fact, the dog is not intelligent at all. The dog is lively and alert in the use of its senses, but it is not intelligent. Intelligence is a name for intellect in one of its functions, and hence is identified with intellect as a faculty; it is anorganic; it is a faculty of one who has a spiritual soul. 4. Understanding is synonymous with intellect. It signifies the power by which man, as it were, gets under the experiences of sense to lay hold of essential reality. 5. Reason is the intellect inasmuch as it works out inferences by thought or study. It is the intellect inasmuch as it works out truths that are not selfevident. I know that one and one are two by an act of intelligence, but I know that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180° by an act of reason. Intelligence recognizes immediately evident truths; reason works out such truths as are not immediately evident. 6. Conscience is reason inasmuch as it works out conclusions that have a moral significance. It is reason (which, in turn, is intellect) inasmuch as it makes inference with reference to the right and wrong of human conduct. Conscience is the intellectual inference and pronouncement of judgment on the right or wrong of a situation to be faced and decided here and now. Notice that conscience is the actual reasoned judgment of the intellect in moral matters. We sometimes speak of conscience inaccurately, as in the expression, “examining one’s conscience.” We do not examine our conscience; we review in intellectual memory its judgments and try to recall whether or not we have acted in accordance with these judgments. 7. Consciousness (that is, intellectual consciousness} is the intellect inasmuch as it is aware of itself, its states, its acts. Carefully distinguish this consciousness from that of sense. Sense-consciousness is the common or central sense, one of the internal senses already discussed.

We might add another name to our list of titles of the intellect, viz., intellectual memory, which is the intellect inasmuch as it retains and recalls its past conditions, states, acts.

Summary Of The Article

In this article we have evidenced the existence of intellect, man’s cognitive faculty, which excels in character and function the faculties called senses. We have learned that the intellect forms its ideas or concepts, its judgments, and its reasonings, by penetrating within the findings of sense and apprehending essences, and by comparing, compounding, dividing, reflecting upon the understood essences. We have seen that the intellect is spiritual in its action, and we have concluded that it must, therefore, belong to a spiritual substance—the soul. We have listed and briefly explained various names by which the intellect is known.