Nature and Actuality of the Intellect

a) Meaning of Intellect — b) Existence of Intellect

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.

Various names are applied to the intellect in accordance with its various functions or services: mind, intelligence, reason, understanding, consciousness, conscience, memory. Of these, mind is the broadest term, and it is often used as an equivalent of intellect. Intelligence is the name for the intellect inasmuch as it reads the inner meaning of things — particularly as applied to the capacity for doing so quickly and readily. Reason is the name for intellect inasmuch as it proceeds from premises to conclusion in a process of discursive thought. Understanding is the name for intellect inasmuch as it grasps truth without the movement of reasoning — inasmuch as it simply sees and understands. Consciousness is the name for the mind’s awareness of itself and its own states, of its thinking and willing. Conscience is the name for the mind’s moral judgment — its awareness of the rightness or wrongness of its own actions or proposed actions. Memory in its specifically intellectual sense (as distinguished from sensory or sense-memory) is the faculty by which the mind retains and reproduces intellectual knowledge previously acquired.

b) Existence of Intellect

That man actually possesses an intellect is proved from the same three marks which showed that animals lack reason: these marks, which are absent in animals, are present in man.

1. Man knows things in universal and in the abstract. When a man says “I saw a flower,” another man understands “flower” in universal, in general; he understands, indeed, without having to inquire about the sort of flower indicated; he understands without knowing whether the flower referred to be rose, or violet, or aster, or lily. For the human person (having had some sense-experience of certain individual flowers) understands; he grasps the essence indicated by the term flower; he knows what a flower is as such, what any flower is, what every flower is. No brute animal does this.

2. Man uses intelligently significant speech. Man can discuss, can reason in words, can communicate abstract thought. He can construct a proposition, tell a story, ask an abstract question, coin a new word for a new meaning. This capacity is entirely beyond the powers of any merely sentient organism.

3. Man can improve upon prior modes of action. The history of intelligent beings (of men) is a story of progress in the liberal and mechanical arts. One generation of men takes up where the last generation left off. Animals of a given species in each generation do precisely what their predecessors did, in precisely the same way.

These three marks demonstrate the presence of intellect. Now, the intellect is not an organic faculty. It has no bodily organ. The proof: no bodily organ can deal with objects in the abstract; no organ can deal with objects in universal. The brain? You might as well say the eye or the ear. For no organ deals with objects in the abstract; no organ can deal with objects in universal. But the intellect does deal with objects in universal and in the abstract. Therefore the intellect has no organ; it is non-organic or inorganic.

Being inorganic, the intellect 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.

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 alone. 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.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have studied the nature of the intellect. We have defined the term, and 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. We have made a short proof of the existence of the will in man. Finally, we have learned that the intellect is a spiritual faculty of the soul.