/lit/ - Literature

Definition

Intelligence, in the sense that I use the word here, in the sense that it has etymologically and in the sense that it was used at the time that the words made sense, does not mean the ability to solve problems, the mathematical ability, the visual imagination, the musical aptitude or any other type of skill in particular. It means, in the most general and comprehensive way, the ability to apprehend the truth. Intelligence is not even about thinking. When we think, but our thinking does not exactly capture what is true in what we think, then what is at work in that thinking is not exactly intelligence, in the rigor of the term, but only the frustrated desire to intellect (understand) or even the pure automatism of an unintelligent thinking. Thinking and intellecting are completely different activities. The proof of this is that you often think, think, and don't intellect anything, and other times you intellect without having thought, in a sudden intuitive flash.

Intelligence is an organ - let's say: an organ - that only serves this purpose: to capture the truth. Sometimes it comes into operation through thought, sometimes through imagination or feeling, and sometimes it comes into operation directly, in an intellective - or intuitive - instantaneous act, in which you capture something without preparation and without a particular representative form that serves as a channel for intellection. At other times there is a long preparation through thought, imagination and memory, and in the end you do not capture anything very much: the representative acts having been completed, the intellection to which they were directed completely fails; given the means, the purpose is not realized. Intelligence is in the realization of the purpose, not in the nature of the means employed. And if the purpose of the means of knowledge is to know, and if knowledge is only knowledge in the full sense if you know the truth, then the definition of intelligence is: the potency to know the truth by any means.