The mind has at physical birth one uniform quality of plasma and
consciousness. By education and experience a portion of the plasma is
gradually changed, and the consciousness excited by this portion is
what we call INTELLECT. The word may also stand for the plasma so
differentiated.
The consciousness pertaining to the plasma left in its primitive state
is SENTIMENT, which generally corresponds to what is termed the moral
nature of man.
Intellect is a temporary condition arising out of the need to preserve
the Self from hostile and inharmonious surroundings. The adaptation is
artificial, and may therefore be well-done, or ill-done, or over-done.
It is over-done when too much of the plasma and mental energy is
devoted to intellectual purposes--when the individual has, to use
a common expression, more head than heart. In this case the end is
sacrificed to the means.
I conceive the intellect as a hardening of the plasma in its
superficies, the formation of a sort of rind capable of receiving
finer, sharper, and more enduring impressions than the plasma of
sentiment; and, being harder, it is better able than the latter to
resist enfeebling influences. Its duty is to challenge and inspect
vibrations before permitting them to pass inwards to the region of
sentiment. Yet the intellectual consciousness is itself a degree
of sentiment, and in intellects not sufficiently trained it may be
impossible to distinguish thoughts that are purely intellectual, from
thoughts that are also to some extent sentimental. Upon minds of this
sort the best-prepared arguments have no hold; they must be mixed with
oratory and poetry to receive any attention. It need not be said
that a mind which responds only to 'persuasive' language is feeble
of intellect. It lives in the present only, and is incapable of
far-reaching designs. It is to the intellect we owe the power of
conceiving the past and future, and of laying plans for the future.
A mind properly intellectualised is, of its kind, strong and
self-controlled. With the intellect defective the man exhibits
passion, undue excitement and demonstrativeness. He responds to
the least stimulus, like an exposed nerve; his energy is wasted
in explosions. Sentiment is the inmost nerve of man--intellect its
protecting sheath. The most carefully trained intellect is liable at
times to be carried by assault or stratagem; then follows a feeling
of emptiness occasioned by loss of energy. On the other hand an
appearance of self-command may be really due to apathy,--the mind
is of a low type and callous to influences that usually affect its
species. If it is bad to be explosive, it is perhaps worse to be
incapable of exploding.
Intellect is not the supreme or ruling intelligence of man. It
initiates nothing. It is a light to direct our steps, but we do not
walk where the light happens to fall--we make it fall where we
desire to walk. Hence the diversity of occupation and intellectual
accomplishments in men. Each acquires the sort of intellect he
thinks will be sentimentally most serviceable to him; and on matters
concerning which he has not learnt to reason he consults other men.
We are not born rational beings; we are in no sense rational on all
subjects; we are rational only on those few which we have mastered.
Men pretend to act from reason only, and perhaps they do on matters to
which they are indifferent. But in general their rationality consists
in finding pretexts for what on sentimental grounds they have already
resolved to do, and in finding ways and means to carry out their
resolves. Sentiment is the moving spring of conduct: intellect is
the executive faculty. Those historical philosophers are mistaken who
suppose the progress of mankind results from intellectual discoveries
and inventions. These are effects, not causes, of progress--effects of
_sentimental_ disagreement with previous conditions.
Intellect is little more than an extension inwards of our senses.
It is an epitome and rearrangement of their observations, and is as
instrumental as they. We are not necessarily improved by a development
of the intellect forced upon us from without. Education is sometimes
a dagger put into the hands of an assassin. The best education is
largely sentimental (moral), for that is not confined to preserving
the mind we have--it gives us another and a better mind, and so
indirectly improves the intellect.