And so Alfred Tennyson:
"The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state."[A]
[Footnote A: "In Memoriam," lxxxv.]
God is also sometimes referred to as the "Supreme Intelligence." It is in this sense, then, that I use the term Intelligence; a being that is intelligent, capable of apprehending facts or ideas; possessed of power to think.
2. Intelligence: Consciousness: In other words the term Intelligence is descriptive of the thing to which it is applied. Therefore Intelligence (mind) or Intelligences (minds), thus conceived are conscious. Conscious of self and of not self; of the me and the not me. "Intelligence is that which sees itself, or is at once both subject and object." It knows itself as thinking, that is, as a subject; thinking of its self, it knows itself as an object of thought—of its own thought. And it knows itself as distinct from a vast universe of things which are not self; itself the while remaining constant as a distinct individuality amid the great universe of things not self. Fiske calls Consciousness "the soul's fundamental fact;" and "the most fundamental of facts."[A] It may be defined as the power by which Intelligence knows its own acts and states. It is an awareness of the mind. By reason of it an Intelligence, when dwelling in a body—as we best know it (man)—knows itself as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching; also as searching, and finding; as inquiring and answering; as active or at rest; as loving or hating; as contented or restless; as advancing or receding; as gaining or loosing, and so following in all the activities in which Intelligences, as men, engage.
[Footnote A: "Studies in Religion," p. 245.]
3. Generalization: By another power or faculty of Intelligence (mind) it can perceive, as connected with the things that sense perceives, something that cannot be taken in by sense perception; that is to say, Intelligence can generalize. Sense can get at the individual, concrete thing only: "this triangle," "this orange" "that triangle," "those oranges," etc. By the consideration of the individual, concrete object, however, the mind can form an idea, a concept, a general notion—"triangle," "orange"—which does not specify this or that individual object, but "fits to any individual triangle or orange past, present, or future, and even the possible oranges that never shall be grown."[A] In other words Intelligence can rise from consideration of the particular to the general.
[Footnote A: "The Truth of Thought," p. 41.]
4. Perception of a priori[A] Principles: Again there are a priori principles, which the mind can perceive to be incontrovertible and of universal application, by mere reflection upon the signification of the principles and without going into the applications.[B] Such for example as that one and one make two. That two and one make three. Also, to continue the illustration above, borrowed from the late Professor Wm. James, for some time Professor of Psychology in Harvard University.—"White differs less from gray than it does from black; that when the cause begins to act the effect also commences. Such propositions hold of all possible 'ones,' of all conceivable 'whites' and 'grays' and 'causes.' The objects here are mental objects. Their relations are perceptually obvious at a glance, and no sense-verification is necessary. Moreover, once true, always true, of those same mental objects. Truth here has an 'eternal' character. If you can find a concrete thing anywhere that is 'one' or 'white' or 'gray' or an 'effect' then your principles will everlastingly apply to it. It is but a case of ascertaining the kind, and then applying the law of its kind to the particular object. You are sure to get truth if you can name the kind rightly, for your mental relations hold good of everything of that kind without exception."[C]
[Footnote A: A priori, from something prior or going before, hence from antecedent to consequent; from cause to effect. See illustrations in the text quoted from James.]