The Intellect.
Let us now see what light we can get concerning the intellect. What are its functions and limitations? Is it safe as a guide? According to the phrenological classification, the intellectual faculties are divided into three classes; viz.: the perceptive, literary and reasoning faculties. The perceptive faculties bring us into relationship with the external world, and through them we learn about the color, size, form, weight, etc., of material objects. If the phrenologists are right, then neither those who claim that the mind is like a blank sheet and knows nothing but what it gets from without, nor those who ascribe almost everything to innate, intuitive ideas, are wholly correct. As usual, the truth lies midway between the two extremes. The mind has innate, intuitive powers of perception, selection and discrimination without which material objects, events and thoughts could make no more impression upon us than upon a fence-rail. But these innate powers are subject to improvement by heredity and culture and their dictates must be carefully watched and corrected by other faculties, as they are fallible and most of them subject to perversion and delusion. As the conscience and sentiments although not infallible, are our only guides in their sphere; so our perceptive faculties are good and safe, but not perfect, guides. These perceptive faculties, in a measure, help and correct each other's impressions; and through optical illusions, expectant attention, dreams, etc., we learn that their dictates must be carefully watched and verified. The latest voice of science is that all the sensation produced by physical stimulants can also be produced by the imagination; so that people can feel cold, heat, pain, etc., when there is no physical cause for them. These things should not make us skeptical about our perceptive powers, but rather cautiously critical.
If we turn to the reasoning faculties we find that they have been the cause of most contention and misunderstanding. On the one hand have been the extreme intuitionalists, or deductive theorizers, who for centuries limited philosophical thought almost entirely to fruitless, abstract, deductive reasoning based upon premises that had no real foundation in facts. As John Stuart Mill pointed out, the mind may become so accustomed to conceiving of a thing as true that it seems like an axiomatic truth, although facts discovered later may show that it was an error. Thus the time was before modern discoveries, when people could not conceive of persons living under the earth walking with their heads down, or of objects attracted towards each other without some material object to connect them and thus draw them together.
Other extremists have looked upon the mind as a blank sheet, or have become so skeptical of its intuitive impressions that they mistrust its guidance almost entirely, especially in religious matters; although, strange to say, they inconsistently seem to trust it all the more in material things.
It cannot be denied that our "think so's," "feel so's," impressions, prejudices and inherited or preconceived ideas may seem as infallible to us as any so-called axiomatic or intuitive truths. This delusion of the mind has led to multitudes of errors and has held people in bondage to ignorance and superstition in all centuries and in all countries. It has ever been the greatest hindrance to progress. Closely allied to this and reinforcing it is the inertia of the mind, through which it naturally continues to run in the grooves in which it has been running. After awhile the grooves or ruts become so deep and smooth that it seems next to impossible to turn out of them without breaking something or upsetting the mental team. We see on every hand how hard it is to get away from the ideas we have inherited or in which we have lived a long time. When truth, like a vine-dresser, has attempted to trim off these unnecessary and injurious accretions, it has always raised the hue and cry that the foundations of truth were being destroyed.
When Mansel, in his Bampton lectures of 1858, showed that the finite intellect is inadequate and helpless in trying to grasp the truth where infinity of any kind is involved, the cry was raised that he robbed reason of its glory and authority, tore away the very foundation of religion and of all truth, and opened the way to all kinds of skepticism. But the very purpose of that marvelous piece of reasoning was to lead people to the truth as revealed in the Bible and to keep them from setting it aside or robbing it of its power because it transcends their finite intellects. Good but misled people, in all ages, have set aside or limited God's Word by their "think so's" or "feel so's," which were mistakingly taken as an infallible test of truth. Just as man by feeling knew not God (Acts 17:27), so man by wisdom knew not God; and it pleased God by the foolishness of a revealed gospel to save such as accept it by faith (I Cor. 1:21). President Schurman voices the highest conclusion of philosophy when he says that the farthest reason can go is to assert that God is necessary as a working theory. To this we can add conceptions of God revealed in our moral nature (Rom. 1:19, 20). But what a lifeless skeleton this is compared to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Bacon, Locke, Mill and others have joined in the battle to destroy a false trust in subjective impressions without subjecting them to a fearless test of observed facts as revealed in experience, observation and testimony. This is not intellectual skepticism that destroys all the authority of reason and leaves us to imbecility. Just as the conscience, sentiments and perceptive faculties are our safe, proper and necessary guides, although not infallible, so our logical reason is our safe and necessary guide to truth, although helpless to grasp and understand infinite truths and likely to deceive us unless we carefully test its impressions or conceptions by experience and facts. Reason is the eye of the intellect as conscience is of the moral nature. But as the eye is helpless as a guide without light, and the conscience without love, so reason is helpless and worthless as a guide without facts. There is no conflict between theory and practise if the theory takes into consideration all the facts. For example, if from the fact that a horse can trot a mile in three minutes on the race-track, one should conclude that he can trot from one city to another five miles away in fifteen minutes, the theory would be false, because it did not take into consideration the condition of the road and the fact that a horse cannot keep up the same speed for a long distance. Whatever impressions or conceptions of the mind may be self-evident or axiomatic truths, it is certain that our highest conception of truth must be taken as our only and necessary guide; but, knowing the variable part of our judgment, and knowing how very likely we are to be mistaken in our "think so's" and "feel so's," we should ever be on the alert to verify or rectify our convictions by the help of experience and facts. The question as to how much of our intellectual power is intuitive and innate, or how much is acquired and dependent upon truth learned by induction, is not so important after all. For the powers of the mind which enable it to learn truths through induction from facts observed and experienced come from God just as much as the powers that enable us to see truth intuitively.
If we take the consensus of all the mental faculties, we have the wonderful human intelligence created but little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor (Ps. 8:5). Created in the very image of God himself (Gen. 1:27), man is an intelligence with the threefold guidance of intellect, conscience and sentiments which give him abundant light for his daily walk in the fear of the Lord. But even our so-called "consciousness," including all these powers, is fallible and subject to deception, perversion and delusion and therefore it needs the help of the truth revealed in the Bible and the help of all the truth we can learn from life and science to enable us to fulfill our highest destiny and to continue to progress Godward and heavenward.
Let us remember that love is the arch that unites and supports all the mental faculties and all the operations of the mind. On it hang all the law and prophets, and the gospel as well. Let us rejoice and glory in our wonderful heritage of intelligence, but, knowing the limitations of our finite minds, let us walk humbly before God and our fellow-men.