Discourse VII - Philosophical Knowledge viewed in relation to Mental Acquirements

Summary

It were well, if the English, like the Greek language, possessed some definite word to express simply and generally, intellectual proficiency or perfection, such as “health”, as used with reference to the animal frame, and “virtue”, with reference to our moral nature. I am not able to find such a term;—talent, ability, genius, belong distinctly to the raw material, which is the subject-matter, not to the excellence which is the result, of exercise and training. When we turn, indeed, to the particular kinds of intellectual perfection, words are forthcoming for our purpose as, for instance, judgment, taste, and skill; yet even these belong, for the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon practice or upon art, and not to any perfect condition of the intellect, considered in itself. Wisdom, again, which is a more comprehensive word than any other, certainly has a direct relation to conduct, and to human life. Knowledge, indeed, and Science express purely intellectual ideas, but still not a state or habit of the intellect; for knowledge, in its ordinary sense, is but one of its circumstances, denoting a possession or influence; and science has been appropriated to the subject matter of the intellect, instead of belonging at present, as it ought to do, to the intellect itself.