Literary notes about intellection (AI summary)
The term "intellection" in literature often serves as a versatile label for the mind’s analytical and discerning capacities. It is invoked to denote both the abstract process of thought—as in the portrayal of the cerebral cortex as the exclusive seat of higher functioning [1]—and the more nuanced, sometimes aesthetic, aspects of cognition, where emotional or sensory arousal alters its pace [2][3]. Some works present intellection as an ongoing movement or actualization, emphasizing its role in evolving intellectual processes [4][5], while others contrast it with sensation or depict it as a quality elevating artistic expression, such as in poetry that is "stiff with intellection" [6]. Thus, across diverse contexts, intellection comes to symbolize not merely raw thinking but the structured, dynamic operation of the intellect in engaging with both abstract truth and lived experience [7][8].
- This, of course, is equivalent to postulating the cerebral cortex as the exclusive seat of higher intellection.
— from A History of Science — Volume 4 by Edward Huntington Williams - If, as has been stated, his intellection is slow, when unexcited, it is most prompt and rapid when he is thoroughly aroused.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass - Will it therefore be beautiful? —In so far as it is apprehended by the sight, which I suppose means here esthetic intellection, it will be beautiful.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - —The processes marked off by the psychologist as thinking or thought constitute the highest stage of intellectual elaboration (intellection).
— from The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 by Various - The first step in the direction of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself, to comprehend the act itself of intellection.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - Cowley’s poetry was cerebral, “stiff with intellection,” as Coleridge said of another.
— from The Connecticut Wits, and Other Essays by Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers - But surely such a Hell is unjustly balanced by such a Heaven—all Platonic intellection, Plotinian ecstasy, and ethereal Light.
— from Italian Fantasies by Israel Zangwill - The artist’s procedure must have been psychologically correct and must have counted upon the weakness of our observation and intellection.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross
