INTELLECT (Lat. intellcetus, understand ing, front intellcgere, intelligere, to perceive. from inter, between + lrgere, to choose. gaiter). The common name for the mental processes concerned in the tunction of cognition. It is thus the coun terpart of feeling and will. (See these titles, and AFFECTION.) TB the older psychology, a distinc tion was drawn, in various ways, between 'high er' and 'lower' forms of cognition (see FAC LT.Ty ) , and intellect was thus marked off from sense. or front sense and "There is nothing in the intellect that has not previously been in sense," says Descartes; but Leibnitz adds, "except the intellect itself." Kant's 'pure intel lect' is, similarly, an intellect freed in its opera tion from the intermixture of In modern terminology, intellect covers both sensation and its derivatives; so that its treatment includes the study of the formation of perception and idea, the association of ideas. memory and recognition, passive and active imagination, and reasoning. The word 'intellection' is sometimes reserved for the formation of concepts and judgments and for reasoning; see the discussion of these processes under Loctc.
The root-function in intellect is discrimination (see DISCRIMLNATION, SENSIBLE), WhiC11 implies knowledge of the likens., of similar and ot the
difference of dissimilar things. and (in the case of man) capacity to report in language upon this likeness and difference. The discriminative func tion is supported and extended by that of repro duction (see MEmortr ), which adds a past and a future to the present domain of mind. Discrimi nation and reproduction have been variously sub divided, both upon a genetic and upon a logical basis. Classifications of the latter kind are, how ever, merely aids to the presentation of psychol ogy, and do not themselves contribute to our knowledge of mind: while genetic have so far rested rather upon the logic of some psychological system, or utsm biological analo gies, than upon unbiased of the de veloping organism. Consult: Bain, The Sew‘s and the Intellect (London, 1868) ; Sully, Human Mind (London. 1892) : Ladd. Psychology: De scriptive and Explanatory (New York. 1894) ; Titchener, Outline of Psyeholoyy (New York, 1899 . See ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY ; GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY.