J.— PSYCHOLOGY. 179 



For Plato, as Prof. Spearman writes, intellect was the permanent mental 

 power, intelligence the putting of this power into use. He adds that 

 ' intellect,' which seems to be deliberately avoided by most writers, has 

 always been essentially characterised by the power of abstraction. '" 



Yet the view seems justifiable that ' intellectual,' as used popularly 

 nowadays, means ' able to express oneself in words ' (spoken or written). 



If its meaning be narrowed only slightly it would be very useful in 

 the present connexion. The successful, deliberate use of any words to 

 express oneself would be intellectual. Emitting words merely as speech- 

 habits would not. This use, I submit, allows one to characterise a type 

 very common in these days of universal reading and writing — the person 

 who is definitely classed as intellectual though not necessarily -highly 

 intelligent. 



Now many muscular knowledges differ from most other kinds in that 

 they have almost no proper language. While it is manifestly possible to 

 be intelligent about them, it is less easy to be intellectual. To describe 

 skill, one's vocabulary often has to be collected in the grand-stand, the 

 newspaper ofl&ce, the study and the laboratory, rather than on the field of 

 action. Perhaps because so many persons, skilled in certain directions, 

 are inarticulate and almost mute, one tends to consider them as un- 

 intellectual. Yet their type of muscular knowledge may possess few 

 words, even if they searched for some. Often they would be the last 

 persons to make such an effort. 



In some spheres and by some exponents skill is becoming rapidly 

 intellectualised. Yet the die-hards may take comfort in the vast tracts 

 of untouched desert, both in their skills and in themselvee. 



Let us look at ourselves for a moment through the eyes of one who 

 was in but not of our country. In The Return, Joseph Conrad pictures a 

 man — 



' whose clear pale face had under its commonplace refinement 



that . . . overbearing brutality which is given by the possession of 

 only partly difficult accomplishments ; by excelling in games. . . .' 



May it be that such athletes have overcome only the non-intellectual 

 difficulties in their game ? To them it is just an occasion for the gleeful 

 exertion of sheer strength, of low cunning, for the permissible indulgence 

 of pugnacity and other simple instincts. One has met these men. The 

 intellectual challenge, the exhilarating possibility that undreamed-of 

 strokes, stances, breaks and swerves may be invented, are neither accepted 

 nor comprehended. Yet ten years after an innovation has elbowed itself 

 into the game's structure these men will be sternly teaching it. 



To summarise this, a person skilled in work, art or sport, may not be 

 intelligent or intellectual. Yet he may show one, two or all these qualities 

 in a characteristic personal fusion. The thrice-blessed intelligent, skilled 

 intellectual would use his intelligence upon his problems of behaviour. 

 In this he would be helped by his intellect {i.e. by his power to recall, to 

 select and to employ words) in formulating the problems, and in abstracting 

 and expressing the general principles which he discovers or uses in solving 

 them. 



" The Abilities of Man, London, 1926, pp. 28 and 33. 



N2 



