Intellect

Use in the book

The Hermetic sayings distinguish intellect in God, reasoning in human beings, and reason in intellect. Another report makes intellect and perception criteria for different objects: the intelligible and the perceptible. In a further Hermetic passage the pious soul becomes wholly mind.

Places to read

1. I.41.1.11Nous, logismos, and logos are distinguished.
2. I.58.1.3Intellect judges intelligible things, while perception concerns perceptible things.
3. I.49.49.1The pious soul is said to become wholly mind.
4. I.49.24.5Intellect and discursive thought differ in their manner of activity.
5. I.48.5.7The apprehension of intelligibles is related to self-contemplation.
6. I.48.5.8The many intelligibles bear on the priority of the One.

Translation in this edition

“Intellect” often marks the philosophical distinction; “mind” remains appropriate in some passages. Neither rendering should erase the difference between nous and psychē, soul.

Images and comparisons

At I.48.6.6 intellect is compared with a unit and a point because it is without parts. The analogy concerns indivisibility, not physical minuteness.

Intellect and successive thought

The survey of powers contrasts the all-at-once activity of intellect with discursive thought proceeding step by step. It also reports competing classifications, including the view that one rational substance has different activities. The argument about intelligibles locates their apprehension in intellect’s relation to itself, then uses their plurality to place the One before intellect. Neither discussion makes intellect simply the physical organ of perception.

Use in the book

Intellect is the knowing power or knower; the intelligible is what can be understood; intellection is the act of understanding. The related Latin words intellectus, intelligentia, mens, and cognitio overlap without identifying three or four consistently separate faculties. Their particular force depends on whether the argument concerns a power, an activity, a separate intellectual being, or a mode of knowing. Cognition has the widest range here and includes sense: Ficino's example of animals possessing cognition without intelligence requires that distinction.

The relation between knower and known is central. Forms become intelligible through separation from matter and its conditions, while still greater independence from matter supports a being's capacity to understand. Ficino reasons from their kinship, not from a claim that any abstraction imagined by a person becomes an independently conscious mind. In the account of completely immaterial forms, intellect and intelligible coincide; nevertheless, angelic mind receives truth and has many intelligible contents. Human soul possesses mind as one power among others and normally knows successively. Its self-knowledge, however, concerns its spiritual essence, so a temporal mode of understanding does not make every object bodily.

The divine case requires a qualification stronger than these differences of degree. God is presented as intellection existing in itself and directed to itself, without an external object or a receiving faculty distinct from his essence. Yet even intellect, intelligible, and intellection are not fully proper names for God. Book II explains that intellectual language applies according to cause rather than form: angel belongs properly to the genus of minds, while God is its source and exceeds it. God is above mind without being ignorant, understanding in a mode above intelligence. The text therefore does not abandon its hierarchy when it attributes knowledge to the One.

Ficino supports that attribution in several ways. Intelligence is a desirable good that cannot be absent from the first Good's perfection; intelligent minds cannot appropriately be instruments of a first mover wholly devoid of intelligence; and maximal separation from matter supports the most exact understanding. Divine being and understanding are identical, and God knows through one power everything available to human sense, imagination, and intellect, as well as every individual and infinitely many possibilities. He acquires no information from external things.

This unified cognition gives the forms and intelligent order required for creation, while will accounts for the production of selected external effects. Book III characterizes rational soul's knowledge of itself, divine things, and bodily things as discursive. Book IV further differentiates faculties: celestial soul's intellectual part possesses ideas simultaneously, while its lowest motive powers unfold productive seeds successively. A statement about soul's characteristic temporal operation must not be made into a blanket denial of simultaneous intellectual possession within it. The surrounding account of spiritual union explains how its different objects can be apprehended without reducing cognition to material contact. Reading the English word “intelligence” as a measurable personal aptitude would miss its metaphysical range across these passages.

Further passage references. I.5.10–I.5.142345, I.5.20, I.5.24; I.6.4, I.6.7–I.6.13234567; II.9.1–132345678910111213; II.9.16–202345; II.10.6–72; II.11.11–182345678, 24–32; III.1.12; III.2.23–302345678; IV.2.9–IV.2.12234.

Places to read

1. I.6.13Even names such as intelligible and intellection are said not to apply to God wholly properly
2. II.9.1Kinship and separation from matter link knowable form with intellectual capacity
3. II.9.12Causal naming qualifies the attribution of intelligence to God
4. II.9.16The hierarchy of sense, imagination, and intellect retains knowledge of individuals
5. IV.2.10Celestial mind possesses ideas together while lower powers hold unrealized seeds

Translation in this edition

II.9.1 explicitly distinguishes intelligenda or intelligibilis, what can be understood, from intelligens, what understands. At II.9.12 intellectual names apply to God “in respect of cause rather than form”; angel is properly mind. Neither the object–subject distinction nor that divine qualification should disappear in English paraphrase.

cogitare / cogitatio

cogitare / cogitatio. Printed forms: cogitat; cogitatio.

Think or contemplate / thought. The artist’s thought orders materials; rational soul thinks of or divines higher beings. This family differs from cogere, compel. References: II.13.5, III.1.31. See Intellect and intellection.

cognitio / intelligentia

cognitio / intelligentia. Printed forms: cognitio; intelligentia; intelligentiam.

Cognition and intelligence, with divine application explicitly qualified. An inward operation remains in the agent; divine cognition is affirmed while surpassing the mode proper to created mind. References: II.9.5, II.9.6, II.9.7, II.9.13. See Intellect and intellection.

cognoscere / cognitio

cognoscere / cognitio. Printed forms: cognitio; cognitionem; cognoscit; Cognoscit.

Know / cognition. Ficino distinguishes cognition from production through affect and later defines knowing through spiritual union. References: II.11.31, III.2.28, III.2.29. See Intellect and intellection.

indifferens / determino

indifferens / determino. Printed forms: determinetur; indifferens.

Open to either alternative; to be determined toward one. Soul alternates between understanding and not understanding and is directed by a higher source always actual in that kind; this is not emotional indifference. References: I.5.10. See Intellect and intellection.

intellectus / intellectio / intelligibile

intellectus / intellectio / intelligibile. Printed forms: intellectio; intellectus; intelligibile.

Intellectual capacity, its act and what is intelligible. Ficino prefers forms of naming that avoid making God a capacity perfected by an external object, while saying even these names do not apply altogether properly. References: I.6.12, I.6.13. See Intellect and intellection.

intellectus / intelligentia / intelligere

intellectus / intelligentia / intelligere. Printed forms: intellectus; intelligentia; intelligere.

Intellect or intelligence / understand. Intellectual awareness of possible effects is distinguished from effective willing; the concepts coincide in divine being without identical explanatory roles. References: II.11.11, II.11.29, II.12.8. See Intellect and intellection.

intellectus / intelligere

intellectus / intelligere. Printed forms: intellectu; intellectum; intellectus; Intellectus; intelligantur; intelligere; intelligi; intelligit; intelliguntur.

Intellect as knowing power or knower, and its act of understanding. God’s being and understanding are identified, while intellectual naming is qualified as causal rather than creaturely form. References: II.9.1, II.9.7, II.9.12, II.10.7. See Intellect and intellection.

intelligibilis / intelligendus / intelligens

intelligibilis / intelligendus / intelligens. Printed forms: intelligenda; intelligendae; intelligendam; intelligens; intelligibile; intelligibilisque.

Understandable object, what is to be understood, or understanding subject. The grammatical differences keep being known distinct from knowing in the argument from immateriality. References: II.9.1, II.9.7, II.9.8. See Intellect and intellection.

iudicare / percipere / nescire / nosse / notitia / speculari

iudicare / percipere / nescire / nosse / notitia / speculari. Printed forms: iudicamus; iudicari; nescit; nosse; notitiam; percipiat; speculatur.

To judge, perceive, know, or contemplate, with local faculties distinguished. The color-source analogy imagines light perceiving itself, while divine contemplation is one act rather than enumeration. References: II.3.4, II.4.8, II.9.16, II.9.20, II.10.10, II.10.12. See Intellect and intellection.

Plotinus

Plotinus. Printed forms: Plotini; Plotinus.

Plotinus as reported authority or named manner of speaking. One passage reports radically passive matter and quality; another uses Plotinian idiom for divine intellection without an external subject or object. The two contexts should remain distinct. References: I.3.19, I.6.12. See Intellect and intellection.

Plotinus as the reported expositor. Ficino recounts an explanation of inward divine activity and later identifies the conclusion as what Plotinus wishes to establish. References: II.12.9, II.12.11. See Self-production and reservation.

The perfect eye of Jupiter (Greek quotation)

Διὸς ὄμμα τέλειον

This is the expression identified by Ficino’s immediately following Latin gloss, Iovis perfectus oculus. The supplied Greek includes a longer sequence concerning what comes to pass and divine knowledge. The short gloss must not be represented as a full independent translation of every word in that sequence. Its local function is to continue the account of divine cognition.

Place. II.9.18. See Intellect and intellection.

Plotinus (authorities and cited works)

Plotinus. Invoked for matter and qualities as passive, God's self-directed intellection, universal mental presence, divine inward self-production, and celestial reason's motion. These passages have different attribution and qualification needs. I.3.19; I.6.12; II.6.14–24234567891011; II.12.9–1123; IV.2.11. See Matter; Intellect and intellection; Mind; Generation and corruption.

Use in the book

Grasping, judging and reasoning

The rational soul has two chief powers, understanding and will. Their difference is functional rather than a division into two substances: understanding apprehends; will moves towards or away from what has been apprehended. The definition of understanding includes knowledge of individual things and universals, inborn beginnings of knowledge, and the ability to examine its own operations. Burton’s contrast with animals attributes intricate making to bees but denies them reflection upon the work once done. This is his philosophical classification, not a modern finding about animal cognition.

The object first stirring understanding is something perceptible. By successive reasoning the mind proceeds to corporeal substance and then spiritual substance. The order matters: the passage gives a route from sensory encounter to further cognition, not a claim that every spiritual object is directly sensed. Burton reports several divisions and lists of activities, marking one list “some say.” Discovery and judgment can also serve as broader headings under which the operations are collected. Speculative and practical understanding distinguish contemplation or knowledge from thought directed towards action. Understanding in habit is an enduring capacity; understanding in act is its exercise. The simple/compound division is also named, without a worked explanation here. These distinctions coexist with the active/passive distinction.

Teacher and pupil within understanding

Active understanding is sharpness of discovery: finding something independently or learning something new. It abstracts intelligible forms from imagination and transfers them to passive understanding. The maxim that nothing is in understanding which was not first in sense explains this dependence. The active power also judges the truth or falsity of what imagination presents. The receptive power is compared to a pupil and to a wiped tablet, but it is not wholly inert: its assigned office includes keeping and further judging what it receives. Calling the active power a teacher does not introduce an external schoolmaster into this inner transaction.

This sensory-acquisition account stands beside the earlier assertion of inborn notions and a subsequent enumeration containing innate moral capacities. Burton then reports Plato’s claim that all are innate and Aristotle’s five intellectual habits, attempting a compressed reconciliation of several schemes. The supplied text has an abrupt gap between practice and fabrication; the modern version supplies the art of making. A reading should retain the different accounts and the textual difficulty rather than turn them into one seamless system.

Ordinary usage keeps the word close to learning and good sense. Burton wants to inform his reader’s understanding rather than please the ear; an “understanding man” is a sensible person able to consider rejection in proportion. The margin to the account of sickness adds a different direction of influence: “Vexatio dat intellectum,” affliction gives understanding. Its surrounding examples concern moral self-reflection and diminished pride, rather than the bodily impairment of thought described later.

Intellectual work in bodies, trades and love

The formal definition says that understanding apprehends and judges without organs. Elsewhere the medical explanation describes its functions as bound to the lower senses. Burton attributes the latter to Melanchthon while discussing humours, spirits and damaged organs; the soul’s working is compared to a torch whose light depends on its material and wine flavoured by its cask. Independence in the philosophical definition does not remove the dependence described in this account of embodied activity.

Nuremberg supplies a deliberately concrete counterpoint to abstract classification. Its barren soil contrasts with the wealth drawn in by industrious craftspeople. Their active intellect is said to sit at their fingertips, so intellectual vocabulary praises skilled manufacture. Burton attributes the accompanying saying to Sallust; the supplied annotation leaves that attribution unresolved. The joke does not propose fingers as the literal anatomical seat of understanding.

The classification of love also uses intellectual vocabulary. Rational or intellectual love is first called proper to human beings, then said to appear in God, angels and human beings. Within the following division by objects, intellectual love concerns virtue and wisdom as honourable things and is preferred to love of profit and pleasure. This extends the vocabulary beyond abstract knowledge to desire shaped by a judgment of worth. Burton’s later religious controversy introduces a different problem: Julian is represented as accusing Christians of enslaving understanding to faith. Burton defends faith’s higher standing and distinguishes grounds for belief from a demand for certain demonstration. The charge belongs to the reported opponent; the response belongs to Burton’s Christian argument.

The “eyes of our understanding” can imagine the beauty of someone never physically seen: language furnishes the inward image. In Calasiris’s reported confession, however, the “eyes of my understanding” resist bodily sight and desire, until that resistance fails. The same inward-sight figure thus supports imagined attraction in one passage and reflective restraint in the other.

Related entries

Faculty; Reason; Judgment; Wit; Apprehension; Species in perception; Imagination; Memory and recollection; Organical parts; Soul; Synderesis; Conscience; Will and nill; Habit and disposition; Actuality (future article)

Places to read

1. · paragraph 28understanding as the reader’s comprehension, contrasted with pleasing the ear
2. · paragraph 34active intellect at craftspeople’s fingertips; prosperity through practical skill
3. · paragraph 21affliction as a teacher of moral understanding; the body’s examples concern self-reflection
4. · paragraph 22–26understanding and will differ in office; cognition of particulars and universals, reflection and asserted independence from organs
5. · paragraph 27–31sensory starting point, discursive reasoning, active/receptive powers and teacher/pupil imagery; competing classifications and the supplied art wording
6. · paragraph 36will desires or avoids what understanding has already apprehended and judged
7. · paragraph 46–54bodily causation and understanding’s dependence on lower senses; the torch and cask comparisons
8. · paragraph 3an understanding person as sensible or judicious in responding to rejection
9. · paragraph 15rational/intellectual love and its extension to humans, God and angels
10. · paragraph 30intellectual love directed towards the morally honourable
11. · paragraph 7the eyes of understanding imagine absent beauty through description
12. · paragraph 63Calasiris’s eyes of understanding resist bodily sight, until he yields
13. Julian’s reported objection about understanding and faith, followed by Burton’s defence and distinction concerning demonstration

In this edition

“intellectus agens” becomes “active intellect”; “by discoursing” becomes “by reasoning”; and the list “Discoursing, Reasoning” becomes “discursive thought, reasoning.” “Agent, and Patient” becomes “active and passive.” The full constructions distinguish a mode of thought from conversation and a receptive cognitive power from a medical patient. The fingertip rendering retains the technical term because the practical-skill joke depends upon it.

At the passage “art, whose end is” is supplied in the modern column between prudence’s end of action and the end of making. The supplied editorial note cites an earlier witness for the supplement; this entry has checked the supplied edition, not independently collated that witness. The isolated “Intellectuall” becomes “Intellectual love”: the noun is supplied from context. The Latin intellectum means understanding within Julian’s reported objection, not Burton’s unqualified prescription that inquiry cease.

The adjective “understanding” in “an understanding man” becomes “sensible”. The translation of “Vexatio dat intellectum” belongs to the supplied editorial explanation of Burton’s marginal Latin, not to the modern body column.

agent and patient understanding

Printed “Agent, and Patient” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Source wording: Agent, and Patient

Citation convention

Understanding considered as active and receptive powers.

Context: One of several common divisions; patient here is receptive understanding, not a sick person.

Source: original body

agent understanding

Printed “Agent” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The active power that discovers and abstracts intelligible forms from imagination for passive understanding.

Context: Burton identifies active understanding with acuteness and discovery; it transfers forms rather than being the bodily sensory organ.

Source: original body

Source wording: The Agent is that which is called the Wit of man

discourse

Printed “discoursing” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Reasoning step by step from what the senses present towards bodily and spiritual substance.

Context: Burton describes successive cognition; this is intellectual inference, not conversation.

Source: original body

Source wording: after by discoursing, the minde findes out the corporeal substance, and from thence the spiritual

discoursing and reasoning

Printed “Discoursing, Reasoning” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Source wording: Discoursing, Reasoning

Citation convention

Listed intellectual operations of working through or inferring connections.

Context: The list is qualified by some say; other writers subsume these activities under discovery and judgment.

Source: original body

eyes of understanding · eyes of our understanding

Printed “eyes of our understanding” (English; phrase).

Citation convention

Mental perception, figured as inward sight of someone absent.

Context: Burton explains how hearing or reading a description can generate love for someone never seen; this image does not mean resistance to desire in this passage.

Source: original body

Source wording: We see with the eyes of our understanding

eyes of understanding · eyes of my understanding

Printed “eyes of my understanding” (English; phrase).

Citation convention

Reflective judgment, figured as inward sight opposing bodily attraction.

Context: Calasiris speaks within Burton’s report of Heliodorus; he says his resistance eventually fails. The speaker is not Burton recounting his own experience.

Source: original body

Source wording: I resisted a long time my bodily eyes with the eyes of my understanding

intellectivus amor

Printed “Intellectivus amor” (Latin; phrase).

Citation convention

Love involving knowledge or rational cognition.

Context: Burton calls this third class proper to humans and immediately says it appears in God, angels and humans; both statements must be retained.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: Rationall Love, Intellectivus amor

Modern rendering, Modern wording: rational love, “intellectual love,”

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

intellectual

Printed “Intellectuall” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Directed towards virtue and wisdom as morally honourable objects.

Context: The adjective concerns love; honest is morally honourable, not merely truthful.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: Intellectuall, about that which is honest

Modern rendering, Modern wording: Intellectual love concerns what is honourable

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Supplied or implicit wording: The modern text supplies the noun love from the preceding discussion.

intellectual habit

Printed “intellectual habits” (English; phrase).

Citation convention

Enduring capacities of knowing or practical thinking, rather than momentary acts.

Context: Burton attributes a compressed fivefold scheme to Aristotle, then attempts to reconcile competing enumerations.

Source: original body

Source wording: Aristotle reckons up but five intellectual habits

intellectus · intellectum · local use 1

Printed “intellectum” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Understanding as the power allegedly subjected to religious belief without further inquiry.

Context: Julian’s objection is reported; Burton answers it through Gregory rather than endorsing the charge.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: quod captivemus intellectum in obsequium fidei

Modern rendering, Modern wording: because we take our understanding captive in obedience to faith

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

intellectus · intellectum · local use 2

Printed “intellectum” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Understanding or insight gained through affliction.

Context: The marginal maxim presents affliction as the giver of insight; the body illustrates moral self-reflection during sickness. It is a historical religious argument, not medical advice.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original wording: Vexatio dat intellectum.

Modern rendering, Modern wording: Affliction gives understanding.

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

Edition note: independently checked against supplied marginal quotation and its editorial translation; not the modern body

intellectus agens

Printed “intellectus agens” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The active power of understanding, humorously located in the skilled hands of manufacturers.

Context: Burton praises Nuremberg craftspeople; the location in fingers is a practical-skill joke, not anatomical doctrine.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: their soul, or intellectus agens, was placed in their fingers ends

Modern rendering, Modern wording: their soul, or “active intellect,” was lodged in the ends of their fingers

Alignment convention

Alignment convention

passible understanding

Printed “Passible” (English; phrase).

Citation convention

The receptive power entrusted with preserving and further judging what active understanding supplies.

Context: Active understanding is the committing agent; passive understanding keeps and further judges.

Source: original body

Source wording: he commits it to the Passible to be kept

patient understanding

Printed “Patient” (English; phrase).

Citation convention

Receptive understanding, distinguished from the active power.

Context: The indexed Patient is the second member of the aligned pair; its local equivalent is passive, not a person receiving medical treatment.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: Agent, and Patient

Modern rendering, Modern wording: active and passive

Alignment convention

Alignment scope: Whole coordinated pair; Patient corresponds to passive within that pair.

simple or compound understanding

Printed “Simple, or Compound” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Source wording: Simple, or Compound

Citation convention

Understanding considered as uncombined or composite; Burton names the division but does not explain which acts each member comprises.

Context: A common division is reported, not demonstrated. The nearby composition/division list offers context but does not establish an exact technical identification.

Source: original body

speculative and practical understanding

Printed “Speculative, and Practick” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Source wording: Speculative, and Practick

Citation convention

Understanding directed towards contemplation or knowledge, contrasted with understanding directed towards action.

Context: A reported common division, distinct from the active/receptive division and from enduring capacity versus present exercise.

Source: original body

understanding · local use 1

Printed “understanding” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The soul’s power of grasping or knowing, distinguished in function from will, the rational power of movement.

Context: Burton reports a division in office, explicitly not in essence.

Source: original body

Source wording: The understanding, which is the Rational power apprehending

understanding · Understanding · local use 1

Printed “Understanding” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The power to know particulars and universals and examine its own acts.

Context: Definition cited alongside Melanchthon; reflective activity and asserted freedom from organs are philosophical claims.

Source: original body

Source wording: Understanding is a power of the Soul, by which we perceive, know, remember, and judge as well singulars, as universals

understanding · Understanding · local use 2

Printed “Understanding” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The cognitive power described as dependent in operation on the lower senses.

Context: Burton attributes this explanation of infirm human nature to Melanchthon; it is qualified by the surrounding account of bodily conditions.

Source: original body

Source wording: the Understanding is so tied to, and captivated by his inferior senses, that without their help he cannot exercise his functions

understanding · local use 2

Printed “understanding” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

The reader’s capacity to comprehend the subject matter.

Context: Burton states his aim as informing the reader, contrasting substance with pleasing sound; this is an authorial claim about his prose.

Source: original body

Source wording: inform my readers understanding, not to please his ear

understanding · local use 3

Printed “understanding” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation convention

Sensible or judicious, used adjectivally of a person.

Context: Burton argues that a sensible person need not take rejection as hard, then gives reasons; he does not say rejection can never hurt.

Source: original body

Source wording: but to an understanding man not so hardly to be taken

understanding in habit or in act

Printed “in Habit, or in Act” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Source wording: in Habit, or in Act

Citation convention

Understanding possessed as an enduring capacity or currently exercised.

Context: The next discussion distinguishes lasting notions from acts of perceiving; act is exercise, not a stage performance.

Source: original body