INTELLIGENT PEOPLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 802, 3 December 1954, Page 5

INTELLIGENT PEOPLE

Sir.-"Irish-New Zealander" wonders whether philosophers make a distinction between intelligence and wisdom. Intelligent means endowed with the capacity or faculty of understanding. Right. But understanding what? Are men intelligent if they understand that two and two make four, but don’t understand the theory of relativity? Human _ intelligence, it seems to me, is a complex consisting of an inherited faculty and a degree of training or development of that faculty; in other words, for current purposes, intelligent people are educated people. But it depends on the kind of education. Brend, in his Foundations of Human Conflict, says: "Modern education does not encourage clear thinking; it tends more to inhibit independent thought in the interests of certain derived emotions, and in consequence men are credulous, illogical, and easily swayed by shibboleths and catchwords." If this be true, can we look for a really intelligent populace, not to mention a wise one? Derived emotions often rest upon. events in the past, or asseftions about events in the past that cannot now be verified, and depend upon the" credulity of those to whom statements are made. Large numbers of people are swayed by derived. emotions because they accept traditional and current points of view instead of thinking for themselves. The truly intelligent individual seeks to liberate himself from the packet of derived emotions that have been created in him as a result of impressions made on him when he was juvenile, defenceless and unable to do other than accept the dicta of "authority." In my judgment, the individual who seeks to do this exhibits wisdom.

J. MALTON

MURRAY

(Oamaru),