1895: What Intelligence Is
A lecture by Lady Hortense Canard
The topic before us is intelligence, a notoriously overfed word which has lately taken to strutting about as if it belonged to the better families of Philosophy. I assure you, it does not. Intelligence is not a title; it is a temperament.
I prefer to begin modestly, with the fox. The fox, as you know, is not a university creature. He holds no lectures, writes no verse, and consults no morning newspaper before conducting himself through the hedgerows. Yet his path—have you ever observed it?—winds with quiet accuracy, as if the earth itself had whispered to him where she ought to be stepped upon. He composes meaning without grammar, which is rather more than many essayists manage. The fox’s intelligence is not something he has, like a glove or an uncle; it is something he is. He does not think cunning; he moves cunning. He lives the thought others later write articles about.
Now, the duck. Please observe that no creature has been more unfairly ridiculed by poets and satirists. And yet, the duck balances. She balances with such serene absurdity that we suspect her of philosophy. What keeps her steady is precisely her refusal to reflect. Were she to question the metaphysics of water, she would sink at once. And beyond that, she does not believe. Belief requires tension; balance requires its absence. The duck, therefore, swims in the pure suspension between gravity and grace. A most enviable condition.
Would you say the duck sins? Of course not. She merely exists at the correct angle. The height of moral conduct is seldom higher than that.
The fox, we have agreed, does not sin; the mountain, I add, does not transgress. Transgression demands boundary; nature rarely bothers to draw any. It is only we humans—with our infatuation for comparison—who manufacture lines and then fall theatrically across them. We decide which thought is cleverer, which person is wiser, which goose more graceful at a distance. The moment we cease comparing, everything becomes tolerably correct. The mountain stands, the fox proceeds, the duck balances. Intelligence, therefore, must be the calm correspondence between a thing and its circumstance.
Some philosophers, not known personally to me, declare that intelligence resides in the brain. That is like saying that buoyancy resides in the wing. The brain is a vessel only, and vessels are useful chiefly for being empty when required. I have a teacup that holds less than the bath upstairs, but it nonetheless fulfils its destiny admirably. Nobody scolds the cup for its modest capacity. A mind, too, need not be enormous, merely well-shaped. Quantity impresses servants; quality persuades company.
Consider, too, our friend the fish. She lives in a most flattering element, her entire world a single consistency. The fish does not climb the tree—not because she is ignorant, but because she is intelligent in the correct direction. To compare her to a squirrel is to misunderstand the matter entirely. The squirrel’s triumph is vertical; the fish’s grace is fluid. Both enact completeness, which is more than success. Imagine the chaos if every creature insisted on versatility. We should have melancholic cats taking up botany and ambitious ducks pursuing astronomy. Nature, thank heaven, has better manners.
The difficulty among us—by which I mean, among clever people—is that we perpetually wish to possess intelligence, as though it were an estate. We ask, “How intelligent am I?” which is as sensible as asking, “How musical is a violin before it has been played?” Intelligence is not a stock to be held; it is a symmetry to be achieved. It passes through us as air through a flute—our only duty is not to block the sound.
I know what you are thinking (I am rather intelligent myself): “But Lady Hortense, if we do not measure, how shall we know who is clever and who is not?” My dears, we shall know by comfort. In the presence of true intelligence, one feels proportionate. In the presence of counterfeit intellect, one feels diminished. That is the simplest test I can offer. It is like walking in the rain: when the company is good, wetness becomes irrelevant.
Permit me a domestic digression. Last Thursday, during a storm of no philosophical importance, I found that the weather had rearranged the terrace furniture in a superior manner to my gardener. It struck me that intelligence may sometimes be nothing more than the capacity to let arrangement happen. The sky had composed harmony without deliberation—there was not an ounce of vanity in it. The enlightened person operates thus: she allows knowledge to pass through, arranging itself as it pleases, not hoarding it in heavy displays.
When we cease to compare, we cease also to envy. When we stop envying, we begin, quite accidentally, to understand. That is the only kind of intelligence worth sustaining—the fluid kind that neither resists nor clings. Beyond that, one may as well be a mountain, which cannot boast, or a duck, which will not, or a fox, which need not.
In short, one should aspire less to have intelligence than to become hospitable to it. Set the mind as you would a fine table. Lay it simply, keep it clean, leave room for conversation. Should intelligence arrive, it will seat itself. Should it not, you will still have an excellent table.
Now then, my pupils, let us adjourn for tea before anyone attempts to think about all this. Thinking, as I have said a hundred times, must be done casually or not at all. Besides, the grounds are full of ducks, and they are holding a perfectly balanced faculty meeting upon the pond.
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