Website owner: James Miller
Intelligence, discernment and understanding are closely
connected. We call the person of knowledge, discernment and
understanding intelligent. And knowledge, discernment and
understanding are closely connected to certain habits and
personality traits. The action of certain personality traits,
ways and habits, over time, tend to produce the intelligent,
knowledgeable, discerning, understanding mind. What are the
personality traits and personal habits that, over time, produce
the intelligent mind? Let us name them:
1. Interest in knowledge and understanding
2. Curiosity
3. Habit of reading
4. Industriousness, willingness to expend effort,
conscientiously doing those things that one ought to do,
energetic application of one's self, hard work and effort
towards mental improvement
5. Perseverance
6. Seriousness
7. High personal standards
Knowledge and mental improvement comes through effort, hard
work and perseverance. It is something developed by the hard-
working, motivated person.
There is a personality trait that is closely connected with
ignorance and lack of intelligence. It is laziness. The lazy,
unmotivated person remains ignorant. One gets out of life
about what one puts into it. If one puts nothing in he gets
nothing out. In life you have to invest in order to reap
benefit.
Psychiatrists tend to equate intelligence with the rapidity and
ease with which a person learns. What lies behind the trait of
being easily teachable, of learning easily? The Funk &
Wagnalls Dictionary gives us a clue. Under "teachable" we
find:
Teachable. Willing or able to learn, docile.
Under the definition of "docile" we find:
Docile. 1. Amenable to training; easy to manage; tractable.
2. Easily worked or handled.
Syn. Docile, tractable, pliant, compliant and amenable mean
submissive to the will of another. The docile person is easy
to teach; the tractable person easy to lead. A pliant man can
easily be bent in any direction; the compliant stresses ease
of persuasion; and amenable describes the person who is
disposed to be obedient.
Ant. Intractable, obstinate, willful, fractious, inflexible.
It is worth noting that the thoughtful, doubting, skeptical,
questioning, examining mind is not a docile, tractable, pliant
mind. It is an independent thinking mind that closely
corresponds to the opposite of pliant and tractable, namely,
intractable and obstinate.
June 2005
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