Of the Virtues Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects
Virtue generally, in all sorts of subjects, is somewhat that is valued for eminence, and consisteth in comparison. For if all things were equal in all men, nothing would be prized. And by “virtues intellectual,” are always understood such abilities of the mind as men praise, value, and desire should be in themselves; and go commonly under the name of a “good wit”; though the same word “wit” be used also to distinguish one certain ability from the rest.
These “virtues” are of two sorts, “natural,” and “acquired.” By natural, I mean not that which a man hath from his birth: for that is nothing else but sense; wherein men differ so little one from another, and from brute beasts, as it is not to be reckoned amongst virtues. But I mean that “wit” which is gotten by use only and experience; without method, culture, or instruction. This “natural wit” consisteth principally in two things, “celerity of imagining,” that is, swift succession of one thought to another, and steady direction to some approved end. On the contrary, a slow imagination maketh that defect, or fault of the mind which is commonly called “dullness,” “stupidity,” and sometimes by other names that signify slowness of motion, or difficulty to be moved.
And this difference of quickness, is caused by the difference of men’s passions; that love and dislike, some one thing, some another: and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some another; and are held to, and observe differently the things that pass through their imagination. And whereas in this succession of men’s thoughts, there is nothing to observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be “like one another,” or in what they be “unlike,” or “what they serve for,”