It is one’s psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person’s judgment ~ Carl Jung

In a book review of Monas Hieroglyphica (or Hieroglyphic Monad) by John Dee, Valentin Tomberg describes the two life paths described by Dee in the preface, incorporating into it the seven-year cycles of life described by Rudolf Steiner. The first stages of life are the same for both paths, as interpreted by Tomberg. I have added the sacraments associated with the beginning of each stage, even if their esoteric significance has apparently long been forgotten. Since Tomberg does not mention Steiner’s description of the stages, I also included them.

During young adulthood, and even adolescence, a choice can be made:

• The path of earth or worldliness
• The path of water or wisdom

The first path leads to the Tyrant ending in the Abyss; the second leads to the Spiritual Man (pneumatikos), ending in Fire. These are the stages on each path, including Tomberg’s addition of the ages

Tomberg interprets this to indicate that Dee has a firm understanding of the stages of life. However, in point of fact, few people make that choice of all, becoming neither tyrant or philosopher; or else they only go partway along the path. Most people, on the other hand, seem to wander aimlessly through life, oblivious to any higher calling.

IQ and Intelligence

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? ~ old saying

Nassim Taleb recently tweeted something about IQ tests:

IQ measures an inferior form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects, meant to select paper shufflers, obedient IYIs [intelligent yet idiots].

Taleb is normally reliable, but his desire to be the gadfly and curmudgeon — i.e., to be outrageous — might get the better of him. Apparently he believes that “higher” intelligence applies solely to being successful in the world. Actually, success in the world does not required an exceptionally high IQ, or else the human race would have failed millennia ago.

On the contrary, the highly intelligent are less interested in success by worldly standards and are more attracted to abstract thinking. In other words, they take the water path rather than the earth path. Thus, even if they are not highly financially successful, they are hardly obedient paper shufflers. Instead of IQ, perhaps a more objective test can be used. Here are some proposals, for example, based on academic courses:

• Pass a course in logic. I was in a class that started with 25 students and ended with just 3 or us. The philosophy, political science, pre-law students had all dropped out.
• Read and understand one of Plato’s dialogs.
• Pass an economics class. This class forced many business majors to switch majors.
• Pass organic chemistry. This is often the bane of pre-med students.
• Pass a physics class. Few students even attempt it.
• Pass a class in abstract mathematics. I used to teach algebra to elementary education majors, many of whom were taking the course for the second or third time. That was torture.
• Read and comment on a few sonnets.
• Read and comment on selected works of fiction.

Obviously, you can do well in the world without taking any of those classes. That does not mean that intelligence does not exist.

Twofold Reason

Aristotle identified two types of reason: Creative and Passive. These are described as:

• Creative Mind: Always in full possession of all forms or ideas.
• Passive Mind: Only has potential possession of them and which can only rise to actual possession through the inspiration of the creative mind.

Most students who are considered smart in school work through the passive mind. That is, they are really competent at absorbing and repeating the ideas taught by their teachers. Of course, in most cases the teachers themselves only have a passive mind. Such students are convinced they are intelligent because they can absorb the propaganda repeated by the powerful.

However, the ideas themselves come from those with creative minds. They can resist propaganda due to their better critical thinking skills. They may be considered to be oddballs and may fail in situations which required conformity.

It is true that IQ may not capture this distinction.

Things and Concepts

I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet — a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, of development, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and the fearful passionless force of non-human things. ~ Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development

Bertrand Russell separates terms into two types: things and concepts. Things refer to individuals and concepts to classes. For Russell, these are merely logical categories, so there is no judgment about the reality of concepts.

In reality, the thing, or percept, refers to existence—or that the thing exists. Concepts refer to essences — what a thing is. The dominant position today is that concepts are not real. Rather, they are just nominal concepts — or social constructs in today’s language — and do not refer to anything transcendental.

The ability to “see” the concept in the percept is an ability not available to everyone (although it can be learned). This is a form of theophany since the concepts are really ideas in the Mind of God. Borrowing form Carl Jung, with some poetic license, we can distinguish two different perceiving types: the intuitive and the sensitive.

The sensitive type is dominated by sensation, i.e., he experiences the thing through the senses. The intuitive type, on the other hand, can “see” the concept in the thing, which is a direct knowing of the idea. The intuitive type can certainly experience the thing via the senses, just as the sensitive type does, but he also experiences reality more deeply. Specifically, he also sees the idea instantiated by the thing. John Findlay affirms this:

It seems plain that our human world is a world in which innumerable ideas, meanings, facts, principles, constructions, hypotheses, laws, images and ideals are as essential a part of the landscape as are the concrete bodies and thinking persons around which they cluster, and above which they float. They constitute a universal world of rational mind in which all thinking persons share, whatever the limitations of their immediate, sensuous viewpoint.

Instantiation

Statistics were unknown to the ancients and are very poorly understood today, even by the educated. Qualities follow a statistical distribution when they become instantiated in a population. This divergence leads many to think that the quality is not real or is irrelevant. Findlay, in his reworking of Plato, makes this clear:

Probability is an irremovable feature of the human cave, and as such it resists reduction to anything factual, anything ascertainable and discoverable, anything that is could be merely there.

That means that the ideal of necessary connections is not always met. When a concept or quality manifests itself in existence, it will follow a statistical distribution of some sort (otherwise, there would be a hidden law or principle). So for intelligence, there will be a range from the highly to the average and to low intelligence. This does not mean that intelligence does not exist. It also precludes the possibility of any notion of egalitarianism in intelligence.

The instantiation of a divine idea requires sacrifice and limitation. Otherwise, the essence and existence of finite beings would be identical. However, the identity of essence and existence is possible only for God.

References
The Hieroglyphic Monad

Valentin Tomberg, Russian Spirituality

Stages of Life according to Rudolf Steiner

John Findlay, The Discipline of the Cave

Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics

Carl Jung, Psychological Types