I have always put a high value on intelligence. As a child going through public school, I was internally motivated not only to be intelligent, but to proved my intelligence. My thoughts surrounding intelligence (what it is and what it is not), its value and varying types of intelligence have changed enormously in my adult life, especially since beginning home educating my children. While I have not read all of the literature that Erskine cites, his examples of intelligence equating to evil is almost shocking. I was immediately pressed to come up with examples where this is not the case, and thought of Anne of Green Gables, who, by the end of the series proved herself to be both intelligent and good. Then I remembered, however, that even Anne asks the question, "Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?" It appears that even she thought, at least in her youth, that intelligence and goodness are mutually exclusive.
Perhaps literary characters often have to be one or the other. As they are portrayed, they are often slightly two-dimensional when compared with a real person. Flaws are emphasized, virtues exaggerated, as they become representations of a specific trait. But when I think of my family and my hopes for them, I resonate with one of Erskine's last assertions that, "We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life,--not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God." When the worship of intelligence is born from faith - faith in a God who embodies all intelligence - than perhaps we can visualize what true intelligence is. It is not cunning, it does not create fear. Those who worship intelligence simply for intellect's sake, may be missing the point. When combined with goodness and extolled as a virtue, cultivated and shaped just as any other virtue ought be, intelligence may indeed be the ultimate virtue through which we are able to best develop all other virtues, both as individuals and societies.
Perhaps literary characters often have to be one or the other. As they are portrayed, they are often slightly two-dimensional when compared with a real person. Flaws are emphasized, virtues exaggerated, as they become representations of a specific trait. But when I think of my family and my hopes for them, I resonate with one of Erskine's last assertions that, "We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life,--not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God." When the worship of intelligence is born from faith - faith in a God who embodies all intelligence - than perhaps we can visualize what true intelligence is. It is not cunning, it does not create fear. Those who worship intelligence simply for intellect's sake, may be missing the point. When combined with goodness and extolled as a virtue, cultivated and shaped just as any other virtue ought be, intelligence may indeed be the ultimate virtue through which we are able to best develop all other virtues, both as individuals and societies.