The Intellect, With an Appendix on Language

The Intellect, With An Appendix On Language by Thomas C. Upham. This nineteenth-century handbook of eclectic mental philosophy surveys the mind’s threefold structure—Intellect, the Sensibilities, and the Will—and presents an inductive, empirical programme to synthesize major schools. It outlines a division of the intellect into External or Sensuous Intellect and Internal or Super-sensuous Intellect, with a third part on imperfect and disordered intellectual action. The work advances primary propositions about self-evident starting points such as personal existence and identity, and describes diverse grounds of belief arising from intuition, consciousness, sensation, memory, testimony, and relations. Upham argues for the immateriality of the mind, contrasts mind and body, and treats language development, perception, memory, imagination, attention, and reasoning as interrelated faculties. An Appendix on Language traces signs from natural and oral origins to writing, including ancient scripts and the Cherokee syllabary, illustrating how language reflects cognitive structures. Throughout, the author advocates careful observation, Baconian method, and case-based illustration from infancy and abnormal states to ground a systematic study of knowledge production and mental life.