Intelligence sprouts where it will and is spent day by day like income for incessant needs

The House of the Intellect by Jacques Barzun. Page 5.

Shades of E.D. Hirsch in Cultural Literacy.

Intellect is community property and can be handed down. We all know what we mean by an intellectual tradition, localized here or there; but we do not speak of a 'tradition of intelligence,' for intelligence sprouts where it will and is spent day by day like income for incessant needs. Intelligence is the native ability of the creature to achieve its ends by varying the use of its powers - living, as we say, by its wits. Accordingly, we can distinguish the intelligent from the stupid throughout the scale of sentient beings: an intelligent, but not intellectual, dog or child; an intellectual, but not intelligent, bluestocking or university professor. Intelligence is by definition the protean faculty. We find it in a political move or in a work of art, in the performance of a football team or in a piece of repartee, none of which are specifically intellectual. And though Intellect neither implies nor precludes intelligence, two of its uses are - to make up for the lack of intelligence and to amplify the force of it by giving it quick recognition and embodiment.

For intelligence wherever found is an individual and private possession; it dies with the owner unless he embodies it in more or less lasting form. Intellect is on the contrary a product of social effort and an acquirement. A man cannot help being intelligent, but he can easily help becoming an intellectual. Intellect is an institution; it stands up as it were by itself, apart from possessors of intelligence, even though they alone could rebuild it if it should be destroyed.