intellection

noun

1. The mental activity or process of grasping with the intellect; apprehension by the mind; understanding.

   uncountable

   These books will fill, and well fill, certain stretches of life […] But in old or nervous or solemnest or dying hours, when one needs the impalpably soothing and vitalizing influences of abysmic Nature, or its affinities in literature or human society, and the soul resents the keenest mere intellection, they will not be sought for.

2. A particular act of grasping by means of the intellect.

   countable

   Our senses, our instincts, our intellections are all instruments of adaptation.

3. The mental content of an act of grasping by means of the intellect, as a thought, idea, or conception.

   countable

   When Banerjee talks about the artist's thinking about the music, she is not referring to an intellection about the mechanics of technique.

Where it comes from

Borrowed from Latin intellectiō, intellectiōnem.

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry intellection (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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