Intelligence: The Practical Use of Knowledge. Knowledge: The End Result of Learning. Learning . . . The Key to Learning is the Key to Intelligence. To truly understand what it means to be “smart”, we must start from the bottom up, and look at these terms, and see what they really mean. So what does it mean to learn? How does one learn? The easiest, most simple answer is by questions. Many have the assumption that only by gaining answers does one acquire knowledge, but I know for certain that this is a falsity. Imagine a ladder. Questions are the bottom rung of this ladder, used to reach the light bulb which will shine when powered with electricity just as our minds will shine when powered by knowledge. The end result? Of a light bulb, Light. Of a mind, Intelligence. All must start at this bottom rung, just like any normal ladder to reach the end result of intelligence. When we start on the bottom rung of our ladder, when we start asking questions, we, just like architects, begin to build a foundation stronger than any building: it’s the foundation of knowledge. This foundation, however, is scattered. When we ask a question, we search for an answer. That search is not destined to always return the answer for which we are looking. We may find an answer to a question we may not yet have even asked! But that answer is put into our foundation upon which other questions with other answers will be built. Even if we do not find the answer to our original question, we have learned. We have successfully gained knowledge! Not only that, but we have gained knowledge we weren’t even looking for. The importance of that knowledge is that, one day, it will provide useful in the quest for the acquisition of further knowledge! You may be thinking that this now contradicts my earlier statement, that gaining answers does not lead to knowledge. However, there is a key difference between that statement and what I have just presented to you: The former provides that answers are the first rung; the latter shows that questions are the real keys to learning. This is why the questions are so important, and why they are the first rung! It is because they are the ways to acquiring knowledge! Obviously, the second rung of our ladder is answers. Just as the first step leads to the second, the questions we ask lead to answers. As mentioned earlier, these answers begin a foundation. When we start climbing our ladder again by asking questions, we find more answers. If these new answers are closely related to previous answers, our foundation, our total knowledge, on a single subject increases because our foundation of that subject is growing larger. If they are related to no previous answers, we begin a new foundation on another subject! We are always learning! On our quest to intelligence, our third rung is knowledge. Not only is it our third rung, it is our final rung! Once we reach this third rung, we can grasp the light bulb that is our mind, and let intelligence go forth! But how do we reach it? It is a simple matter. We must survey our knowledge and decide if we have a practical use for this knowledge. Lucky for us, this surveying is done subconsciously on many occasions! What if every time we were confronted with a problem, we had to think of everything we knew of the subject in order to formulate a solution! It would be quite a burdensome task. However, there may be an occasion in which the solution is not so evident (there may be many occasions!). It is now that we must muster together our foundations of knowledge in order to find the solution. This is practically finding the solution. This here, is intelligence. There are many foundations of knowledge, and likewise, there are many forms of intelligence. As long as we continue to build upon our foundations of knowledge, our intelligence is infinite.