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The power to understand; the intellectual faculty; the intelligence; the rational powers collectively conceived an designated; the higher capacities of the intellect; the power to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to adapt means to ends. There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty them understandi…

ake into a unit; to unite; to view as one. A comprehensive or unifying act of the judging faculty. De Quincey. Perception is thus a unifying act. Sir W. Hamilton.

Deprived of the faculty of will or volition. Mrs. Browning.

med in the evening preceding a feast. Vigils, or Watchings, of flowers (Bot.), a peculiar faculty belonging to the flowers of certain plants of opening and closing their petals as certain hours of the day. [R.]

The faculty of seeing; sight; one of the five senses, by which colors and the physical qualities of external objects are appreciated as a result of the stimulating action of light on the sensitive retina, an expansion of the optic nerve.

. [Obs.] I can not satisfy myself how men should be so little surprised about this visive faculty. Berkeley.

The faculty or power of utterance; as, to cultivate the voice.

riginating in the will; having the power to will. "They not only perfect the intellectual faculty, but the volitive." Sir M. Hale.

The power of choosing; the faculty or endowment of the soul by which it is capable of choosing; the faculty or power of the mind by which we decide to do or not to do; the power or faculty of preferring or selecting one of two or more objects. It is necessary to form a distinct notion of what is meant by the word "voli…

A mental faculty, or power of the mind; -- used in this sense chiefly in the plural, and in certain phrases; as, to lose one's wits; at one's wits' end, and the like. "Men's wittes ben so dull." Chaucer. I will stare him out of his wits. Shak.

Fig.: An injury, hurt, damage, detriment, or the like, to feeling, faculty, reputation, etc.