Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

Whitehead frames intellect as a necessary but secondary layer over the more fundamental reality of emotion. Like clothing, intellect can refine, protect, and make social life workable—helping us articulate, regulate, and coordinate our impulses. But clothing is not the body: if intellect becomes detached from feeling, it turns into an empty shell—formal, sterile, and incapable of sustaining genuine human purposes. The analogy also implies a critique of overly “rational” cultures or philosophies that treat emotion as an embarrassment rather than the living source of value, motivation, and meaning. For Whitehead, a healthy civilization needs both: disciplined thought that remains responsive to the felt texture of experience.