This article discusses the nature of intelligence, introducing a new distinction between macrocomponents and microcomponents of human intelligence. Microcomponents are fairly elementary operations such as inference and application of analogical relations. Macrocomponents are the global-level constellations of processes that are formed from concatenations of microcomponents and include the following: (1) ability to learn and profit from experience and the products of this experience; (2) ability to think or reason abstractly; (3) ability to adapt oneself to the vagaries of a changing and uncertain real-world environment; and (4) ability to motivate oneself to accomplish expeditiously the tasks one needs to accomplish. Based on the knowledge gained from intensive information-processing analysis of problems found on IQ tests, it seems that contemporary theories of intelligence are adequate in their accounts of the first two macrocomponents listed above, but are wholly inadequate in their accounts of the last two macrocomponents. The effort to measure motivational and practical problem solving abilities needs to be redoubled, despite the frequent frustrations with which they have met in past research. (Author/RL)