Your Beauvoir quote and clarifications jibe with a statement by David Krakauer: intelligence is search.

In which case, why specific people are more intelligent than others, and whether that intelligencee is highly general (rare) or more specific (common, almost painfully or absurdly so at times), and why, is a fascinating question.

Beauvoir and Proust suggest that the mechanism is technique rather than a more general capacity, and hence focused on specific capabilities. That is, a method effective at crossing some specific divides, but not providing a deeper vision or reach, or higher vantage, generally. That last visualising a conceptual landscape as having peaks, valleys, and barriers (walls or chasms) to be crosssed.

Technique providing bridging capacity, but not view-from-a-peak.