Creative Evolution — Henri Bergson (trans. Arthur Mitchell, 1911)

To what date is it agreed to ascribe the appearance of man on the earth? To the period when the first weapons, the first tools, were made. The memorable quarrel over the discovery of Boucher de Perthes in the quarry of Moulin-Quignon is cot forgotten. The question was whether real hatchets had been found or merely bite of flint accidentally broken. But that, supposing they were hatchets, we were indeed in the presence of intelligence, and more particularly of human intelligence, no one doubted for an instant. Now let us open a col- lection of anecdotes on the intelligence of animals: we ehall see that besides many acts explicable by imitation or by the automatic association of images, there are some that we do not hesitate to call intelligent: foremost among them are tho:,e that bear witness to some idea of manu- facture, whether the animal life succeeds in fashioning a crude instrument or uses for its profit an object made by man. The animals that rank immediately after man in

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the matter of intelligence, the apes and elephants, are those that can use an artificial instrument occasionally. Below, but not very far from thcni, come those that recognize a constructed object: for example, the fox, which knows quite well that a trap is a trap. No doubt, there is intelligence wherever there is inference; but inference, which consists in an inflection of past experience in the direction of present experience, is already a beginning of invention. Invention becomes complete when it is materialized in a manufactured instrument. Towards that achievement the intelligence of animals tends as towards an ideal. And though, ordinarily, it does not yet succeed in fashioning artificial objects and in making use of them, it is preparing for this by the very variations which it performs on the instincts furnished by nature. As regards human intelligence, it has not been sufficiently noted that mechanical invention has been from the first its essential feature, that even to-day our social life gravi- tates around the manufacture and use of artificial instru- ments, that the inventions which strew the road of progress have also traced its direction. This we hardly realize, because it takes us longer to change ourselves than to change our tools. Our individual and even social habits survive a good while the circumstances for which they were made, so that the ultimate efi'ects of an invention are not observed until its novelty is already out of sight. A century has elapsed since the invention of the steam- engine, and we are only just beginning to feel the depths of the shock it gave us. But the revolution it has effected in industry has nevertheless upset human relations al- together. New ideas are arising, new feelings are on the way to flower. In thousands of years, when, seen from the distance, only the broad lines of the present age will still be visible, our wars and our revolutions will count for

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^Fnttle, even supposing they are remembered at all; but the Bteam-engine, and the procession of inventions of every kind that accompanied it, will perhaps be spoken of as we speak of the bronze or of the chipped stone of pre-historic times: it will serve to define an age.' If we could rid our- selves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us to be the constant characteristic of man and of intelli- gence, we should say not Hovio sapiens, but Hovio faber. tin short, inlelligence, considered in what seetns to be its [itrigincd feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artifidaZ objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture.

Now, doed an unintelligent animal also possess tools or machines? Yes, certainly, but here the instrument forms a part of the body that uses it; and, correspond- ing to this instrument, there is an instinct that knows how to use it. True, it cannot be maintained that all instincts consist in a natural ability to use an inborn mechanism. Such a definition would not apply to the instincts which Romanes called "secondary"; and more than one "pri- mary" instinct would not come under it. But this defi- nition, like that which we have provisionally given of intelligence, determines at least the ideal limit toward which the very numerous forms of instinct are traveUng. Indeed, it has often been pointed out that most instincts are only the continuance, or rather the consummation, ' of the work of organization itself. Where does the activity of instinct begin? and where does that of nature end? We cannot tell. In the metamorphoses of the larva into the nymph and into the perfect insect, metamorphoses that

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often require appropriate action and a kind of initiative on the part of the larva, there is no sharp line of demarca- tion between the instinct of the animal and the organizing work of living matter. We may say, as we will, either that instinct organizes the instruments it is about to use, or that the process of organization is continued in the instinct that has to use the organ. The most marvelous instincts of the insect do nothing but develop its special structure into movements: indeed, where social life divides the labor among different individuals, and thus allots them different instincts, a corresponding difference of structure is observed: the polymorphism of ants, bees, wasps and certain j)seudoneuroptera is well known. Thus, if we consider only those typical cases in which the complete triumph of intelligence and of instinct is seen, we find this essential difference between them: instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even of conslrucling organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of rnaking and usiTtg imorganized instruments.

The advantages and drawbacks of these two modes of activity are obvious. Instinct finds the appropriate instrument at hand: this instrument, which makes and repairs itself, which presents, like all the works of nature, &n infinite complexity of detail combined with a marveloua simplicity of function, does at once, when required, what it is called upon to do, without difficulty and with a per- fection that is often wonderful. In return, it retains an almost invariable structure, since a modification of it involves a modification of the species. Instinct is there- fore necessarily specialized, being nothing but the utiU- zation of a specific instrument for a specific object. The instrument constructed intelligently, on the contrary, is an imperfect instrument. It costs an effort. It ia generaliy troublesome to handle. But, as it is made of

unorganized matter, it can take any form whatsoever, serve any purpose, free the bving being from every new difficulty that arises and bestow on it an unlimited number of powers, Whilst it is inferior to the natural instrument for the satisfaction of immediate wants, its advantage over it is the greater, the less urgent the need. Above all, it reacts on the nature of the being that constructs it; for in calling on him to exercise a new function, it confers on him, so to speak, a richer organization, being an artificial organ by which the natural organism is ex- tended. For every need that it satisfies, it creates a new 1 need; and so, instead of closing, like instinct, the round of ' action within which the animal tends to move auto- matically, it lays open to activity an unlimited field into which it is driven further and further, and made more and more free. But this advantage of intelligence over instinct only appears at a late stage, when inteUigence, having raised construction to a higher degree, proceedi to construct constructive machinery. At the outset, the advantages and drawbacks of the artificial instrument and of the natural instrument balance so well that it is hard to for&- tell which of the two will secure to the living being the greater empire over nature.

We may surmise that they began by being implied in each other, that the original psychical activity included both at once, and that, if we went far enough back into the past, we should find instincts more nearly approaching intelligence than those of our insects, intelligence nearer to instinct than that of our .vertebrates, intelligence and instinct being, in this elementary condition, prisoners of s matter which they are not yet able to control. K the force immanent in life were an unhmited force, it might perhaps have developed instinct and intelligence together, and to my Krtent, in the same organisms. But everything scemj

to indicate that this force is limited, and that it soon exhausts itself in its very manifestation. It is hard for it to go far in several directions at once: it must choose. Now, it has the choice between two modes of acting on the material world: it can either effect this action directly by creating an organized instrument to work with; or else it can effect it indirecUj/ through an organism which, in- stead of possessing the required instrument naturally, will itself construct it by fashioning inorganic matter. Hence intelligence and instinct, which diverge more and more as they develop, but which never entirely separate from each other. On the one hand, the most perfect instinct of the insect is accompanied by gleams of intelli- gence, if only in the choice of place, time and materials of construction: the bees, for example, when by exception they build in the open air, invent new and really intelligent arrangements to adapt themselves to such new con- ditions.' But, on the other hand, intelligence has even more need of instinct than instinct has of intelligence; for the power to give shape to crude matter involves al- ready a superior degree of organization, a degree to which the animal could not have risen, save on the wings of instinct. So, while nature has frankly evolved in the di- rection of mstinct in the arthropods, we observe in almost all the vertebrates the striving after rather than the ex- pansion of intelligence. It is instinct still which forma the basis of their psychical activity; but intelligence ia there, and would fain supersede it. Intelligence does not yet succeed in inventing instruments; but at least it tries to, by performing as many variations as possible on the instinct which it would like to dispense with. It gains complete self-possession only in man, and this triumph Bouvier, "La NidilicatioD dea abeillca i I'air Libre" (C. B. de t'A9^

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is attested by the very insufficiency of the natural meana &t nmn's disposal for defense against his enemies, against cold and hunger. This insufficiency, when we strive to fathom its significance, acquires the value of a prehistoric document; it is the final leave-taking between intelli- gence and instinct. But it is no less true that nature must have hesitated between two modes of psychical activity — one assured of immediate success, but limited in ita effects; the other hazardous, but whose conquests, if it should reach independence, might be extended in- definitely. Here again, then, the greatest success was achieved on the side of the greatest risit. Instinct and inielligence therefore represent two divergent sdi^ona, equally fitting, of one and the same problem.

There ensue, it is true, profound differences of internal structure between instinct and intelligence. We shall dwell only on those that concern our present study. Let us say, then, that instinct and intelligence imply two radically different kinds of knowledge. But some ex- planations are first of all necessary on the subject of con- sciousness in general.

It has l>een asited how far instinct is conscious. Our reply is that there are a vast number of differences and degrees, tliat instinct is more or less conscious in certain cases, unconscious in others. The plant, as we shall see, has instincts; it is not likely that these are accompanied by feeling. Even in the animal there is hardly any com- plex instinct that is not unconscious in some part at least of its exercise. But here we must point out a difference, not often noticed, between two kinds of unconsciousness, viz., that in which consciousness is absent, and that in which consciousness is nullified. Both are equal to zero, but in one case the zero expresses the fact that there is nothing, in the other that we have two equal quantities of opposite