the form to be obtained. As to the matter, we choose that which is most convenient; but, in order to choose it, that is to say, in order to go and seek it among many others, we must have tried, in imagination at least, to endow every kind of matter with the form of the object conceived. In other words, an intelligence which aims at fabricating is an inteDigence which never stops at the actual form of things nor regards it as final, but, on the contrary, looks upon all matter as if it were car\-able at will. Plato compares the good dialectician to the skilful cook who carves the animal without breaking its bones, by following the articulations marked out by nature." An intelligence which always proceeded thus would really be an intelligence turned toward speculation. But action, and in particular fabrication, requires the opposite mental tendency : it makes us consider every actual form of things, even the form of natural things, as artificial and provisional; it makes our thought efface from the object perceived, even though organized and living, the lines that outwardly mark its inward structure; in short, it makes us regard its matter as indifferent to its form. The whole of matter is made to appear to our thought as an immense piece of cloth in which we can cut out what we will and sew it together again as we please. Let us note, in passing, that it is this power that we affirm when we say that there is a apace, that is to say, a homogeneous and empty medium, infinite and infinitely divisible, lending itself indifferently to any mode of decomposition whatso- ever. A medium of this kind is never perceived; it is only conceived. What is perceived is extension colored, re- Bistant, divided according to the lines which mark out the boundaries of real bodies or of their real elements. But when we think of our power over this matter, that is to say, Plato, Phatarui, 26S ■.
iM THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 157
of our faculty of decomposing and recomposing it as we please, we project the whole of these possible decompositions and recompositions behind real extension in the form of a homogeneous space, empty and indifferent, which is supposed to underlie it. This space is therefore, pre- eminently, the plan of our possible action on things, al- though, indeed, things have a natural tendency, aa we shall explain further on, to enter into a frame of this kind. It is a view taken by mind. The animal has probably no idea of it, even when, hke us, it perceives ex- tended things. It is an idea that symboUzes the tendency of the human intellect to fabrication. But this point must not detain us now. Suffice it to say that the iTiteUect is characterized by the unlimited power of decomposing ac- cording to any law and of recomposing iriio any system.
We have now enumerated a few of the essential features of human intelligence. But we have hitherto considered the individual in isolation, without taking account of social life. In reahty, man is a being who lives in society. If it be true that the human intellect aims at fabrication, we must add that, for that as well as for other purposes, it is associated ^nth other intellects. Now, it is difficult to imagine a society whose members do not communicate by signs. Insect societies probably have a language, and this language must be adapted, like that of man, to the neces- sities of life in common. By language community of action is made possible. But the requirements of joint action are not at all the same in a colony of ants and in a human society. In insect societies there is generally polymor- phism, the subdivision of labor is natural, and each indi- vidual is riveted by its structure to the function it performs. In any case, these societies are based on instinct, and con- sequently on certain actions or fabrications that are more or less dependent on the form of the organs. So if the ants.
158 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (ohap.
for instance, have a language, the signs which compose it must be very liinited in number, and each of them, once the species is fonned, must remain invariably attached to a certain object or a certain operation: the sign is adherent to the thing signified. In human society, on the contraiy, fabrication and action are of variable form, and, moreover, each individual must learn his part, because he is not preordained to it by his structure. So a language is re- quired which makes it possible to be always passing from what is known to what is yet to be known. There must be a language whose signs — which cannot be infinite in number — are extensible to an infinity of things. This tendency of the sign to transfer itself from one object to another is characteristic of human language. It is ob- servable in the httle child as soon as he begins to speak. Immediately and naturally he extends the meaning of the words he learns, availing himself of the most accidental connection or the most distant analogy to detach and transfer elsewhere the sign that had been associated in his hearing with a particular object. "Anything can designate anything;" such is the latent principle of infantine language. This tendency has been wrongly confused with the faculty of generalizing. The animals themselves generalize ; and, moreover, a sign — even an instinctive sign — always to some degree represents a genus. But what characterizes the signs of human language is not so much their generality as their mobility. The instinctive siffn is adherent, the ijUeUigent swpi is mobile.
Now, this mobiUty of words, that makes them able
to pass from one thing to another, has enabled them to
be extended from things to ideas. Certainly, language
would not have given the faculty of reflecting to an in-
telligence entirely externalized and incapable of turn-
n.i THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 159
ing homeward. Ad intelligence which reflects is om that originally had a surplus of energy to spend, over and above practically useful efforts. It ia a conscious- ness that has virtually reconquered itself. But still the virtual has to become actual. Without language, in- telligence would probably have remained riveted to the material objects which it was interested in considering. It would have lived in a state of somnambulism, outside itself, hypnotized on its own work. Language has greatly contributed to its liberation. The word, made to pass from one thing to another, is, in fact, by nature transferable and free. It can therefore be extended, not only from one perceived thing to another, but even from a perceived thing to a recollection of that thing, from the precise recollection to a more fleeting image, and Anally from an image fleets ing, though still pictured, to the picturing of the act by which the image is pictured, that is to say, to the idea. Thus is revealed to the intelligence, hitherto always turned outwards, a whole internal world— the spectacle of its own workings. It required only this opportunity, at length offered by language. It profits by the fact that the word is an external thing, which the intelligence can catch bold of and cling to, and at the same time an immaterial thing, by means of which the intelligence can penetrate even to the inwardness of its own work. Its first business was indeed to make instruments, but this fabrication is possible only by the employment of certain means which are not cut to the exact measure of their object, but go beyond it and thus allow intelligence a supplementary — that is to say disinterested work. From the moment that the intellect, reflecting upon itB own doings, perceives itself as a creator of ideas, as a faculty of representation in general, there is no object of which it may not wish to have the idea, even though that object be without direct re-
[CHAP,
lation to practical action. That is why we said there are things that intellect alone can seek. Intellect alone, indeed, troubles itself about theory; and its theory would fain embrace everything — not only inanimate matter, over which it has a natural hold, but even life and thought.
By what means, what instruments, in short by what method it will approach these problems, we can easily guess. Originally, it was fashioned to the form of matter. Language itself, which has enabled it to extend its field of operations, is made to designate things, and nought but things: it is only because the word is mobile, because it flies from one thing to another, that the intellect was sure to take it, sooner or later, on the wing, while it was not settled on anything, and apply it to an object which ia Dot a thing and which, concealed till then, awaited the coming of the word to pass from darkness to light. But the word, by covering up this object, again converts it into a thing. So intelligence, even when it no longer operates upon its own object, follows habits it has con- tracted in that operation: it applies forms that are indeed those of unorganized matter. It is made for this kind of work. With this kind of work alone is it fully satisfied. And that is what intelligence expresses by saying that tbuB only it arrives at dislincineas and clearness.
It must, therefore, in order to think itself clearly and distinctly, perceive itself under the form of discontinuity. Concepts, in fact, are outside each other, like objects in space; and they have the same stability as such objects, on which they have been modeled. Taken together, they constitute an "intelligible world," that resembles the world of solids in its essential characters, but whose elements are lighter, more diaphanous, easier for the intellect to deal with than the image of concrete thin^:
n.i THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 16t
they are not, indeed, the perception itself of things, but the representation of the act by which the intellect is fixed on them. They are, therefore, not images, but symbols. Our logic is the complete set of rules that must be followed in using symbols. As these symbols are de- rived from the consideration of solids, as the rules for com- bining these symbols hardly do more than express the most general relations among solids, our logic triumphs in that science which takes the solidity of bodies for its object, that is, in geometry. Logic and geometry engender each other, as we shall see a little further on. It is from the extension of a certain natural geometry, suggested by the most general and immediately perceived properties of solids, that natural logic has arisen; then from this natural logic, in its turn, has sprung scientific geometry, which extends further and further the knowledge of the external properties of solids.' Geometry and logic are strictly applicable to matter; in it they are at home, and in it they can proceed quite alone. But, outside this domain, pure reasoning needs to be supervised by common sense, which is an altogether different thing.
Thus, all the elementary forces of the intellect tend to transform matter into an instrument of action, that is, in the etymological sense of the word, into an organ. Life, not content with producing organisms, would fain give them as an appendage inorganic matter itself, con- verted into an immense organ by the industry of the living being. Such is the initial task it assigns to intelligence. That is why the intellect always behaves as if it were fascinated by the contemplation of inert matter. It is life looking outward, putting itself outside itself, adopting the ways of unorganized nature in principle, in order to direct them in fact. Hence its bewilderment when it ' We shall return to these puintd in the next chapter.
turns to the living and is confronted with organization. It does what it can, it resolves the organized into the un- organized, for it cannot, mthout reversing its natural direction and twisting about on itself, think true continuity, real mobility, reciprocal penetration — in a word, that creative evolution which is life.