cism of its
ordinary proceedings. But I must now note the service which suits them,
the domain in which they apply and are valid, and what they teach us
thereby about the meaning, reach, and natural task of intelligence.

Whilst instinct vibrates in sympathetic harmony with life, it is about
inert matter that intelligence is granted; it is a rider to our faculty
of action; it triumphs in geometry; it feels at home among the objects
in which our industry finds its supports and its tools. In a word,
"our logic is primarily the logic of solids." (Preface to "Creative
Evolution".) But if we enter the vital order its incompetence is
manifestly apparent.

It is very important that deduction should be so impotent in biology.
Still more impotent is it perhaps in matters of art or religion; whilst,
on the contrary, it works marvels so long as it has only to foresee
movements or transformations in bodies. What does this mean, if not
that intelligence and materiality go together, that language with its
analytic steps is regulated by the movements of matter? Philosophy
once again then must leave it behind, for the duty of philosophy is to
consider everything in its relation to life.

Do not conclude, however, that the philosopher's duty is to renounce
intelligence, place it under tutelage, or abandon it to the blind
suggestions of feeling and will. It has not even the right to do so.
Instinct, with us who have evolved along the grooves of intelligence,
has remained too weak to be sufficient for us. Besides, intelligence
is the only path by which light could dawn in the bosom of primitive
darkness. But let us look at present reality in all its complexity, all
its wealth. Round intelligence itself exists a halo of instinct. This
halo represents the remains of the first nebulous vapour at the expense
of which intelligence was constituted like a brilliantly condensed
nucleus; and it is still today the atmosphere which gives it life, the
fringe of touch, and delicate probing, inspiring contact and divining
sympathy, which we see in play in the phenomena of discovery, as also in
the acts of that "attention to life," and that "sense of reality" which
is the soul of good sense, so widely distinct from common-sense. And
the peculiar task of the philosopher is to reabsorb intelligence in
instinct, or rather to reinstate instinct in intelligence; or better
still, to win back to the heart of intelligence all the initial
resources which it m