urely formal character of intelligence
deprives it of the ballast necessary to enable it to settle itself on
the objects that are of the most powerful interest to speculation.
Instinct, on the contrary, has the desired materiality, but it is
incapable of going so far in quest of its object; it does not speculate.
Here we reach the point that most concerns our present inquiry. The
difference that we shall now proceed to denote between instinct and
intelligence is what the whole of this analysis was meant to bring out.
We formulate it thus: _There are things that intelligence alone is able
to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct
alone could find; but it will never seek them._

It is necessary here to consider some preliminary details that concern
the mechanism of intelligence. We have said that the function of
intelligence is to establish relations. Let us determine more precisely
the nature of these relations. On this point we are bound to be either
vague or arbitrary so long as we see in the intellect a faculty intended
for pure speculation. We are then reduced to taking the general frames
of the understanding for something absolute, irreducible and
inexplicable. The understanding must have fallen from heaven with its
form, as each of us is born with his face. This form may be defined, of
course, but that is all; there is no asking why it is what it is rather
than anything else. Thus, it will be said that the function of the
intellect is essentially unification, that the common object of all its
operations is to introduce a certain unity into the diversity of
phenomena, and so forth. But, in the first place, "unification" is a
vague term, less clear than "relation" or even "thought," and says
nothing more. And, moreover, it might be asked if the function of
intelligence is not to divide even more than to unite. Finally, if the
intellect proceeds as it does because it wishes to unite, and if it
seeks unification simply because it has need of unifying, the whole of
our knowledge becomes relative to certain requirements of the mind that
probably might have been entirely different from what they are: for an
intellect differently shaped, knowledge would have been different.
Intellect being no longer dependent on anything, everything becomes
dependent on it; and so, having placed the understanding too high, we
end by putting too low the knowledge it gives us. Knowledge becomes
relative, as soo