the invention itself. We have said that
intelligence is modeled on matter and that it aims in the first place at
fabrication. But does it fabricate in order to fabricate or does it not
pursue involuntarily, and even unconsciously, something entirely
different? Fabricating consists in shaping matter, in making it supple
and in bending it, in converting it into an instrument in order to
become master of it. It is this _mastery_ that profits humanity, much
more even than the material result of the invention itself. Though we
derive an immediate advantage from the thing made, as an intelligent
animal might do, and though this advantage be all the inventor sought,
it is a slight matter compared with the new ideas and new feelings that
the invention may give rise to in every direction, as if the essential
part of the effect were to raise us above ourselves and enlarge our
horizon. Between the effect and the cause the disproportion is so great
that it is difficult to regard the cause as _producer_ of its effect. It
releases it, whilst settling, indeed, its direction. Everything happens
as though the grip of intelligence on matter were, in its main
intention, to _let something pass_ that matter is holding back.

The same impression arises when we compare the brain of man with that of
the animals. The difference at first appears to be only a difference of
size and complexity. But, judging by function, there must be something
else besides. In the animal, the motor mechanisms that the brain
succeeds in setting up, or, in other words, the habits contracted
voluntarily, have no other object nor effect than the accomplishment of
the movements marked out in these habits, stored in these mechanisms.
But, in man, the motor habit may have a second result, out of proportion
to the first: it can hold other motor habits in check, and thereby, in
overcoming automatism, set consciousness free. We know what vast regions
in the human brain language occupies. The cerebral mechanisms that
correspond to the words have this in particular, that they can be made
to grapple with other mechanisms, those, for instance, that correspond
to the things themselves, or even be made to grapple with one another.
Meanwhile consciousness, which would have been dragged down and drowned
in the accomplishment of the act, is restored and set free.[77]

The difference must therefore be more radical than a superficial
examination would lead us to suppose. It is the dif