nd iii.]

[Footnote 76: "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (_Revue de
metaphysique_, Nov. 1904).]

[Footnote 77: A geologist whom we have already had occasion to cite,
N.S. Shaler, well says that "when we come to man, it seems as if we find
the ancient subjection of mind to body abolished, and the intellectual
parts develop with an extraordinary rapidity, the structure of the body
remaining identical in essentials" (Shaler, _The Interpretation of
Nature_, Boston, 1899, p. 187).]

CHAPTER III

ON THE MEANING OF LIFE--THE ORDER OF NATURE AND THE FORM OF INTELLIGENCE

In the course of our first chapter we traced a line of demarcation
between the inorganic and the organized, but we pointed out that the
division of unorganized matter into separate bodies is relative to our
senses and to our intellect, and that matter, looked at as an undivided
whole, must be a flux rather than a thing. In this we were preparing the
way for a reconciliation between the inert and the living.

On the other side, we have shown in our second chapter that the same
opposition is found again between instinct and intelligence, the one
turned to certain determinations of life, the other molded on the
configuration of matter. But instinct and intelligence, we have also
said, stand out from the same background, which, for want of a better
name, we may call consciousness in general, and which must be
coextensive with universal life. In this way, we have disclosed the
possibility of showing the genesis of intelligence in setting out from
general consciousness, which embraces it.

We are now, then, to attempt a genesis of intellect at the same time as
a genesis of material bodies--two enterprises that are evidently
correlative, if it be true that the main lines of our intellect mark out
the general form of our action on matter, and that the detail of matter
is ruled by the requirements of our action. Intellectuality and
materiality have been constituted, in detail, by reciprocal adaptation.
Both are derived from a wider and higher form of existence. It is there
that we must replace them, in order to see them issue forth.

Such an attempt may appear, at first, more daring than the boldest
speculations of metaphysicians. It claims to go further than psychology,
further than cosmology, further than traditional metaphysics; for
psychology, cosmology and metaphysics take intelligence, in all that is
essential to it, as given, instead of, as