cquiring any new habit.
It is of the essence of reasoning to shut us up in the circle of the
given. But action breaks the circle. If we had never seen a man swim, we
might say that swimming is an impossible thing, inasmuch as, to learn to
swim, we must begin by holding ourselves up in the water and,
consequently, already know how to swim. Reasoning, in fact, always nails
us down to the solid ground. But if, quite simply, I throw myself into
the water without fear, I may keep myself up well enough at first by
merely struggling, and gradually adapt myself to the new environment: I
shall thus have learnt to swim. So, in theory, there is a kind of
absurdity in trying to know otherwise than by intelligence; but if the
risk be frankly accepted, action will perhaps cut the knot that
reasoning has tied and will not unloose.

Besides, the risk will appear to grow less, the more our point of view
is adopted. We have shown that intellect has detached itself from a
vastly wider reality, but that there has never been a clean cut between
the two; all around conceptual thought there remains an indistinct
fringe which recalls its origin. And further we compared the intellect
to a solid nucleus formed by means of condensation. This nucleus does
not differ radically from the fluid surrounding it. It can only be
reabsorbed in it because it is made of the same substance. He who throws
himself into the water, having known only the resistance of the solid
earth, will immediately be drowned if he does not struggle against the
fluidity of the new environment: he must perforce still cling to that
solidity, so to speak, which even water presents. Only on this condition
can he get used to the fluid's fluidity. So of our thought, when it has
decided to make the leap.

But leap it must, that is, leave its own environment. Reason, reasoning
on its powers, will never succeed in extending them, though the
extension would not appear at all unreasonable once it were
accomplished. Thousands and thousands of variations on the theme of
walking will never yield a rule for swimming: come, enter the water, and
when you know how to swim, you will understand how the mechanism of
swimming is connected with that of walking. Swimming is an extension of
walking, but walking would never have pushed you on to swimming. So you
may speculate as intelligently as you will on the mechanism of
intelligence; you will never, by this method, succeed in going beyond
it. You