PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



edge. Of course, being knowable is something passive and, 

 therefore, quite different from having an active cognitive 

 faculty. And it is precisely by his active faculty of intellectual 

 knowledge, of self-presence, that man distinguishes himself 

 essentially from a material being. Yet — and this is the point 

 at issue — the distinctive moment is not something that is 

 utterly foreign to matter. For in the cognitive act the knowing 

 subject and the known object are one. Both contribute to that 

 unity. It would be a mistake to evaluate the contribution of 

 the known object merely as a passive potency, for matter 

 makes itself known by its material activities. These activities 

 are a kind of self-expression of matter. It is by that self- 

 expression that matter answers the questions which the scientist 

 asks in his experiment. Of course, this answering, this self- 

 expression is more passive than active, because it is wholly 

 determined by nature; matter undergoes its own activity more 

 than it exercises it, yet there is something active too. Not for 

 nothing do we speak of material activity. In its activity a 

 material thing "knows" how to act, how to react, because it is 

 inscribed in its nature, and by that very activity it makes itself 

 known to man. Perhaps the best way to state the relationship 

 between material activity as self-expression of material being 

 and the intellectual knowledge of man would be as follows. 

 Although there is no cognitive faculty in matter, yet the 

 passive role matter has in the process of knowing is not 

 entirely passive, there is something active involved too. On 

 the level of material being something can be found that 

 corresponds to the cognitive faculty of man. It is more passive 

 than active, but exactly the same applies to the level of being 

 of matter, for material being in a sense is also both active 

 and passive. 



We are, therefore, entitled^ to the conclusion that there is a 

 proportion between the degree of knowledge a being possesses 

 and its degree of being. We may even go so far as to say that 

 a being exists only in so far as it is capable of knowing, on 

 condition that we are aware of the analogous way the term 

 knowing has to be understood. Or to put it another way, the 

 higher forms of existence in nature (plants, animals, and 

 man) are not higher forms because of the addition to matter 

 of entirely new principles or factors, they are higher forms 



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