94 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



Intellect. The Intellect is practical, differential, analytical, 

 selective, purposive; it is at once the principle and the 

 instrument of action; it can analyse the material before it 

 and choose what is useful for its purpose. It is spatial, it 

 converts pure Duration into impure Time. Nor is Time its 

 only offspring. From its marriage with pure Duration the 

 Intellect has produced all the sensible forms in the universe. 

 Bodies and things are simply our lines of action on matter. 

 The practical Intellect selects what it wants for action and 

 ignores or simply does not notice the rest. The sensible 

 qualities it distinguishes are those which attract its attention 

 by their practical usefulness or serviceableness for its pur- 

 poses. The forms of bodies and things are therefore merely 

 the result of this selective action on matter.^ Structure is 

 the creature of Intellect; in fact in its forms the sensible 

 universe is an intellect-made universe. The result is a hope- 

 lessly lop-sided affair, and but for Instinct and Intuition — 

 another twin of this marriage who partake more of the pure 

 and gentle character of the maternal Duration — reality and 

 truth in the universe would be distorted beyond recognition. 

 Such is a very summary statement of the essential point in 

 Bergsonism, at least as I understand it. For my present 

 purpose I have only two criticisms to make. In the first 

 place, as already indicated, the principle of pure Duration 

 fails either to generate or to explain impure concrete reality. 

 In the second place, there is far more in structure than the 

 mere creation of the Intellect. Admitting the practical in- 

 strumental selective character of the Intellect, it would yet 

 be a profound mistake to make it the sole cause of the forms 

 and structures of sensible bodies or things. The Intellect is 

 not creative in that fundamental sense. To make of Intellect 

 what Kant made of Space and Time — the forms imposed 

 ab extra on sensible reality by the activity of the mind — 

 would be a travesty of psychology and nature alike. Intel- 

 lect selects and orders, but not arbitrarily; it is itself merely 

 an element in a greater, more universal order. Structure 

 is the creature of experience, and experience is an interaction 



* Creative Evolution, p. 102. 



