158 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



is as if the force evolving in living forms, being a 

 limited force, had had to choose between two kinds of 

 limitation in the field of natural or innate knowledge, 

 one applying to the extension of knowledge, the other to 

 its intension. In the first case, the knowledge may 

 be packed and full, but it will then be confined to one 

 specific object ; in the second, it is no longer limited 

 by its object, but that is because it contains nothing, 

 being only a form without matter. The two tend 

 encies, at first implied in each other, had to separate 

 in order to grow. They both went to seek their 

 fortune in the world, and turned out to be instinct 

 and intelligence. 



Such, then, are the two divergent modes of 

 knowledge by which intelligence and instinct must be 

 defined, from the standpoint of knowledge rather than 

 that of action. But knowledge and action are here 

 only two aspects of one and the same faculty. It is 

 easy to see, indeed, that the second definition is only a 

 new form of the first. 



If instinct is, above all, the faculty of using an 

 organized natural instrument, it must involve innate 

 knowledge (potential or unconscious, it is true) both of 

 this instrument and of the object to which it is applied. 

 Instinct is therefore innate knowledge of a thing. But 

 intelligence is the faculty of constructing unorganized 

 that is to say artificial instruments. If, on its 

 account, nature gives up endowing the living being 

 with the instrument that may serve him, it is in order 

 that the living being may be able to vary his construction 

 according to circumstances. The essential function of 

 intelligence is therefore to see &quot;the way out of a difficulty 

 in any circumstances whatever, to find what is most suit 

 able, what answers best the question asked. Hence it 



