ii INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 159 



bears essentially on the relations between a given 

 situation and the means of utilizing it. What is innate 

 in intellect, therefore, is the tendency to establish 

 relations, and this tendency implies the natural know 

 ledge of certain very general relations, a kind of stuff 

 that the activity of each particular intellect will cut up 

 into more special relations. Where activity is directed 

 toward manufacture, therefore, knowledge necessarily 

 bears on relations. But this entirely formal knowledge 

 of intelligence has an immense advantage over the 

 material knowledge of instinct. A form, just because 

 it is empty, may be filled at will with any number of 

 things in turn, even with those that are of no use. So 



o 



that a formal knowledge is not limited to what is 

 practically useful, although it is in view of practical 

 utility that it has made its appearance in the world. 

 An intelligent being bears within himself the means 

 to transcend his own nature. 



He transcends himself, however, less than he wishes, 

 less also than he imagines himself to do. The purely 

 formal character of intelligence deprives it of the ballast 

 necessary to enable it to settle itself on the objects that 

 are of the most powerful interest to speculation. 

 Instinct, on the contrary, has the desired materiality, 

 but it is incapable of going so far in quest of its object ; 

 it does not speculate. Here we reach the point that 

 most concerns our present inquiry. The difference 

 that we shall now proceed to denote between instinct 

 and intelligence is what the whole of this analysis was 

 meant to bring out. We formulate it thus : There 

 are things that intelligence alone is able to seek^ 

 but which, by itself, it will never find. These 

 things instinct alone could find ; but it will never seek 

 them. 



