1 62 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



itself, fabrication deals only with the solid ; the rest 

 escapes by its very fluidity. If, therefore, the tendency 

 of the intellect is to fabricate, we may expect to find 

 that whatever is fluid in the real will escape it in part, 

 and whatever is life in the living will escape it 

 altogether. Our intelligence, as it leaves the hands of 

 nature -, has for its chief object the unorganised solid. 



When we pass in review the intellectual functions, 

 we see that the intellect is never quite at its ease, 

 never entirely at home, except when it is working upon 

 inert matter, more particularly upon solids. What is 

 the most general property of the material world ? It 

 is extended : it presents to us objects external to other 

 objects, and, in these objects, parts external to parts. 

 No doubt, it is useful to us, in view of our ulterior 

 manipulation, to regard each object as divisible into 

 parts arbitrarily cut up, each part being again divisible 

 as we like, and so on ad infinitum. But it is above all 

 necessary, for our present manipulation, to regard the 

 real object in hand, or the real elements into which 

 we have resolved it, as provisionally final^ and to 

 treat them as so many units. To this possibility of 

 decomposing matter as much as we please, and in any 

 way we please, we allude when we speak of the 

 continuity of material extension ; but this continuity, as 

 we see it, is nothing else but our ability, an ability that 

 matter allows to us to choose the mode of discontinuity 

 we shall find in it. It is always, in fact, the mode of 

 discontinuity once chosen that appears to us as the 

 actually real one and that which fixes our attention, 

 just because it rules our action. Thus discontinuity 

 is thought for itself ; it is thinkable in itself ; we form 

 an idea of it by a positive act of our mind ; while the 

 intellectual representation of continuity is negative. 



