ii THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 169 



which, concealed till then, awaited the coming of the 

 word to pass from darkness to light. But the word, by 

 covering up this object, again converts it into a thing. 

 So intelligence, even when it no longer operates upon 

 its own object, follows habits it has contracted in that 

 operation : it applies forms that are indeed those of 

 unorganized matter. It is made for this kind of work. 



O 



With this kind of work alone is it fully satisfied. And 

 that is what intelligence expresses by saying that thus 

 only it arrives at distinctness and clearness. 



It must, therefore, in order to think itself clearly 

 and distinctly, perceive itself under the form of dis 

 continuity. Concepts, in fact, are outside each other, 

 like objects in space ; and they have the same stability 

 as such objects, on which they have been modelled. 

 Taken together, they constitute an &quot; intelligible world,&quot; 

 that resembles the world of solids in its essential char 

 acters, but whose elements are lighter, more diaphanous, 

 easier for the intellect to deal with than the image of 

 concrete things : they are not, indeed, the perception 

 itself of things, but the representation of the act by 

 which the intellect is fixed on them. They are, there 

 fore, not images, but symbols. Our logic is the 

 complete set of rules that must be followed in using 

 symbols. As these symbols are derived from the 

 consideration of solids, as the rules for combining 

 these symbols hardly do more than express the most 

 general relations among solids, our logic triumphs in 

 that science which takes the solidity of bodies for its 

 object, that is, in geometry. Logic and geometry 

 engender each other, as we shall see a little further on. 

 It is from the extension of a certain natural geometry, 

 suggested by the most general and immediately per 

 ceived properties of solids, that natural logic has arisen ; 



