u THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 171 



science, an incomparable progress was realized when the 

 organized tissues were resolved into cells. The study 

 of the cell, in its turn, has shown it to be an organism 

 whose complexity seems to grow, the more thoroughly 

 it is examined. The more science advances, the more 

 it sees the number grow of heterogeneous elements 

 which are placed together, outside each other, to make 

 up a living being. Does science thus get any nearer 

 to life ? Does it not, on the contrary, find that what 

 is really life in the living seems to recede with every 

 step by which it pushes further the detail of the parts 

 combined ? There is indeed already among scientists 

 a tendency to regard the substance of the organism 

 as continuous, and the cell as an artificial entity. 1 

 But, supposing this view were finally to prevail, it 

 could only lead, on deeper study, to some other 

 mode of analysing of the living being, and so to a 

 new discontinuity although less removed, perhaps, 

 from the real continuity of life. The truth is that 

 this continuity cannot be thought by the intellect while 

 it follows its natural movement. It implies at once the 

 multiplicity of elements and the interpenetration of 

 all by all, two conditions that can hardly be reconciled 

 in the field in which our industry, and consequently 

 our intellect, is engaged. 



Just as we separate in space, we fix in time. The 

 intellect is not made to think evolution, in the proper sense 

 of the word that is to say, the continuity of a change 

 that is pure mobility. We shall not dwell here on this 

 point, which we propose to study in a special chapter. 

 Suffice it to say that the intellect represents becoming as 

 a series of states, each of which is homogeneous with itself 

 and consequently does not change. Is our attention 



1 We shall return to this point in chapter iii. p. 273. 



