ii THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 173 



kind, are part of the effect, have come into existence 

 with it, and are determined by it as much as they 

 determine it, all this we can feel within ourselves and 

 also divine, by sympathy, outside ourselves, but we 

 cannot think it, in the strict sense of the word, nor 

 express it in terms of pure understanding. No 

 wonder at that : we must remember what our intellect 

 is meant for. The causality it seeks and finds every 

 where expresses the very mechanism of our industry, 

 in which we go on recomposing the same whole with 

 the same parts, repeating the same movements to obtain 

 the same result. The finality it understands best is 

 the finality of our industry, in which we work on a 

 model given in advance, that is to say, old or com 

 posed of elements already known. As to invention 

 properly so called, which is, however, the point of 

 departure of industry itself, our intellect does not 

 succeed in grasping it in its up springing^ that is to say, 

 in its indivisibility, nor in its fervour^ that is to say, 

 in its creativeness. Explaining it always consists in re 

 solving it, it the unforeseeable and new, into elements 

 old or known, arranged in a different order. The 

 intellect can no more admit complete novelty than real 

 becoming ; that is to say, here again it lets an essential 

 aspect of life escape, as if it were not intended to think 

 such an object. 



All our analyses bring us to this conclusion. But it 

 is hardly necessary to go into such long details con 

 cerning the mechanism of intellectual working ; it is 

 enough to consider the results. We see that the 

 intellect, so skilful in dealing with the inert, is awkward 

 the moment it touches the living. Whether it wants 

 to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it 

 proceeds with the rigour, the stiffness and the brutality 



