1 88 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



practical interest, and turned outward by it into move 

 ments of locomotion. 



How theory of knowledge must take account of 

 these two faculties, intellect and intuition, and how 

 also, for want of establishing a sufficiently clear dis 

 tinction between them, it becomes involved in inextric 

 able difficulties, creating phantoms of ideas to which 

 there cling phantoms of problems, we shall endeavour 

 to show a little further on. We shall see that the 

 problem of knowledge, from this point of view, is one 

 with the metaphysical problem, and that both one and 

 the other depend upon experience. On the one hand, 

 indeed, if intelligence is charged with matter and 

 instinct with life, we must squeeze them both in order 

 to get the double essence from them ; metaphysics is 

 therefore dependent upon theory of knowledge. But, 

 on the other hand, if consciousness has thus split up 

 into intuition and intelligence, it is because of the 

 need it had to apply itself to matter at the same time 

 as it had to follow the stream of life. The double 

 form of consciousness is then due to the double form 

 of the real, and theory of knowledge must be de 

 pendent upon metaphysics. In fact, each of these two 

 lines of thought leads to the other ; they form a circle, 

 and there can be no other centre to the circle but the 

 empirical study of evolution. It is only in seeing 

 consciousness run through matter, lose itself there and 

 find itself there again, divide and reconstitute itself, 

 that we shall form an idea of the mutual opposition of 

 the two terms, as also, perhaps, of their common origin. 

 But, on the other hand, by dwelling on this opposition 

 of the two elements and on this identity of origin, 

 perhaps we shall bring out more clearly the meaning 

 of evolution itself. 



