CHAPTER III 



ON THE MEANING OF LIFE THE ORDER OF NATURE 



AND THE FORM OF INTELLIGENCE 



IN the course of our first chapter we traced a line of 

 demarcation between the inorganic and the organized, 

 but we pointed out that the division of unorganized 

 matter into separate bodies is relative to our senses and 

 to our intellect, and that matter, looked at as an un 

 divided whole, must be a flux rather than a thing. In 

 this we were preparing the way for a reconciliation 

 between the inert and the living. 



On the other side, we have shown in our second 

 chapter that the same opposition is found again between 

 instinct and intelligence, the one turned to certain 

 determinations of life, the other moulded on the 

 configuration of matter. But instinct and intelligence, 

 we have also said, stand out from the same background, 

 which, for want of a better name, we may call con 

 sciousness in general, and which must be coextensive 

 with universal life. In this way, we have disclosed the 

 possibility of showing the genesis of intelligence in set 

 ting out from general consciousness, which embraces it. 



We are now, then, to attempt a genesis of intellect 

 at the same time as a genesis of material bodies two 

 enterprises that are evidently correlative, if it be true 

 that the main lines of our intellect mark out the genera] 



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