CH. in THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY 197 



form of our action on matter, and that the detail of 

 matter is ruled by the requirements of our action. 

 Intellectuality and materiality have been constituted, 

 in detail, by reciprocal adaptation. Both are derived 

 from a wider and higher form of existence. It is 

 there that we must replace them, in order to see them 

 issue forth. 



Such an attempt may appear, at first, more daring 

 than the boldest speculations of metaphysicians. It 

 claims to go further than psychology, further than 

 cosmology, further than traditional metaphysics ; for 

 psychology, cosmology and metaphysics take intelli 

 gence, in all that is essential to it, as given, instead of, 

 as we now propose, engendering it in its form and in 

 its matter. The enterprise is in reality much more 

 modest, as we are going to show. But let us first say 

 how it differs from others. 



To begin with psychology, we are not to believe 

 that it engenders intelligence when it follows the pro 

 gressive development of it through the animal series. 

 Comparative psychology teaches us that the more an 

 animal is intelligent, the more it tends to reflect on the 

 actions by which it makes use of things, and thus to 

 approximate to man. But its actions have already by 

 themselves adopted the principal lines of human action ; 

 they have made out the same general directions in the 

 material world as we have ; they depend upon the 

 same objects bound together by the same relations ; so 

 that animal intelligence, although it does not form 

 concepts properly so called, already moves in a 

 conceptual atmosphere. Absorbed at every instant by 

 the actions it performs and the attitudes it must adopt, 

 drawn outward by them and so externalized in relation 

 to itself, it no doubt plays rather than thinks its ideas ; 



