in THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 285 



indications of the state of consciousness ; but the inter 

 dependence of consciousness and brain is limited to 

 this ; the destiny of consciousness is not bound up 

 on that account with the destiny of cerebral matter. 

 Finally, consciousness is essentially free ; it is freedom 

 itself ; but it cannot pass through matter without 

 settling on it, without adapting itself to it : this 

 adaptation is what we call intellectuality ; and the 

 intellect, turning itself back toward active, that is to 

 say free, consciousness, naturally makes it enter into 

 the conceptual forms into which it is accustomed to 

 see matter fit. It will therefore always perceive free 

 dom in the form of necessity ; it will always neglect 

 the part of novelty or of creation inherent in the free 

 act ; it will always substitute for action itself an imita 

 tion artificial, approximative, obtained by compounding 

 the old with the old and the same with the same. 

 Thus, to the eyes of a philosophy that attempts to re- 

 absorb intellect in intuition, many difficulties vanish 

 or become light. But such a doctrine does not only 

 facilitate speculation ; it gives us also more power to 

 act and to live. For, with it, we feel ourselves no 

 longer isolated in humanity, humanity no longer seems 

 isolated in the nature that it dominates. As the smallest 

 grain of dust is bound up with our entire solar system, 

 drawn along with it in that undivided movement of 

 descent which is materiality itself, so all organized 

 beings, from the humblest to the highest, from the 

 first origins of life to the time in which we are, and 

 in all places as in all times, do but evidence a single 

 impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and 

 in itself indivisible. All the living hold together, and 

 all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal 

 takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, 



