380 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



them into a system presenting on all sides an equal 

 solidity. He did not consider, in his Critique of Pure 

 Reason , that science became less and less objective, 

 more and more symbolical, to the extent that it went 

 from the physical to the vital, from the vital to the 

 psychical. Experience does not move, to his view, in 

 two different and perhaps opposite ways, the one con 

 formable to the direction of the intellect, the other con 

 trary to it. There is, for him, only one experience, and 

 the intellect covers its whole ground. This is what Kant 

 expresses by saying that all our intuitions are sensuous, 

 or, in other words, infra-intellectual. And this would 

 have to be admitted, indeed, if our science presented in 

 all its parts an equal objectivity. But suppose, on the 

 contrary, that science is less and less objective, more 

 and more symbolical, as it goes from the physical to the 

 psychical, passing through the vital : then, as it is indeed 

 necessary to perceive a thing somehow in order to sym 

 bolize it, there would be an intuition of the psychical, 

 and more generally of the vital, which the intellect 

 would transpose and translate, no doubt, but which 

 would none the less transcend the intellect. There 

 would be, in other words, a supra-intellectual intuition. 

 If this intuition exist, a taking possession of the spirit 

 by itself is possible, and no longer only a knowledge 

 that is external and phenomenal. What is more, if 

 we have an intuition of this kind (I mean an ultra- 

 intellectual intuition), then sensuous intuition is likely to 

 be in continuity with it through certain intermediaries, 

 as the infra-red is continuous with the ultra-violet. 

 Sensuous intuition itself, therefore, is promoted. It 

 will no longer attain only the phantom of an unattain 

 able thing-in-itself. It is (provided we bring to it 

 certain indispensable corrections) into the absolute 



