From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



we could question it, and if it could reply, it would 

 give up to us the most intimate secrets of life, for 

 it does but continue the work by which Life organises 

 Matter.' 



Unfortunately, as a consequence of the evolution 

 of the animal to man, intuition is vague and discon- 

 tinuous; 'it is an expiring lamp which burns up at 

 long intervals and for a few moments only ... it sheds 

 but a feeble and flickering light on our personality, 

 on the place which we hold in Nature, on our origin 

 and destiny, but its rays scarcely penetrate the darkness 

 in which our reason leaves us.' 



The intuition, however, cannot dispense with reason, 

 we must inevitably reckon with reason in some measure, 

 and taking account of the lessons of fact, must submit 

 them to the control of reason. 



But ' the proper task of philosophy is to absorb 

 reason into instinct, or rather to reintegrate instinct in 

 Intelligence.' Thus understood ' philosophy includes, 

 pre-supposes, and rests on science; and it further involves 

 tests by experimental verification.' 1 



It has been objected that this concept of intuition 

 and its relations to intelligence is paradoxical, the reason- 

 ing being in a vicious circle. Bergsonians have been 

 told 'you claim, on the one hand, that intuition goes 

 beyond intelligence in a domain proper to itself, and 

 on the other you reserve to intelligence a right of control 

 in this domain which is not its own! ' 



Bergsonians reply that the answer is that the 

 intelligence to which they refer is not 'the critical and 

 discursive intelligence, guided by its own power . . . 

 and enclosed in an inviolable circle. We are speaking of 

 something quite different that intelligence should take 

 the risk of a plunge into the phosphorescent water 

 around it, which is not altogether strange to reason 



1 Le Roy : Ibid. 

 172 



