136 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



haunt each other continually; everywhere we find them 

 mingled; it is the proportion that differs. So with in- 

 telligence and instinct. There is no intelligence in which 

 some traces of instinct are not to be discovered, more 

 especially no instinct that is not surrounded with a 

 fringe of intelligence. It is this fringe of intelligence 

 that has been the cause of so many misunderstandings. 

 From the fact that instinct is always more or less in- 

 telligent, it has been concluded that instinct and intelligence 

 are things of the same kind, that there is only a difference 

 of complexity or perfection between them, and, above all, 

 that one of the two is expressible in terms of the other. 

 In reality, they accompany each other only because they 

 are complementary, and they are complementary only 

 because they are different, what is instinctive in instinct 

 being opposite to what is intelligent in intelligence. 



We are bound to dwell on this point. It is one of the 

 utmost importance. 



Let us say at the outset that the distinctions we are 

 going to make will be too sharply drawn, just because we 

 wish to define in instinct what is instinctive, and in intelli- 

 gence what is intelligent, whereas all concrete instinct is 

 mingled with intelligence, as all real intelligence is pene- 

 trated by instinct. Moreover, neither intelligence nor 

 instinct lends itself to rigid definition: they are tendencies, 

 and not things. Also, it must not be forgotten that in the 

 present chapter we are considering intelligence and instinct 

 as going out of life which deposits them along its course. 

 Now the life manifested by an organism is, in our view, 

 a certain effort to obtain certain things from the material 

 world. No wonder, therefore, if it is the diversity of this 

 effort that strikes us in instinct and intelligence, and if 

 we see in these two modes of psychical activity, above 

 all else, two different methods of action on inert matter. 



