ill INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 141 



unorganized matter, it can take any form whatsoever, 

 serve any purpose, free the living being from every new 

 difficulty that arises and bestow on it an unlimited number 

 of powers. Whilst it is inferior to the natural instrument 

 for the satisfaction of immediate wants, its advantage 

 over it is the greater, the less urgent the need. Above 

 all, it reacts on the nature of the being that constructs 

 it; for in calling on him to exercise a new function, it 

 confers on him, so to speak, a richer organization, being 

 an artificial organ by which the natural organism is ex- 

 tended. For every need that it satisfies, it creates a new 

 need; and so, instead of closing, like instinct, the round of 

 action within which the animal tends to move auto- 

 matically, it lays open to activity an unlimited field into 

 which it is driven further and further, and made more 

 and more free. But this advantage of intelligence over 

 instinct only appears at a late stage, when intelligence, 

 having raised construction to a higher degree, proceeds 

 to construct constructive machinery. At the outset, the 

 advantages and drawbacks of the artificial instrument and of 

 the natural instrument balance so well that it is hard to fore- 

 tell which of the two will secure to the living being the 

 greater empire over nature. 



We may surmise that they began by being implied 

 in each other, that the original psychical activity included 

 both at once, and that, if we went far enough back into the 

 past, we should find instincts more nearly approaching 

 intelligence than those of our insects, intelligence nearer 

 to instinct than that of our vertebrates, intelligence and 

 instinct being, in this elementary condition, prisoners of a 

 matter which they are not yet able to control. If the force 

 immanent in life were an unlimited force, it might perhaps 

 have developed instinct and intelligence together, and to 

 any extent, in the same organisms. But everything seems 



