ill INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 145 



of view, the consciousness of a living being may be defined as 

 an arithmetical difference between potential and real activity. 

 It measures the interval between representation and action. 



It may be inferred from this that intelligence is likely 

 to point towards consciousness, and instinct towards un- 

 consciousness. For, where the implement to be used is 

 organized by nature, the material furnished by nature, 

 and the result to be obtained willed by nature, there is 

 little left to choice; the consciousnesss inherent in the 

 representation is therefore counterbalanced, whenever it 

 tends to disengage itself, by the performance of the act, 

 identical with the representation, which forms its counter- 

 weight. Where consciousness appears, it does not so 

 much light up the instinct itself as the thwartings to which 

 instinct is subject; it is the deficit of instinct, the distance, 

 between the act and the idea, that becomes consciousness 

 so that consciousness, here, is only an accident. Es- 

 sentially, consciousness only emphasizes the starting- 

 point of instinct, the point at which the whole series of 

 automatic movements is released. Deficit, on the con- 

 trary, is the normal state of intelligence. Laboring under 

 difficulties is its very essence. Its original function being 

 to construct unorganized instruments, it must, in spite 

 of numberless difficulties, choose for this work the place 

 and the time, the form and the matter. And it can never 

 satisfy itself entirely, because every new satisfaction 

 creates new needs. In short, while instinct and intelli- 

 gence both involve knowledge, this knowledge is rather 

 acted and unconscious in the case of instinct, thought and 

 conscious in the case of intelligence. But it is a difference 

 rather of degree than of kind. So long as consciousness 

 is all we are concerned with, we close our eyes to what is, 

 from the psychological point of view, the cardinal difference 

 between instinct and intelligence. 



