148 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



but when, a little later on, he will hear an epithet being 

 applied to a substantive, he will immediately understand 

 what it means. The relation of attribute to subject is 

 therefore seized by him naturally, and the same might be 

 said of the general relation expressed by the verb, a re- 

 lation so immediately conceived by the mind that language 

 can leave it to be understood, as is instanced in rudimentary 

 languages which have no verb. Intelligence, therefore, 

 naturally makes use of relations of like with like, of con- 

 tent to container, of cause to effect, etc., which are implied 

 in every phrase in which there is a subject, an attribute and 

 a verb, expressed or understood. May one say that it has 

 innate knowledge of each of these relations in particular? 

 It is for logicians to discover whether they are so many 

 irreducible relations, or whether they can be resolved 

 into relations still more general. But, in whatever way 

 we make the analysis of thought, we always end with one 

 or several general categories, of which the mind possesses 

 innate knowledge since it makes a natural use of them. 

 Let us say, therefore, that whatever, in instinct and intelli- 

 gence, is innate knowledge, bears in the first case on things 

 and in the second on relations. 



Philosophers distinguish between the matter of our 

 knowledge and its form. The matter is what is given 

 by the perceptive faculties taken in the elementary state. 

 The form is the totality of the relations set up between 

 these materials in order to constitute a systematic know- 

 ledge. Gan the form, without matter, be an object of 

 knowledge? Yes, without doubt, provided that this 

 knowledge is not like a thing we possess so much as like 

 a habit we have contracted, — a direction rather than a 

 state: it is, if we will, a certain natural bent of attention. 

 The schoolboy, who knows that the master is going to 

 dictate a fraction to him, draws a line before he knows 



