150 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



contrary, possesses naturally only an external and empty 

 knowledge; but it has thereby the advantage of supplying 

 a frame in which an infinity of objects may find room in 

 turn. It is as if the force evolving in living forms, being a 

 limited force, had had to choose between two kinds of 

 limitation in the field of natural or innate knowledge, 

 one applying to the extension of knowledge, the other to 

 its intension. In the first case, the knowledge may be 

 packed and full, but it will then be confined to one specific 

 object; in the second, it is no longer limited by its object, 

 but that is because it contains nothing, being only a form 

 without matter. The two tendencies, at first implied 

 in each other, had to separate in order to grow. They 

 both went to seek their fortune in the world, and turned 

 out to be instinct and intelligence. 



Such, then, are the two divergent modes of knowledge 

 by which intelligence and instinct must be defined, from 

 the standpoint of knowledge rather than that of action. 

 But knowledge and action are here only two aspects of 

 one and the same faculty. It is easy to see, indeed, that 

 the second definition is only a new form of the first. 



If instinct is, above all, the faculty of using an organized 

 natural instrument, it must involve innate knowledge 

 (potential or unconscious, it is true), both of this instru- 

 ment and of the object to which it is applied. Instinct 

 is therefore innate knowledge of a thing. But intelligence 

 is the faculty of constructing unorganized — that is to say 

 artificial — instruments. If, on its account, nature gives 

 up endowing the living being with the instruments that may 

 serve him, it is in order that the living being may be able 

 to vary his construction according to circumstances. The 

 essential function of intelligence is therefore to see the way 

 out of a difficulty in any circumstances whatever, to find 

 what is most suitable, what answers best the question 



