ii.] INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 151 



asked. Hence it bears essentially on the relations between 

 a given situation and the means of utilizing it. What is 

 innate in intellect, therefore, is the tendency to establish 

 relations, and this tendency implies the natural know- 

 ledge of certain very general relations, a kind of stuff 

 that the activity of each particular intellect will cut up 

 into more special relations. Where activity is directed 

 toward manufacture, therefore, knowledge necessarily 

 bears on relations. But this entirely formal knowledge 

 of intelligence has an immense advantage over the material 

 knowledge of instinct. A form, just because it is empty, 

 may be filled at will with any number of things in turn, 

 even with those that are of no use. So that a formal 

 knowledge is not limited to what is practically useful, al- 

 though it is in view of practical utility that it has made 

 its appearance in the world. An intelligent being bears 

 within himself the means to transcend his own nature. 



He transcends himself, however, less than he wishes, 

 less also than he imagines himself to do. The purely 

 formal character of intelligence deprives it of the ballast 

 necessary to enable it to settle itself on the objects that 

 are of the most powerful interest to speculation. Instinct, 

 on the contrary, has the desired materiality, but it is 

 incapable of going so far in quest of its object; it does not 

 speculate. Here we reach the point that most concerns 

 our present inquiry. The difference that we shall now 

 proceed to denote between instinct and intelligence is 

 what the whole of this analysis was meant to bring out. 

 We formulate it thus: There are things that intelligence 

 alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it mil never find. 

 These things instinct alone could find; but it mill never seek 

 them. 



It is necessary here to consider some preliminary de- 

 tails that concern the mechanism of intelligence. We 



