160 CREATIVE EVOLUTION Ichap. 



lation to practical action. That is why we said there are 

 things that intellect alone can seek. Intellect alone, 

 indeed, troubles itself about theory; and its theory would 

 fain embrace everything— not only inanimate matter, 

 over which it has a natural hold, but even life and 



thought. ■ 



By what means, what instruments, in short by what 

 method it will approach these problems, we can easily 

 guess. Originally, it was fashioned to the form of matter. 

 Language itself, which has enabled it to extend its field 

 of operations, is made to designate things, and nought but 

 things: it is only because the word is mobile, because it 

 flies from one thing to another, that the intellect was sure 

 to take it, sooner or later, on the wing, while it was not 

 settled on anything, and apply it to an object which is 

 not a thing and which, concealed till then, awaited the 

 coming of the word to pass from darkness to light. But 

 the word, by covering up this object, again converts it 

 into a thing. So intelligence, even when it no longer 

 operates upon its own object, follows habits it has con- 

 tracted in that operation: it applies forms that are indeed 

 those of unorganized matter. It is made for this kind of 

 work. With this kind of work alone is it fully satisfied. 

 And that is what intelligence expresses by saying that thus 

 only it arrives at distinctness and clearness. 



It must, therefore, in order to think itself clearly and 

 distinctly, perceive itself under the form of discontinuity. 

 Concepts, in fact, are outside each other, like objects in 

 space; and they have the same stability as such objects, 

 on which they have been modeled. Taken together, 

 they constitute an "intelligible world/' that resembles 

 the world of solids in its essential characters, but whose 

 elements are lighter, more diaphanous, easier for the 

 intellect to deal with than the image of concrete things: 



