178 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



it establishes between us and the rest of the living, by the 

 expansion of our consciousness which it brings about, 

 it introduces us into life's own domain, which is reciprocal 

 interpenetration, endlessly continued creation. But, though 

 it thereby transcends intelligence, it is from intelligence 

 that has come the push that has made it rise to the point 

 it has reached. Without intelligence, it would have 

 remained in the form of instinct, riveted to the special 

 object of its practical interest, and turned outward by it 

 into movements of locomotion. 



How theory of knowledge must take account of these 

 two faculties, intellect and intuition, and how also, for 

 want of establishing a sufficiently clear distinction between 

 them, it becomes involved in inextricable difficulties, creat- 

 ing phantoms of ideas to which there cling phantoms of 

 problems, we shall endeavor to show a little further on. 

 We shall see that the problem of knowledge, from this point 

 of view, is one with the metaphysical problem, and that 

 both one and the other depend upon experience. On the 

 one hand, indeed, if intelligence is charged with matter and 

 instinct with life, we must squeeze them both in order 

 to get the double essence from them; metaphysics is 

 therefore dependent upon theory of knowledge. But, 

 on the other hand, if consciousness has thus split up into 

 intuition and intelligence, it is because of the need it had to 

 apply itself to matter at the same time as it had to follow 

 the stream of life. The double form of consciousness is 

 then due to the double form of the real, and theory of 

 knowledge must be dependent upon metaphysics. In 

 fact, each of these two lines of thought leads to the other; 

 they form a circle, and there can be no other centre to 

 the circle but the empirical study of evolution. It is only 

 in seeing consciousness run through matter, lose itself 

 there and find itself there again, divide and reconstitute 



