188 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



then simply in following the development of an embryo 

 of humanity into complete humanity. We show how a 

 certain direction has been followed further and further 

 by beings more and more intelligent. But the moment 

 we admit the direction, intelligence is given. 



In a cosmogony like that of Spencer, intelligence is 

 taken for granted, as matter also at the same time. We 

 are shown matter obeying laws, objects connected with 

 objects and facts with facts by constant relations, con- 

 sciousness receiving the imprint of these relations and 

 laws, and thus adopting the general configuration of 

 nature and shaping itself into intellect. But how can 

 we fail to see that intelligence is supposed when we admit 

 objects and facts? A priori and apart from any hypothesis 

 on the nature of the matter, it is evident that the material- 

 ity of a, body does not stop at the point at which we touch 

 it: a body is present wherever its influence is felt; its 

 attractive force, to speak only of that, is exerted on the 

 sun, on the planets, perhaps on the entire universe. The 

 more physics advances, the more it effaces the individuality 

 of bodies and even of the particles into which the scientific 

 imagination began by decomposing them: bodies and 

 corpuscles tend to dissolve into a universal interaction. 

 Our perceptions give us the plan of our eventual action 

 on things much more than that of things themselves. 

 The outlines we find in objects simply mark what we can 

 attain and modify in them. The lines we see traced 

 through matter are just the paths on which we are called to 

 move. Outlines and paths have declared themselves 

 in the measure and proportion that consciousness has 

 prepared for action on unorganized matter — that is to say, 

 in the measure and proportion that intelligence has been 

 formed. It is doubtful whether animals built on a different 

 plan — a mollusc or an insect, for instance — cut matter up 



