198 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



marcation between the inert and the living. We shall 

 find that the inert enters naturally into the frames of the 

 intellect, but that the living is adapted to these frames 

 only artificially, so that we must adopt a special attitude 

 towards it and examine it with other eyes than those of 

 positive science. Philosophy, then, invades the domain 

 of experience. She busies herself with many things which 

 hitherto have not concerned her. Science, theory of know- 

 ledge, and metaphysics find themselves on the same ground. 

 At first there may be a certain confusion. All three may 

 think they have lost something. But all three will profit 

 from the meeting. 



Positive science, indeed, may pride itself on the uniform 

 value attributed to its affirmations in the whole field of 

 experience. But, if they are all placed on the same foot- 

 ing, they are all tainted with the same relativity. It 

 is not so, if we begin by making the distinction which, 

 in our view, is forced upon us. The understanding is 

 at home in the domain of unorganized matter. On this 

 matter human action is naturally exercised; and action, 

 as we said above, cannot be set in motion in the unreal. 

 Thus, of physics — so long as we are considering only its 

 general form and not the particular cutting out of matter 

 in which it is manifested — we may say that it touches 

 the absolute. On the contrary, it is by accident — chance 

 or convention, as you please — that science obtains a hold 

 on the living analogous to the hold it has on matter. Here 

 the use of conceptual frames is no longer natural. I do not 

 wish to say that it is not legitimate, in the scientific mean- 

 ing of the term. If science is to extend our action on 

 things, and if we can act only with inert matter for in- 

 strument, science can and must continue to treat the 

 living as it has treated the inert. But, in doing so, it 

 must be understood that the further it penetrates the 



