358 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



lations, Kant attributed an extra-intellectual origin to the 

 terms between which the relations are established. He 

 affirmed, against his immediate predecessors, that know- 

 ledge is not entirely resolvable into terms of intelligence. 

 He brought back into philosophy — while modifying it 

 and carrying it on to another plane — that essential element 

 of the philosophy of Descartes which had been abandoned 

 by the Cartesians. 



Thereby he prepared the way for a new philosophy, 

 which might have established itself in the extra-intellectual 

 matter of knowledge by a higher effort of intuition. Co- 

 inciding with this matter, adopting the same rhythm and 

 the same movement, might not consciousness, by two 

 efforts of opposite direction, raising itself and lowering 

 itself by turns, become able to grasp from within, and no 

 longer perceive only from without, the two forms of reality, 

 body and mind? Would not this twofold effort make us, 

 as far as that is possible, re-live the absolute? Moreover, 

 as, in the course of this operation, we should see intellect 

 spring up of itself, cut itself out in the whole of mind, in- 

 tellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited, 

 but not relative. 



Such was the direction that Kantianism might have 

 pointed out to a revivified Cartesianism. But in this 

 direction Kant himself did not go. 



He would not, because, while assigning to knowledge 

 an extra-intellectual matter, he believed this matter to 

 be either co-extensive with intellect or less extensive than 

 intellect. Therefore he could not dream of cutting out 

 intellect in it, nor, consequently, of tracing the genesis 

 of the understanding and its categories. The molds 

 of the understanding and the understanding itself had to be 

 accepted as they are, already made. Between the matter 

 presented to our intellect and this intellect itself there was 



