360 CREATIVE EVOLUTION iohap. 



the vital: then, as it is indeed necessary to perceive a 

 thing somehow in order to symbolize it, there would be an 

 intuition of the psychical, and more generally of the vital, 

 which the intellect would transpose and translate, no 

 doubt, but which would none the less transcend the in- 

 tellect. There would be, in other words, a supra-intel- 

 lectual intuition. If this intuition exist, a taking possession 

 of the spirit by itself is possible, and no longer only a know- 

 ledge that is external and phenomenal. What is more, 

 if we have an intuition of this kind (I mean an ultra-in- 

 tellectual intuition) then sensuous intuition is likely to 

 be in continuity with it through certain intermediaries, 

 as the infra-red is continuous with the ultra-violet. Sen- 

 suous intuition itself, therefore, is promoted. It will 

 no longer attain only the phantom of an unattainable 

 thing-in-itself. It is (provided we bring to it certain 

 indispensable corrections) into the absolute itself that it 

 will introduce us. So long as it was regarded as the only 

 material of our science, it reflected back on all science 

 something of the relativity which strikes a scientific know- 

 ledge of spirit ; and thus the perception of bodies, which is 

 the beginning of the science of bodies, seemed itself to 

 be relative. Relative, therefore, seemed to be sensuous 

 intuition. But this is not the case if distinctions are made 

 between the different sciences, and if the scientific knowledge 

 of the spiritual (and also, consequently, of the vital) be 

 regarded as the more or less artificial extension of a certain 

 manner of knowing which, applied to bodies, is not at all 

 symbolical. Let us go further: if there are thus two in- 

 tuitions of different order (the second being obtained by a 

 reversal of the direction of the first), and if it is toward the 

 second that the intellect naturally inclines, there is no 

 essential difference between the intellect and this intuition 

 itself. The barriers between the matter of sensible know- 



