PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



mentation of instinct. One must choose, and know that 

 in choosing one makes, as the case may be, either instinct 

 or intelligence, the seed or flower of a single plant: the 

 sensibility. 



One will first establish that for manifestations of in- 

 stinct and for those of intelligence, there is no essential 

 difference between man and animals. The life of all men, 

 quite as well as that of all animals, is based on instinct, 

 and doubtless there is no animal who can not give signs 

 of spontaneity, that is to say, of intelligence. Instinct 

 seems anterior because in all animals except man the 

 quantity and especially the quality of instinctive facts 

 greatly surpasses the value and number of intellectual 

 facts. This is so, but in admitting this hierarchy, if 

 one thereby explain with considerable difficulty, the for- 

 mation of intelligence in man and in the animals which 

 show more or less perceptible gleams of it, one also re- 

 nounces by so doing, all later attempts that might fur- 

 nish some notions as to the formation of instinct. If the 

 bee makes his combs mechanically, if this act is as neces- 

 sary as the evaporation of warmed water, or the crystal- 

 lization of freezing water, it is useless to search any 

 further: one is in the presence of a fact which will never 

 yield anything else. 



If, on the contrary, one consider intelligence as an- 

 terior, the field of investigation stretches out to infinity 

 and instead of one problem radically insoluble, one has a 

 hundred thousand or more, as many as there are animal 

 species, and of these problems none is simple, none 

 absurd. This manner of looking at it, brings, I admit, 

 grave consequences. One must then look at matter as 

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