THE NATURAL 



a simple allotropic form of intelligence, or, if you prefer, 

 consider intelligence and matter as equivalents, and admit 

 that intelligence is merely matter endowed with sensi- 

 bility, and that its power of extremely diversifying itself 

 finds impassable limits in the very forms which clothe 

 it. Instinct is the proof of these limits. When acts have 

 become instinctive, they have become invincible. A 

 specie is a group of instincts whose tyranny becomes, one 

 day, deaf to all attempts at movement. Evolution is 

 limited by the resistance of what is, striving against what 

 might be. There comes a moment when a specie is a 

 mass too heavy to be moved by intelligence: then it 

 remains in its place; this is death, but is compensated by 

 the steady arrival of other species; new forms assumed 

 by the inexhaustible Proteus. 



One will add nothing, here, to this theory, save a 

 few facts favourable to it, and a handful of objections. 



The old distinction between intelligence and instinct, 

 although false and superficial, may be adapted to the 

 views just abbreviated. We will attribute to instinct the 

 series of acts which tend to conserve the present condi- 

 tion of a specie; and to intelligence, those which tend to 

 modify that condition. Instinct will be slavery, sub- 

 jection to custom ; intelligence will represent liberty, that 

 is to say, choice, acts which while being necessary, since 

 they occur, have yet been determined by an ensemble 

 of causes anterior to those which govern instinct. In- 

 telligence will be the deep, the reserve, the spring which 

 after long digging emerges between the rocks. In every- 

 thing that intelligence suggests, the consciousness of the 

 species makes a departure; what is useful is incorporated 

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