PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



in instinct, enlarging and diversifying it; what is useless 

 perishes or perhaps flowers in extravagances, as it does 

 in man, in dancing and gardening birds, or the magpies 

 attracted by a jewel, larks by a mirror! One will then 

 call instinct, the series of useful aptitudes; intelligence, 

 the series of aptitudes de luxe: but what is useful, what 

 useless? Who will dare brand a series of bird notes or 

 a feminine smile as lacking utility? There is neither 

 utility nor inutility unless there be also finality. But 

 finality can not be considered as an aim; it is nothing 

 but a fact, and one which might be other. 



This utilization of old terms, if it were possible, could 

 never be the pretext for a new radical differentiation be- 

 tween instinct and intelligence; one could only use it to 

 define by contrast two states whose manifestations pre- 

 sent appreciable nuances. The great objection to the 

 essential identification of instinct and intelligence comes 

 from a habit of mind which spiritistic philosophy has 

 for long imposed upon us: instinct should be unconscious, 

 intelligence, conscious. But psychological analysis does 

 not permit us rigorously to tie intellectual activity to 

 consciousness. Without consciousness, every thing might 

 happen, even in the most thoughtful man, exactly as 

 it does under the paternal eye of this consciousness. In 

 M. Ribot's interesting analogic comparison, consciousness 

 is an internal candle lighting a clock-face; it has the 

 same influence on the movement of the intelligence that 

 this candle has on the clock. It is difficult to know 

 whether animals have consciousness, and it is perhaps 

 useless, unless at least, one admit that this candle, by its 

 luminous or calorific rays, does, as M. Fouillee teaches, 

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