CONTINUITY OF BERGSON'S THOUGHT 183 



these general characters of matter are precisely what intellect has 

 added to the world in order to act upon and control it. 



"The intellect aims first of all at constructing." This fabrication 

 is exercised exclusively on inert matter, in this sense, that even if it 

 makes use of organized material, it treats it as inert, without troubling 

 about the life which animated it. And of inert matter itself, fabrica- 

 tion deals only with the solid; the rest escapes. Just as the fluid 

 escapes it in inert matter, so the life, the living, escapes it in organ- 

 ized matter. Our intelligence, as it leaves the hands of Nature, has 

 for its chief object the unorganized solid. The intellect forms a clear 

 idea of the discontinuous alone; when it attempts to deal with the 

 continuous, or with real motion, or with life, it gives only a sketch and 

 not an adequate account. It deals with states and positions, not with 

 process, interval or progress. It reconstructs a line by a series of 

 short lines or points; it puts immobilities together to make motion; 

 it substitutes states of mind for living mind; it replaces reality with 

 a practical equivalent. Of immobility alone does the intellect form 

 a clear idea. It invents a concept known as homogeneous space, 

 which no one has ever perceived (what we perceive is extension colored, 

 resistant, etc.) in order to exercise its power of analyzing and decom- 

 posing and recomposing the stuff of perception. 



This kind of knowledge cannot go far without language. Symbols 

 are invented to denote an infinity of things, and these symbols arise 

 out of the need of the intellect and favor the intellectual conception 

 of experience. Language gives liberty. A word can stand for a thing, 

 or for the image, recollection or idea, of a thing. The concept is 

 the beginning of power and control. The intellect looks out upon 

 unorganized matter and adopts its ways in principle, in order to direct 

 and control them in fact. It resolves the organized into the unorgan- 

 ized and treats the living like machines. It does not admit the unfore- 

 seeable, and it fails wherever it has to do with genuine feeling or 

 originality or human nature. That is why pedagogy is so far from 

 being a guide to character and genius. 



The intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend 

 life. Instinct, on the contrary, is molded on the very form of life. 



