86 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
notice that it is precisely comparable to the useful contrast between the little- 
brain and the big-brain type, expounded many years ago by Sir Ray 
Lankester, who now writes a preface to a book on Prof. Bergson’s “illusions.” 
Sir Ray Lankester pointed out that the minute brain of the ant, rich in ready- 
made inborn capacities, but far from docile, is on quite a different evolution- 
tack from the big brain of the dog, poor in instincts, but quick to learn,— 
eminently educable. Well, this is just Bergson’s view. 
One of the fundamental sentences in L’ Evolution Creatrice is this: “The 
cardinal error which, from Aristotle onwards, has vitiated most of the 
philosophies of nature, is to see in vegetative, instinctive, and rational life, 
three successive degrees of the evolution of one and the same tendency, 
whereas they are three divergent directions of an activity that has split up as 
it evolved. The difference between them is not a difference of intensity, nor, 
more generally, of degree, but of kind.” To this thesis he has, of course, 
immediately to add that intelligence and instinct are rarely to be caught pure, 
for instinct is often accompanied by gleams of intelligence (seen, for instance, 
when hive bees nest in the open air), and there is no intelligence in which 
some traces of instinct are not to be discovered. 
Intelligence uses unorganised instruments—tools; instinct uses inborn 
organised instruments. The innate knowledge in instinct is of things, of 
particular pieces of matter; the innate knowledge in intelligence is of 
relations, of forms. Instinct implies intimate and full awareness of a particular 
configuration of things; intelligence makes frames applicable to many things. 
If instinct has signs or words, they are adherent, “invariably attached to a 
certain object or a certain operation.” Intelligence has mobile signs, which 
can pass from things to ideas, and thus language has been a great liberator. 
In short, instinct and intelligence are quite different expressions of life. 
The much-debated question of whether instinct is conscious or not, does 
not trouble Bergson. He holds that there may be lively consciousness in 
some cases, and that it may be nullified in others. Consciousness is the light 
that plays around the zone of possible actions, in the interval between 
representation and action ; it is associated with hesitation and choice. There- 
fore since there 1s much choice in intelligent behaviour, and little in 
instinctive behaviour, the latter tends to be less conscious than the former. 
In many cases it is difficult to say where the organising work of development 
stops and instinctive activity begins. 
Tue Factors In EVOLUTION. 
In regard to the factors in evolution, Bergson’s position is wisely eclectic 
Kach of the surviving evolution theories is true in its way, corresponding to a 
