shed
by nature, and the result to be obtained willed by nature, there is
little left to choice; the consciousness inherent in the representation
is therefore counterbalanced, whenever it tends to disengage itself, by
the performance of the act, identical with the representation, which
forms its counterweight. Where consciousness appears, it does not so
much light up the instinct itself as the thwartings to which instinct is
subject; it is the _deficit_ of instinct, the distance, between the act
and the idea, that becomes consciousness so that consciousness, here, is
only an accident. Essentially, consciousness only emphasizes the
starting-point of instinct, the point at which the whole series of
automatic movements is released. Deficit, on the contrary, is the normal
state of intelligence. Laboring under difficulties is its very essence.
Its original function being to construct unorganized instruments, it
must, in spite of numberless difficulties, choose for this work the
place and the time, the form and the matter. And it can never satisfy
itself entirely, because every new satisfaction creates new needs. In
short, while instinct and intelligence both involve knowledge, this
knowledge is rather _acted_ and unconscious in the case of instinct,
_thought_ and conscious in the case of intelligence. But it is a
difference rather of degree than of kind. So long as consciousness is
all we are concerned with, we close our eyes to what is, from the
psychological point of view, the cardinal difference between instinct
and intelligence.

In order to get at this essential difference we must, without stopping
at the more or less brilliant light which illumines these two modes of
internal activity, go straight to the two _objects_, profoundly
different from each other, upon which instinct and intelligence are
directed.

When the horse-fly lays its eggs on the legs or shoulders of the horse,
it acts as if it knew that its larva has to develop in the horse's
stomach and that the horse, in licking itself, will convey the larva
into its digestive tract. When a paralyzing wasp stings its victim on
just those points where the nervous centres lie, so as to render it
motionless without killing it, it acts like a learned entomologist and a
skilful surgeon rolled into one. But what shall we say of the little
beetle, the Sitaris, whose story is so often quoted? This insect lays
its eggs at the entrance of the underground passages dug by a ki