enominator
are to come; he therefore has present to his mind the general relation
between the two terms although he does not know either of them; he knows
the form without the matter. So is it, prior to experience, with the
categories into which our experience comes to be inserted. Let us adopt
then words sanctioned by usage, and give the distinction between
intelligence and instinct this more precise formula: _Intelligence, in
so far as it is innate, is the knowledge of a_ form; _instinct implies
the knowledge of a_ matter.

From this second point of view, which is that of knowledge instead of
action, the force immanent in life in general appears to us again as a
limited principle, in which originally two different and even divergent
modes of knowing coexisted and intermingled. The first gets at definite
objects immediately, in their materiality itself. It says, "This is what
is." The second gets at no object in particular; it is only a natural
power of relating an object to an object, or a part to a part, or an
aspect to an aspect--in short, of drawing conclusions when in possession
of the premisses, of proceeding from what has been learnt to what is
still unknown. It does not say, "This _is_;" it says only that "_if_ the
conditions are such, such will be the conditioned." In short, the first
kind of knowledge, the instinctive, would be formulated in what
philosophers call _categorical_ propositions, while the second kind, the
intellectual, would always be expressed _hypothetically_. Of these two
faculties, the former seems, at first, much preferable to the other. And
it would be so, in truth, if it extended to an endless number of
objects. But, in fact, it applies only to one special object, and indeed
only to a restricted part of that object. Of this, at least, its
knowledge is intimate and full; not explicit, but implied in the
accomplished action. The intellectual faculty, on the contrary,
possesses naturally only an external and empty knowledge; but it has
thereby the advantage of supplying a frame in which an infinity of
objects may find room in turn. It is as if the force evolving in living
forms, being a limited force, had had to choose between two kinds of
limitation in the field of natural or innate knowledge, one applying to
the _extension_ of knowledge, the other to its _intension_. In the first
case, the knowledge may be packed and full, but it will then be confined
to one specific object; in the second,