n as the intellect is made a kind of absolute.--We
regard the human intellect, on the contrary, as relative to the needs of
action. Postulate action, and the very form of the intellect can be
deduced from it. This form is therefore neither irreducible nor
inexplicable. And, precisely because it is not independent, knowledge
cannot be said to depend on it: knowledge ceases to be a product of the
intellect and becomes, in a certain sense, part and parcel of reality.

Philosophers will reply that action takes place in an _ordered_ world,
that this order is itself thought, and that we beg the question when we
explain the intellect by action, which presupposes it. They would be
right if our point of view in the present chapter was to be our final
one. We should then be dupes of an illusion like that of Spencer, who
believed that the intellect is sufficiently explained as the impression
left on us by the general characters of matter: as if the order inherent
in matter were not intelligence itself! But we reserve for the next
chapter the question up to what point and with what method philosophy
can attempt a real genesis of the intellect at the same time as of
matter. For the moment, the problem that engages our attention is of a
psychological order. We are asking what is the portion of the material
world to which our intellect is specially adapted. To reply to this
question, there is no need to choose a system of philosophy: it is
enough to take up the point of view of common sense.

Let us start, then, from action, and lay down that 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, fabrication deals only with the
solid; the rest escapes by its very fluidity. If, therefore, the
tendency of the intellect is to fabricate, we may expect to find that
whatever is fluid in the real will escape it in part, and whatever is
life in the living will escape it altogether. _Our intelligence, as it
leaves the hands of nature, has for its chief object the unorganized
solid._

When we pass in review the intellectual functions, we see that the
intellect is never quite at its ease, never entirely at home, except
when it is working upon inert matter, more particularly upon solids.
What is the most general property of th