it no longer operates upon its own object,
follows habits it has contracted in that operation: it applies forms
that are indeed those of unorganized matter. It is made for this kind of
work. With this kind of work alone is it fully satisfied. And that is
what intelligence expresses by saying that thus only it arrives at
_distinctness_ and _clearness_.

It must, therefore, in order to think itself clearly and distinctly,
perceive itself under the form of discontinuity. Concepts, in fact, are
outside each other, like objects in space; and they have the same
stability as such objects, on which they have been modeled. Taken
together, they constitute an "intelligible world," that resembles the
world of solids in its essential characters, but whose elements are
lighter, more diaphanous, easier for the intellect to deal with than the
image of concrete things: they are not, indeed, the perception itself
of things, but the representation of the act by which the intellect is
fixed on them. They are, therefore, not images, but symbols. Our logic
is the complete set of rules that must be followed in using symbols. As
these symbols are derived from the consideration of solids, as the rules
for combining these symbols hardly do more than express the most general
relations among solids, our logic triumphs in that science which takes
the solidity of bodies for its object, that is, in geometry. Logic and
geometry engender each other, as we shall see a little further on. It is
from the extension of a certain natural geometry, suggested by the most
general and immediately perceived properties of solids, that natural
logic has arisen; then from this natural logic, in its turn, has sprung
scientific geometry, which extends further and further the knowledge of
the external properties of solids.[65] Geometry and logic are strictly
applicable to matter; in it they are at home, and in it they can proceed
quite alone. But, outside this domain, pure reasoning needs to be
supervised by common sense, which is an altogether different thing.

Thus, all the elementary forces of the intellect tend to transform
matter into an instrument of action, that is, in the etymological sense
of the word, into an _organ_. Life, not content with producing
organisms, would fain give them as an appendage inorganic matter itself,
converted into an immense organ by the industry of the living being.
Such is the initial task it assigns to intelligence. That is why the
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