Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/170

166 Bergson here makes one of his most suggestive contributions, for he makes intellect and instinct divergent instead of linear characteristics. Intellect is not derived from instinct, but they are both present in all life. The former is emphasized by the vertebrates, reaching its culmination in man; the latter is especially developed by the arthropods and finds its highest expression in the Hymenoptera—bees, wasps and ants. The awakening from torpor could be effected in two ways; life, i. e., consciousness launched into matter, could fix its attention either upon its own movement or upon the matter it was passing through, and it would thus be turned either in the direction of intuition, or of intellect. Apparently, on the side of intuition consciousness could not go far; it found itself so restricted by its envelope that intuition had to shrink into instinct, i. e., to embrace only that portion of life upon which its continued well-being depended. Instinct is a prolongation of the life principle (vital impulse). We call that the life principle which in a living body coordinates the thousands of cells to work towards a common end and to divide the labor of feeding, reproduction and preservation among them, but we call that instinct which causes the bees of a hive to work towards a common end, and to divide the labor of feeding, reproduction and preservation among them.

The most essential of the primary instincts are really vital processes. Instinct only carries further the work by which life organizes matter. When the little chick is breaking its shell with a peck of its beak it is acting by instinct, and yet it merely carries on the movement which has borne it through its embryonic life. When the digger-wasp, Ammophila, stings its caterpillar victim in just the right places to ensure paralysis without death it acts by instinct, it must not be considered to have any knowledge like that of the learned entomologist who would know the vulnerable places from the outside—from detailed observations of all parts of the caterpillar body. The insect's knowledge, instinctive, proceeds from its inner identification with the same life principle as that of the caterpillar—from a sympathy (in the etymological sense of the word) between the two organisms which teaches the insect from within the vulnerability of its victim, whereas the intelligence of the entomologist goes all around the caterpillar instead of entering into it, making itself one with it.

On the other hand, consciousness concentrating its attention upon the matter it was passing through succeeded in evading the barriers raised by it, and now in man, freed to some extent from matter, it can turn inwards on itself and awaken the powers of intuition which still slumber within it. Intuition as thus used is instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object.

Bergson makes freedom the corner-stone of his theory. The vital impetus has for its goal the acquirement of an ever fuller volume of