Chapter II (4)

A noteworthy fact is the extraordinary disproportion between the consequences of an invention and the invention itself. We have said that intelligence is modeled on matter and that it aims in the first place at fabrication. But does it fabricate in order to fabricate or does it not pursue involuntarily, and even unconsciously, something entirely different? Fabricating consists in shaping matter, in making it supple and in bending it, in converting it into an instrument in order to become master of it. It is this _mastery_ that profits humanity, much more even than the material result of the invention itself. Though we derive an immediate advantage from the thing made, as an intelligent animal might do, and though this advantage be all the inventor sought, it is a slight matter compared with the new ideas and new feelings that the invention may give rise to in every direction, as if the essential part of the effect were to raise us above ourselves and enlarge our horizon. Between the effect and the cause the disproportion is so great that it is difficult to regard the cause as _producer_ of its effect. It releases it, whilst settling, indeed, its direction. Everything happens as though the grip of intelligence on matter were, in its main intention, to _let something pass_ that matter is holding back.

The same impression arises when we compare the brain of man with that of the animals. The difference at first appears to be only a difference of size and complexity. But, judging by function, there must be something else besides. In the animal, the motor mechanisms that the brain succeeds in setting up, or, in other words, the habits contracted voluntarily, have no other object nor effect than the accomplishment of the movements marked out in these habits, stored in these mechanisms. But, in man, the motor habit may have a second result, out of proportion to the first: it can hold other motor habits in check, and thereby, in overcoming automatism, set consciousness free. We know what vast regions in the human brain language occupies. The cerebral mechanisms that correspond to the words have this in particular, that they can be made to grapple with other mechanisms, those, for instance, that correspond to the things themselves, or even be made to grapple with one another. Meanwhile consciousness, which would have been dragged down and drowned in the accomplishment of the act, is restored and set free.[77]

The difference must therefore be more radical than a superficial examination would lead us to suppose. It is the difference between a mechanism which engages the attention and a mechanism from which it can be diverted. The primitive steam-engine, as Newcomen conceived it, required the presence of a person exclusively employed to turn on and off the taps, either to let the steam into the cylinder or to throw the cold spray into it in order to condense the steam. It is said that a boy employed on this work, and very tired of having to do it, got the idea of tying the handles of the taps, with cords, to the beam of the engine. Then the machine opened and closed the taps itself; it worked all alone. Now, if an observer had compared the structure of this second machine with that of the first without taking into account the two boys left to watch over them, he would have found only a slight difference of complexity. That is, indeed, all we can perceive when we look only at the machines. But if we cast a glance at the two boys, we shall see that whilst one is wholly taken up by the watching, the other is free to go and play as he chooses, and that, from this point of view, the difference between the two machines is radical, the first holding the attention captive, the second setting it at liberty. A difference of the same kind, we think, would be found between the brain of an animal and the human brain.

If, now, we should wish to express this in terms of finality, we should have to say that consciousness, after having been obliged, in order to set itself free, to divide organization into two complementary parts, vegetables on one hand and animals on the other, has sought an issue in the double direction of instinct and of intelligence. It has not found it with instinct, and it has not obtained it on the side of intelligence except by a sudden leap from the animal to man. So that, in the last analysis, man might be considered the reason for the existence of the entire organization of life on our planet. But this would be only a manner of speaking. There is, in reality, only a current of existence and the opposing current; thence proceeds the whole evolution of life. We must now grasp more closely the opposition of these two currents. Perhaps we shall thus discover for them a common source. By this we shall also, no doubt, penetrate the most obscure regions of metaphysics. However, as the two directions we have to follow are clearly marked, in intelligence on the one hand, in instinct and intuition on the other, we are not afraid of straying. A survey of the evolution of life suggests to us a certain conception of knowledge, and also a certain metaphysics, which imply each other. Once made clear, this metaphysics and this critique may throw some light, in their turn, on evolution as a whole.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: This view of adaptation has been noted by M.F. Marin in a remarkable article on the origin of species, "L'Origine des espèces" (_Revue scientifique_, Nov. 1901, p. 580).]

[Footnote 52: De Saporta and Marion, _L'Évolution des cryptogames_, 1881, p. 37.]

[Footnote 53: On fixation and parasitism in general, see the work of Houssay, _La Forme et la vie_, Paris, 1900, pp. 721-807.]

[Footnote 54: Cope, _op. cit._ p. 76.]

[Footnote 55: Just as the plant, in certain cases, recovers the faculty of moving actively which slumbers in it, so the animal, in exceptional circumstances, can replace itself in the conditions of the vegetative life and develop in itself an equivalent of the chlorophyllian function. It appears, indeed, from recent experiments of Maria von Linden, that the chrysalides and the caterpillars of certain lepidoptera, under the influence of light, fix the carbon of the carbonic acid contained in the atmosphere (M. von Linden, "L'Assimilation de l'acide carbonique par les chrysalides de Lépidoptères," _C.R. de la Soc. de biologie_, 1905, pp. 692 ff.).]

[Footnote 56: _Archives de physiologie_, 1892.]

[Footnote 57: De Manacéine, "Quelques observations expérimentales sur l'influence de l'insomnie absolue" (_Arch. ital. de biologie_, t. xxi., 1894, pp. 322 ff.). Recently, analogous observations have been made on a man who died of inanition after a fast of thirty-five days. See, on this subject, in the _Année biologique_ of 1898, p. 338, the résumé of an article (in Russian) by Tarakevitch and Stchasny.]

[Footnote 58: Cuvier said: "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole animal; the other systems are there only to serve it." ("Sur un nouveau rapprochement à établir entre les classes qui composent le regne animal," _Arch. du Muséum d'histoire naturelle_, Paris, 1812, pp. 73-84.) Of course, it would be necessary to apply a great many restrictions to this formula--for example, to allow for the cases of degradation and retrogression in which the nervous system passes into the background. And, moreover, with the nervous system must be included the sensorial apparatus on the one hand and the motor on the other, between which it acts as intermediary. Cf. Foster, art. "Physiology," in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Edinburgh, 1885, p. 17.]

[Footnote 59: See, on these different points, the work of Gaudry, _Essai de paléontologie philosophique_, Paris, 1896, pp. 14-16 and 78-79.]

[Footnote 60: See, on this subject, Shaler, _The Individual_, New York, 1900, pp. 118-125.]

[Footnote 61: This point is disputed by M. René Quinton, who regards the carnivorous and ruminant mammals, as well as certain birds, as subsequent to man (R. Quinton, _L'Eau de mer milieu organique_, Paris, 1904, p. 435). We may say here that our general conclusions, although very different from M. Quinton's, are not irreconcilable with them; for if evolution has really been such as we represent it, the vertebrates must have made an effort to maintain themselves in the most favorable conditions of activity--the very conditions, indeed, which life had chosen in the beginning.]

[Footnote 62: M. Paul Lacombe has laid great stress on the important influence that great inventions have exercised on the evolution of humanity (P. Lacombe, _De l'histoire considérée comme science_, Paris, 1894. See, in particular, pp. 168-247).]

[Footnote 63: Bouvier, "La Nidification des abeilles à l'air libre" (_C.R. de l'Ac. des sciences_, 7 mai 1906).]

[Footnote 64: Plato, _Phaedrus_, 265 E.]

[Footnote 65: We shall return to these points in the next chapter.]

[Footnote 66: We shall return to this point in chapter iii., p. 259.]

[Footnote 67: _Matière et mémoire_, chap. i.]

[Footnote 68: See the two works of Darwin, _Climbing Plants_ and _The Fertilization of Orchids by Insects_.]

[Footnote 69: Buttel-Reepen, "Die phylogenetische Entstehung des Bienenstaates" (_Biol. Centralblatt_, xxiii. 1903), p. 108 in particular.]

[Footnote 70: Fabre, _Souvenirs entomologiques_, 3^e série, Paris, 1890, pp. 1-69.]

[Footnote 71: Fabre, _Souvenirs entomologiques_, 1^{re} série, Paris, 3^e édition, Paris, 1894, pp. 93 ff.]

[Footnote 72: Fabre, _Nouveaux souvenirs entomologiques_, Paris, 1882, pp. 14 ff.]

[Footnote 73: Peckham, _Wasps, Solitary and Social_, Westminster, 1905, pp. 28 ff.]

[Footnote 74: See, in particular, among recent works, Bethe, "Dürfen wir den Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitäten zuschreiben?" (_Arch. f. d. ges. Physiologie_, 1898), and Forel, "Un Aperçu de psychologie comparée" (_Année psychologique_, 1895).]

[Footnote 75: _Matière et mémoire_, chaps. ii. and iii.]

[Footnote 76: "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (_Revue de métaphysique_, Nov. 1904).]

[Footnote 77: A geologist whom we have already had occasion to cite, N.S. Shaler, well says that "when we come to man, it seems as if we find the ancient subjection of mind to body abolished, and the intellectual parts develop with an extraordinary rapidity, the structure of the body remaining identical in essentials" (Shaler, _The Interpretation of Nature_, Boston, 1899, p. 187).]