visible in it, in the domain of inert matter, Mr Bergson goes so far as to
say that physical science touches an absolute. It is true that it touches
this absolute rather than sees it. More particularly it perceives all its
reactions on a system of representative forms which it presents to it, and
observes the effect on the veil of theory with which it envelops it. At
certain moments, all the same, the veil becomes almost transparent. And in
any case the scholar's thought guesses and grazes reality in the curve
drawn by the succession of its increasing syntheses. But there are two
orders of science. Formerly it was from the mathematician that we borrowed
the ideal of evidence. Hence came the inclination always to seek the most
certain knowledge from the most abstract side. The temptation was to make
a kind of less severe and rigorous mathematics of biology itself. Now if
such a method suits the study of inert matter because in a manner
geometrical, so much so that our knowledge of it thus acquired is more
incomplete than inexact, this is not at all the case for the things of
life. Here, if we were to conduct scientific research always in the same
grooves and according to the same formulae, we should immediately encounter
symbolism and relativity. For life is progress, whilst the geometrical
method is commensurable only with things. Mr Bergson is aware of this; and
his rare merit has been to disengage specific originality from biology,
while elevating it to a typical and standard science.

But let us come to the heart of the problem. What was Kant's point of
departure in the theory of knowledge? In seeking to define the structure
of the mind according to the traces of itself which it must have left in
its works, and in proceeding by a reflective analysis ascending from a fact
to its conditions, he could only regard intelligence as a thing made, a
fixed system of categories and principles.

Mr Bergson adopts an inverse attitude. Intelligence is a product of