You know what intelligence is; you know it by knowing yourself. Is
there, or is there not, intelligence in the universe? Allow me to
reproduce some old questions: If a machine implies intelligence, does
the universe imply none? If a telescope implies intelligence in the
optician, does the eye imply none in its author? The production of a
variety of the camelia, or of a new breed of swine, demands of the
gardener and the breeder the patient and prolonged employment of the
understanding; and are our entire flora and fauna to be explained
without any intervention of mind? And if there is intelligence in the
universe, is this intelligence a chemical result of the combination of
molecules? is it a physical result of caloric or of electricity? It is
in vain that you give to material agents an unlimited time; what has
time to do here? Whether the world as it now exists arose out of
nothing, or whether it was slowly formed during thousands of ages, the
question remains the same. With matter and time, you will not succeed in
creating intelligence; this were an operation of transcendent alchemy
utterly beyond our power. In the theory of _slow causes_, the adjective
ends by devouring the substantive; it seems that by dint of becoming
slow the causes become superfluous. A breath of reason upsets, like a
house of cards, the structures of this erring and misnamed science. Time
has a relative meaning and value. We reckon duration as long or short,
by taking human life as our measure. But they tell of insects which are
born in the morning, arrive at mature age at mid-day, and only reach the
evening if they are patriarchs of their race. Is it not easy to conceive
of beings organized for an existence such that our centuries would be
moments with them, and centuries heaped together one of our hours?
Suppose one of these beings to be contemplating our geological periods,
and slow causes will to him appear rapid causes, and the question of
intelligence will be the same for him as for us.