How theory of knowledge must take account of these two faculties,
intellect and intuition, and how also, for want of establishing a
sufficiently clear distinction between them, it becomes involved in
inextricable difficulties, creating phantoms of ideas to which there
cling phantoms of problems, we shall endeavor to show a little further
on. We shall see that the problem of knowledge, from this point of view,
is one with the metaphysical problem, and that both one and the other
depend upon experience. On the one hand, indeed, if intelligence is
charged with matter and instinct with life, we must squeeze them both in
order to get the double essence from them; metaphysics is therefore
dependent upon theory of knowledge. But, on the other hand, if
consciousness has thus split up into intuition and intelligence, it is
because of the need it had to apply itself to matter at the same time as
it had to follow the stream of life. The double form of consciousness is
then due to the double form of the real, and theory of knowledge must be
dependent upon metaphysics. In fact, each of these two lines of thought
leads to the other; they form a circle, and there can be no other centre
to the circle but the empirical study of evolution. It is only in seeing
consciousness run through matter, lose itself there and find itself
there again, divide and reconstitute itself, that we shall form an idea
of the mutual opposition of the two terms, as also, perhaps, of their
common origin. But, on the other hand, by dwelling on this opposition of
the two elements and on this identity of origin, perhaps we shall bring
out more clearly the meaning of evolution itself.
Such will be the aim of our next chapter. But the facts that we have
just noticed must have already suggested to us the idea that life is
connected either with consciousness or with something that resembles it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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