no doubt. By way of suggestion, I will indicate one of these hypothetical possibilities: “The consciousness has the faculty of reading in the effect that which existed in the cause.” It is not rash to believe that by working out this idea, a certain solution would be discovered. Moreover, the essential is, I repeat, less to find a solution than to take account of the point which requires one; and metaphysics seem to me especially useful when it shows us where the gap in our knowledge exists and what are the conditions required to fill this gap.
Above all, I adhere to this idea, which has been one of the guiding forces of this book: there exists at the bottom of all the phenomena of the intelligence, a duality. To form a true phenomenon, there must be at once a consciousness and an object. According to passing tendencies, either of temperament or of fashion, preponderance has been given sometimes to one of the terms of this couple, sometimes to the other. The idealist declares: “Thought creates the world.” The materialist answers: “The matter of the brain creates thought.” Between these two extreme opinions, the one as unjustifiable as the other in the excesses they commit, we take up an intermediate position. Looking at the balance, we see no argument capable of being placed in the scale of the consciousness which may not be
