portance cannot be exaggerated. Thanks to his power of preadaptation, the being endowed with intelligence acquires an enormous advantage over everything which does not reason. No doubt, as has been shrewdly remarked, natural selection resembles a finality, for it ends in an adaptation of beings to their surroundings. There is therefore, strictly speaking, such a thing as finality without intelligence. But the adaptation resulting therefrom is a crude one, and proceeds by the elimination of all that does not succeed in adapting itself; it is a butchery. Real finalism saves many deaths, many sufferings, and many abortions.[1]
Let us examine, then, the process of preadaptation; it will enable us to thoroughly comprehend, not only the difference between the physical and the psychical laws, but the reason why the psychical manages in some fashion to mould itself upon the physical law.
Now, the means employed by preadaptation is, if we take the matter in its simplest form, to be aware of sensations before they are experienced. If we reflect that all prevision implies a previous knowledge of the probable trend of events, it will be understood that the part played by intelligence consists in becoming imbued with the laws of nature, for the purpose of imitating its
- ↑ See a very interesting article by E. Goblot, “La Finalité sans Intelligence,” Revue de Métaphysique, July 1900.
