Each is a psychical activity, but while Instinct is far more perfect, far more complete in its insight, it is confined within narrow limits.  Intelligence, while far less perfect in accomplishing its work, less complete in insight, is not limited in such a way.  But while Intellect is external, looking on reality as different from life, Instinct is an inner sympathy with reality; it is deeper than any intellectual bond which binds the conscious creature to reality, for it is a vital bond.

Bergson now turns to a consideration of Life and Matter in the evolutionary process, and their precise relation to one another.  Life is free, spontaneous, incalculable, not out of relation to Matter, but its direction is not entirely determined by Matter nor has its initial impulse Matter as its source.  Although Bergson denies that Will and Consciousness, as we know them, are mere functions of the material organism, yet they do depend upon it as a workman depends upon his tool.  We are fond of insinuating that a bad workman always blames his tools.  A good workman, however, cannot be expected to do the best work with bad tools.  The tool, although he uses it, at the same time limits him.  So it is with the material organism at our disposal, our body, and so, too, with spirit and matter in general.  Spirit and Matter are not to be regarded as independent or as ranged against one another from all eternity.  Matter is a product of Spirit or Consciousness, the underlying psychic force.  “For want of a better word,” says Bergson, “we have called it Consciousness.  But we do not mean the narrowed consciousness that functions in each of us.” [Footnote:  Creative Evolution, p. 250 (Fr. p. 258).] It is rather super-Consciousness than a consciousness like ours.  Matter is a flux rather than a thing, but its flow is in the opposite direction to that of Spirit.  The flow of Spirit shows itself in the creativeness of the evolutionary process; Matter is the inverse movement towards stability.  Bergson adheres to the view of Spirit as fundamental, while Matter, he says, is due to a lessening of the tension of the spiritual force which is the initial elan.  Now, of course, Matter and Spirit have come to be two opposing forces, for one is determined and the other free.  Yet Bergson has to make out that there must have been some indetermination in Matter, however small, to give Spirit an opening to “insinuate itself” into Matter and thus use it for its own ends.  It always seems, however, as if Spirit were trying to free itself from material limitations.  It evolved the Intellect to cope with Matter.  This is why Reason is at home, not in life and freedom, but in solid Matter, in mechanical and spatial distinctions.  There is thus an eternal conflict in progress between Spirit and Matter.  The latter is always tending to automatism, to the sacrifice of the Spirit with its creative power.  In his little book on The Meaning of the War Bergson claims that here we have an instance of Life and Matter