Gathering Intelligence from Taine to Bergson

The notion of “intelligence” rearticulated the nature and limits of psychic life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This article analyzes one stage in the genealogy of “intelligence,” focusing on passages from Hippolyte Taine’s De l’intelligence (1870) and Henri Bergson’s L’évolution créatrice (1907). Taine and Bergson describe two divergent paths – the artificial and the vital – mapping out the looming cognitive and philosophical terrain for thinking about intelligence and its influence on modern French thought and literature.