Ideas are plastic and adaptable. They owe their stability to the vital functions which they serve. In other words, the intelligence, profiting from past experiences, adapts them as means to new experiments in order to test their value. Ideas emerge in thought under the stimulus of the difficulties which are found within every situation. These ideas serve as a point of reference for action in a determined direction toward a better situation.
Ideas are thus instruments of action.
They are true if they succeed in producing a new and better situation. Morality consists in the consciousness of responsibility in this progressive reorganization of reality. Initiative and inventiveness in the use of one's intelligence constitute personality. Knowledge consists in a continual broadening of the human powers over nature. Through knowledge there are formed ever wider spheres of social life endowed with a democratic spirit.