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The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

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The Two Sources of Morality and Religion THE TWO SOURCES OF MORALITY AND RELIGION By Henri Bergson This e-book had been prepared by Auro e-Books, an international website dedicated to e-books on Well-Being and Spirituality. Discover more e-books and other activities on our website: www.auro-ebooks.com Translated by . !shley !udra and "loudesley Brereton With the assistance o# W. $ors#all "arter %acmillan and "o., Limited St. %artin's Street, London ()*+ ,book ,dition -.(/ 3 Table of Contents Translators' Prefa e!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" C#a$ter I! Moral Obligation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' C#a$ter II! Static Religion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(" C#a$ter III! D)na*% Religion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!+'" C#a$ter I,! Final Re*arks Me #an% s An. M)sticis*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!//0 About the Author!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/2' 4 Translators' Preface 01 undertaking to place before the ,nglish public %. $enri Bergson's great work, which since its publication in %arch ()*- has gone through seventeen editions, the translators were confronted at the outset with great difficulties. !n e2ample, of the utmost importance, was the word 3morale3, which has a wider meaning in 4rench than in English, conveying both morality and ethics. There are obvious disadvantages in attempting to use now the one now the other of these two terms, though this has in some cases been done. But we have in most cases kept to the word 3morality3, and therefore consider it advisable to inform our readers of the wide sense in which we use it. !s %onsieur Bergson himsel# says more than once, 3You may attribute what meaning you like to a word, provided you start by clearly defining that meaning3. The path of all translation is strewn with stumbling-blocks. This is especially true of The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. $ere the thought is the outcome of twenty-five years' reflection and research, cast with unfailing skill in the language in which it was conceived6 the language becomes inseparable from the thought it e2presses. That is why the reader who cares to compare the English with the 4rench te2t will find a certain number of passages which might appear at first sight to have been altered from the original. ! closer study will reveal that this is not the case and that in almost every instance an effort has been made to convey the meaning of the 4rench sentence more accurately still than would have been possible by a word-for-word translation. %onsieur Bergson reali7ed the difficulties with which the translators were confronted, and with the kindly courtesy which is characteristic of him helped them in their task. !t his particular re8uest, and under his guidance, these passages have been re-written and even re-thought in English. 9nce recast in this way, they have been submitted to his final approval. The translators and the reader owe him a debt of gratitude #or his generous and careful collaboration. 5 The translators also wish particularly to thank %r. W. $orsfall "arter, who has helped them with his advice throughout the work of translation, has taken over from Dr. "loudesley Brereton the work o# final revision :owing to the latter's ill-health;, and has undertaken the arduous and delicate task of re-reading the book as a whole, with a fresh mind. 9wing to his remarkable command of his own language, together with a consummate knowledge of 4rench, his assistance has been of the greatest value. R. ASHLEY AUDRA L!UDESLEY BRERET!" 6 Chapter I Moral Obl%gat%on T$, remembrance of forbidden fruit is the earliest thing in the memory of each of us, as it is in that of mankind. We should notice this, were not this recollection overlaid by others which we are more inclined to dwell upon. What a childhood we should have had i# only we had been left to do as we pleased< We should have flitted from pleasure to pleasure. But all of a sudden an obstacle arose, neither visible nor tangible: a prohibition. Why did we obey= The 8uestion hardly occurred to us. We had formed the habit of deferring to our parents and teachers. !ll the same we knew very well that it was because they were our parents, because they were our teachers. Therefore, in our eyes, their authority came less from themselves than from their status in relation to us. They occupied a certain station6 that was the source of true command which, had it issued from some other 8uarter, would not have possessed the same weight. 0n other words, parents and teachers seemed to act by proxy. We did not fully reali7e this, but behind our parents and our teachers we had an inkling of some enormous, or rather some shadowy, thing that e2erted pressure on us through them. &ater we would say it was society. !nd speculating upon it, we should compare it to an organism whose cells, united by imperceptible links, fall into their respective places in a highly developed hierarchy, and for the greatest good of the whole naturally submit to a discipline that may demand the sacrifice of the part. This, however, can only be a comparison, for an organism sub>ect to ine2orable laws is one thing, and a society composed of free wills another. But, once these wills are organi7ed, they assume the guise of an organism6 and in this more or less artificial organism habit plays the same role as necessity in the works of nature. 4rom this first standpoint, social life appears to us a system of more or less deeply rooted habits, corresponding to the needs of the community. Some of them are habits of command, most of 7 them are habits of obedience, whether we obey a person commanding by virtue of a mandate from society, or whether from society itself, vaguely perceived or felt, there emanates an impersonal imperative. Each of these habits of obedience e2erts a pressure on our will. We can evade it, but then we are attracted towards it, drawn back to it, like a pendulum which has swung away from the vertical. ! certain order of things has been upset, it must be restored. 0n a word, as with all habits, we feel a sense of obligation. But in this case the obligation is immeasurably stronger. When a certain magnitude is so much greater than another that the latter is negligible in comparison, mathematicians say that it belongs to another order. So it is with social obligation. The pressure of it, compared to that of other habits, is such that the difference in degree amounts to a difference in kind. 0t should be noted that all habits of this nature lend one another mutual support. !lthough we may riot speculate on their essence and on their origin, we feel that they are interrelated, being demanded of us by our immediate surroundings, or by the surroundings of those surroundings, and so on to the uttermost limit, which would be society. Each one corresponds, directly or indirectly, to a social necessity6 and so they all hang together, they form a solid block. %any o# them would be trivial obligations if they appeared singly. But they are an integral part of obligation in general, and this whole, which is what it is owing to the contributions of its parts, in its turn confers upon each one the undivided authority o# the totality. Thus the sum-total comes to the aid of each of its parts, and the general sentence 3do what duty bids'' triumphs over the hesitations we might feel in the presence of a single duty. !s a matter of #act, we do not e2plicitly think o# a mass of partial duties added together and constituting a single total obligation. Perhaps there is really not an aggregation of parts. The strength which one obligation derives from all the others is rather to be compared to the breath of life drawn, complete and indivisible, by each of the cells from the depths o# the organism of which it is an element. Society, present within each of its members, has claims which, whether great or small, each e2press the sum-total of its vitality. But let us again repeat 8 that this is only a comparison. ! human community is a collectivity of free beings. The obligations which it lays down, and which enable it to subsist, introduce into it a regularity which has merely some analogy to the infle2ible order of the phenomena of life. !nd yet everything conspires to make us believe that this regularity is comparable with that of nature. 0 do not allude merely to the unanimity of mankind in praising certain acts and blaming others. 0 mean that, even in those cases where moral precepts implied in >udgments of values are not observed, we contrive that they should appear so. @ust as we do not notice disease when walking along the street, so we do not gauge the degree of possible immorality behind the e2terior which humanity presents to the world. 0t would take a good deal of time to become a misanthrope i# we confined ourselves to the observation of others. 0t is when we detect our own weaknesses that we come to pity or despise mankind. The human nature from which we then turn away is the human nature we have discovered in the depths of our own being. The evil is so well screened, the secret so universally kept, that in this case each individual is the dupe of all: however severely we may profess to >udge other men, at bottom we think them better than ourselves. 9n this happy illusion much of our social life is grounded. 0t is natural that society should do everything to encourage this idea.
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