les deux sources de la morale et de

HENRI BERGSON: ACTIVIST MYSTICISMAND THE OPEN SOCIETY

Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion(New York: Henry Holt and company, 1935). Authorized transla-tion of Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (Paris: FelixAlcan, 1932), reprinted in Henri Bergson, Oeuvres (Paris:Presses Universitaires de France, 1970), pp. 981-1245. Allreferences to the French are to the latter editions. Page numbersin parentheses refer to the English translation, unless preceded by"Fr." as in Fr. 1069.

Henri Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion is a

classic of contemporary political theory. One of the propertiesof a classic is that no matter how often one reads it, the freshness of itsanalysis of the human condition is still there, and one makes newdiscoveries about the work's meaning and its implications. Bergson'sstudy more than adequately fulfills this criterion.

The purpose of this review article is to consider The Two Sources inrelation to a critical theory of the open society. As with my previousarticle on Karl Popper,' I shall first let Bergson speak for himself andthen offer my criticisms. Parts of the book must be ignored bothbecause of space limitations and because they do not bear centrallyupon the question "What is a political theory of the open society?"

Bergson divides his work into four lengthy chapters; in the follow-ing discussion, I shall follow his own division of subject matter,although not necessarily his emphasis. The chapters on "MoralObligation" and "Static Religion" are twice as lengthy as those on"Dynamic Religion" and "Mechanics and Mysticism."

I. Moral Obligation

Significantly, Bergson begins his analysis of moral obligation withthe question "Why did we obey?" rather than "Why should weobey?" He presents moral obligation as an experience of the con.

1. "Karl Popper's Open Society," The Political Science Reviewer, VIII (Fall, 1978),21-61).

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sciousness which at once constitutes the basis of and emanates fromsomething called "society." Unlike the social contract theorists whohypothesize man out of a society which must then be constructed onabstract, conjectural principles, Bergson begins with the concrete ex-perience of a child's encountering a prohibition and raises the ques-tion of that prohibition's origin.

Why did we obey? The question hardly occurred to us. We had formed the habitof deferring to our parents and teachers. All the same we knew very well that itwas because they were our parents, because they were our teachers. Therefore, inour eyes, their authority came less from themselves than from their status in rela-tion to us. [P]arents and teachers seemed to act by proxy. We did not fully realizethis, but behind our parents and our teachers we had an inkling of some enor-mous, or rather shadowy, thing that exerted pressure on us through them. Laterwe would say it was society.(1)

To an unreflective consciousness, society is comparable to "anorganism whose cells, united by imperceptible links, fall into theirrespective places in the highly developed hierarchy, and for thegreatest good of the whole naturally submit to a discipline that maydemand the sacrifice of the part." (Ibid.) Of course, human beings arenot cells; they are "free wills." Once organized, however, their wills"assume the guise of an organism," and "in this more or less artificialorganism habit plays the same role as necessity in the work ofnature." (2)

From this first standpoint, social life appears to us a system of more or less deep-ly rooted habits, corresponding to the needs of the community. Some of themare habits of command, most of them are habits of behavior, whether we obey aperson's commands by virtue of a mandate from society or whether from societyitself, vaguely perceived or felt, there emanates an impersonal imperative. Eachof these habits of obedience exerts a pressure on our will. We can evade it, butthen we are attracted towards it, drawn back to it, like a pendulum which hasswung away from the vertical. A certain order of things has been upset, it mustbe restored. In a word, as with all habits, we feel a sense of obligation.(2)

The "pressure" of "social obligation" is so immeasurably greaterthan that exerted by other habits that compared with them, it amountsto a difference in kind. In any case, all of our habits of obediencecombine to lend each other mutual support within the context ofsociety, which is the "uttermost limit" of our "surroundings." Socie-ty appears as a great whole coordinating all our duties down to themost trivial. It would be an intellectualist fallacy to assume that wecalculate whether to obey each and every single command or prohibi-

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tion: on the contrary, in its original condition, obligation is experi-enced as a "solid block." To refuse any one command would mean toendanger the whole complex of prohibitions. The general proposition" 'do what duty bids' triumphs over the hesitations we might feel inthe presence of a single duty" (2-3).

Initially, then, "everything conspires" to make the social order "animitation of the order observed in nature" (6). "Habit, served by in-telligence and imagination," produces between the separate in-dividuals a unity comparable to that of cells in an organism. At thispoint, obligation is experienced as a "necessity." This necessity is notentirely from without, however. "Each of us belongs as much tosociety as to himself." Each of us possesses two selves: a "social self"and an "individual self." The individual self is encountered only inthe "depths of our being," while the social self is at the "surface" ofthe consciousness.

Obligation to obey the commands of society for Bergson is notsomething rationalistic and abstract. Rather, it is rooted in the con-crete experience of obligation to those who are closest to us, our fami-ly and our friends. Ordinarily, we do not hesitate and calculate aboutthe question "why obey?" before performing our obligations. Rather,we experience ourselves at the center of a series of concentric circles.

Society occupies the circumference; the individual is at the center; from thecenter to the circumference are arranged, like so many ever-widening concentriccircles, the various groups to which the individual belongs. From the cir-cumference to the center, as the circles grow smaller, obligations are added toobligations, and the individual ends by finding himself confronted with all ofthem together. Thus, obligation increases as it advances; but, if it is more com-plicated, it is less abstract, and the more easily accepted. When it has become ful-ly concrete, it coincides with a tendency, so habitual that we find it natural, toplay in society the part which our station assigns to us. (10-11)

Against Kant, Bergson maintains that, considered as a whole,obligation is habitual rather than rational in nature. The error of therationalist school of ethics is rooted in their failure to see thatresistance to duty is the exception and not the rule. Of course, we en-counter specific obligations against which we internally rebel; we thenhave to invent reasons to ourselves for obeying a specific command.We generally have no difficulty in overcoming the "resistance" of theself in a given instance, because "owing to the interdependence of ourduties, and because the obligation as a whole is immanent in each ofits parts, all duties are tinged with the hue taken on exceptionally byone or the other of them" (11-12).


It is a mistake to regard obligation as a "unique fact, incommen-surate with others, looming above them like a mysterious apparition.If a considerable number of philosophers, especially those who followKant, have taken this view, it is because they have confused the senseof obligation, a tranquil state akin to inclination, with the violent ef-fort we now and again exert on ourselves to break down a possibleobstacle to obligation." (12-13) It is important to note that "from thefact that we get back to obligations by rational ways, it does notfollow that obligation was of a rational order." (14)

Thus far, Bergson has argued that "the essence of obligation is adifferent thing from a requirement of reason." (16) The only truly"categorical imperative" is that in which intelligence supports in-stinct. When we question an obligation, reason ultimately supplies uswith the answer: "You must because you must." Social morality is atbottom a matter of pressure

Despite his criticism of an abstract, intellectualist explanation ofobligation, Bergson does not maintain that any particular obligationcan be called instinctive. "What we must perpetually recall is that, noone obligation being instinctive, obligation as a whole would havebeen instinct if human societies were not... ballasted with variabilityand intelligence." (20) Hence, as Bergson observes, human societydiffers from a beehive or an ant hill in that it is "variable in form,open to every kind of progress" (19).

From the "Closed" to the "Open" Society

At this point, Bergson brings up his famous distinction between"closed societies" (in the plural) and the "open society." His firstmention of the open society is in the following passage:

We have said...that underlying moral obligation there was a social demand. Ofwhat society were we speaking? Was it of that open society represented by allmankind? We did not settle the matter, any more than one usually does whenspeaking of a man's duty to his fellows; one remains prudently vague; onerefrains from making any assertion, but one would like to have it believed that"human society" is already an accomplished fact. (22)

From Bergson's initial formulation of the "open society" idea, itappears to have been conceived as temporal and spatial. The opensociety is a temporal concept because it remains to be realized in thefuture; it is a global or spatial concept because it includes everyonepresently living. Thus, the "civilized" societies in which we presently

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live are only potentially open ones 2 ; in reality, they are "closedsocieties." Our societies are closed because "their essentialcharacteristic is...to include at any moment a certain number of in-dividuals and exclude others" (22). Although empires or large nationsmay be "very extensive compared to the small agglomerations towhich we were drawn by instinct," they are nevertheless closed to apart of humanity presently living on the globe:

The introduction of the closed-open society distinction by Bergsonrepresents a dramatic turn in the argument. Thus far, he had soundedin places like Emile Durkheim and other sociologists who make the in-dividual a mere "cell" of society. With the introduction of this con-cept of the open society, the whole question of obligation becomesenormously complicated. What are we to do when the two sources ofobligation—the closed and the open—conflict? For the present,Bergson is silent on this point. All he does is to introduce the ter-minology and to emphasize that "a moral philosophy which does notemphasize this distinction misses the truth; its analysis will thereby beinevitably distorted." Such a philosophy will not recognize that"when we lay down...the duty of respecting the life and the propertyof others" as a "fundamental demand of social life," it is the closedsociety which we have in mind. To verify this conclusion:

We need only think what happens in time of war. Murder and pillage and per-fidy, cheating and lying become not only lawful, they are actually praiseworthy.The warring nations can say with Macbeth's witches: "Fair is foul, and foul isfair." Would this be possible, would this transformation take place so easily,generally, and instantaneously, if it were really a certain attitude of man towardsman that society had been enjoining on us up till then? (23)

Bergson clearly intends to shock the reader into recognizing as aself-deception the common assumption of international politics: viz.,that the duties enjoined by "society" are "indeed, in principle, dutiestowards humanity, but that under exceptional circumstances, regret-tably unavoidable, they are for the time being, inapplicable." Instead,as we have seen, those duties are to the closed society into which weare born. Far from being the norm, peace between nations has alwaysbeen a "preparation for defense or even attack, at any rate for war."Our social duties "aim at social cohesion"; whether we like it or not,they foster in us an attitude of "discipline in the face of the enemy."

2. They are potentially open because, while purely instinctive or animal societies,they are "open to every kind of progress." (19) Later he is to introduce a third category:societies "on the way to becoming open."


(23) Nonetheless, it is not mere hypocrisy that makes contemporarynations (or "closed societies") speak as if they were generally faithfulto and recognized their obligations toward humanity at large: if theydid not do so, they would block the route to the progress of "anothermorality" which is "not derived from it" and which it "has every in-ducement to honor" (23,F.1001).

Having begun with the insight that we derive our ideas of moralityfrom society and having established there are two radically differentconcepts of society, the "closed" and the "open," Bergson proceedsto a discussion of two types of morality. However, it should be em-phasized that he purports to be dealing with "facts" of our con-sciousness and not with abstract ideals. The evolution of the closed-open distinction is alleged to be in line with and ultimately to be basedon the evolution of man as a biological species.

Before one can proceed to a discussion of that "other" moralitywhich is "not derived" from the first one, however, one needs to con-sider more fully what the author says about the "society" on which itis based. This society, called humanity, may not be understood as theresult of a mere expansion of our experience of the closed society ornation.

For between the nation, however big, and humanity there lies the whole distancefrom the finite to the indefinite, from the closed to the open. We are fond of say-ing that the apprenticeship to civic virtue is served in the family, and that in thesame way, from holding our country dear, we learn to love mankind. Our sym-pathies are supposed to broaden out in an unbroken possession, to expand whileremaining identical, and to end by embracing all humanity. This is a priorireasoning, the result of a purely intellectualist conception of the soUl. (24)

Humanity in general," then, is the third and largest group to whichwe can "attach ourselves." In order to reach it, however, we cannot"expand" our original consciousness but must acquire a new one. Thetwo sentiments, love of country and love of mankind, are so different,Bergson maintains, that the latter can only take root with the help ofreligion and philosophy, or faith and reason.

[I]t is only through God, in God—that religion bids man to love mankind'; andlikewise it is through reason alone that Reason in whose communion we are allpartakers, that philosophers make us look at humanity in order to show us the

3. Actually, Bergson here uses le genre humain rather than his usual! 'humanite.

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pre-eminent dignity of the human being, the right of all to command respect.Neither in the one case nor in the other do we come to humanity by degrees,through the stages of the family and the nation. We must, in a single bound, becarried far beyond it, and, without having made it our goal, reach it by outstrip-ping it. (25)

The "Open Morality"

Bergson is now prepared to pass on to a discussion of "another kindof obligation" greater than that originating in "social pressure." Thisis the obligation to the "open society"; it results in an "openmorality."

Using the "same method" as before—i.e., that of penetrating to theorigin of a morality—Bergson sets out in search of the source of openmorality. Whereas before when he invited us to join him in proceedingfrom the starting point (our present moral consciousness)"downward" as it were into our basic instincts for survival, he nowbeckons us to follow him "upwards to the extreme limit" of ourmoral potential. Whereas primitive man showed us what we were like,the mystic saint or philosopher shows us what we could resemble:

In all times there have arisen exceptional men, incarnating this open morality.Before the saints of Christianity mankind had known the sages of Greece, theprophets of Israel, the Arahants of Buddhism, and others besides. It is to themthat men have always turned for that complete morality which we had best callabsolute morality. (25-26)

Here begins a series of contrasts between the closed or incompleteand the open or complete moralities: whereas the former is reducibleto "impersonal formulae," the latter is "incarnate in a privileged per-son who becomes an example." We pass from the general acceptanceof a law to a "common imitation of a model" (26). Whereas we canbest understand the closed morality as an, undifferentiated block,whose particular commands often seem arbitrary and irrational, in thecase of the open society we witness the reverse. By beginning with anabstract, intellectualist appreciation, say, of the Sermon on the Mountor the sayings of the prophets, we do not succeed in acting on them:rather only when we consider them and their counsels in theirmultiplicity and in relation to the unique personality of the originatordoes the open morality become a moving force in our lives by workingon our wills (27).

It would be inadequate to describe the new morality as based on the"love of humanity," for humanity if conceived as a mere expansion

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of the family and nation, is hopelessly abstract. On the contrary, it isthrough recognizing in the mystic saint, prophet, or philosopher theprototype of what each of us could become that we grow to love thelike potential in every other person. Our souls are flooded with emo-tion from the encounter—whether in person or through his teachingsleft to posterity—with such a rare individual (28-29).

The spiritual individual of the open morality is altogether differentfrom the robot of the closed morality, however. In the closed moralitythe "individual" (so-called) moves about in the circle of society: hispsyche is concerned only with self-preservation, which means that,just as a part of it desires to escape society's demands, another partrecognizes that it draws strength and vitality from society just as a celldoes from an organism. The ultimate "utilitarianism" of the closedmorality is its counsel that even apparent sacrifices eventually redoundto the individual's own interest.

In the case of the "open soul," [1' ame ouverte (Fr. 1006)] allcalculation is thrown to the winds. Such a soul "embraces all humani-ty" as well as "animals, plants...and all nature." None of these thingsis capable of defining that soul, however, for its form is independentof its content. "We have just filled it; we could as easily empty itagain. 'Charity' would persist in him who possesses 'charity' thoughthere be no other living creature on earth." (30).

Bergson is at pains to distinguish the love (or charity) which is in-finite in its content—the love which forms the "open soul"—fromthose forms of love which are dependent on their content such as loveof family or country. He grants that it is much easier for us to under-stand the closed morality, because of its fixed nature: its "duties are amatter of current practice,...have a clear precise formula, and it istherefore easy for us, grasping them where they are entirely visible,and then going down to the roots, to discover the social requirementsfrom which they sprang." By contrast, the "other half" of ourmorality "expresses a certain emotional state" and is the result ofyielding to an "attraction" rather than a "pressure" (41).

Today the two moralities, the closed and the open, are intermingledand may not be found in their pure state. The closed morality has lentthe open morality "something of its imperative character," while theopen morality has leavened the closed so that it is "less strictly social,more broadly human" (41). Thus, "civilized" morality is a mixture ofthe closed and the open; or better, it is a "morality on the way tobecoming open."

The "maxims" of the second, or open morality,

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do not work singly, like those of the first: as soon as one of them, ceasing to beabstract, becomes filled with significance and acquires the capacity to act, theothers tend to do the same: at last they all fuse in the warm emotion which leftthem behind long ago, and in the men, now come to life again, who experiencedit. (42)

Whereas the closed morality is impersonal, the open morality is per-sonal:

Founders and reformers of religion, mystics and saints, obscure heroes of themoral life whom we have met on our way...they are all there: inspired by theirexample, we follow them, as if we were joining an army of conquerors. They areindeed conquerors: they have broken down natural resistance and raisedhumanity to a new destiny. (42)

Although Bergson characterizes the open morality as "triumphing"over nature, in a deeper sense it too is responding to a drive or push bythat very same nature acting indirectly rather than directly:

[I] f we went down to the roots of nature itself we should perhaps find that thesame force which manifests itself directly, rotating on its own axis, in the humanspecies, once constituted, also acts later and indirectly, through the medium ofprivileged persons, in order to drive humanity forward. (42)

If we examine in their "pure" states (in which we today, however,almost never find them), we shall observe the following contrasts bet-ween the two moralities (or the two halves of the same morality):

Closed morality Open Morality

Based on pressureAims at self-preservationStatic, immobileGives feeling of pleasure, well beingDerived from societyApplies to one's fellow-citizensRepose

Based on aspirationAims at fuller lifeDynamic, progressiveGives feeling of joyDerived from GodApplies to all men and all lifeMovement

Contact with the Elan Vital

At this point Bergson introduces a symbol with which readers of hisearlier books, and especially Creative Evolution (1911), will befamiliar: l'elan vital, variously translated as "vital impulse," "im-petus of life," or the like. (Among the many meanings of elan are


"start, spring, flight, glow, soaring, burst, outburst, transport.' ' 4 Ithas always been from the "generative principle of the human species"(le principe generateur de I ' espece humaine) that one derives the"strength to love mankind" (46,Fr.1021). Those leaders of mankindwho have by a sudden break with the closed morality of defensivenessand war "broken down the gates of the city" have "placed themselvesagain in the current of the vital impulse (L 'elan vital)" so that it mightcontinue its work of "creative evolution" (49, Fr. 1023). "There is agenius of the will as there is a genius of the mind."

"[B]etween the first [or closed] morality and the second [or open]morality lies the whole distance between repose and movement." Theelan resumes its movement again, for the open morality "is a forwardthrust, a demand for movement; it 'is the very essence of mobility."(50). The mobile nature of the open morality means that it is all themore difficult to express it in final propositional form:

For our intelligence and our language deal...with things; they are less at home inrepresenting transitions or progress. The morality of the Gospels is essentiallythat of the open soul: are we not justified in pointing out that it borders uponparadox, and even upon contradiction in its more definite admonitions? (50)

Thus, "turn the other cheek" makes a mockery of justice, and giv-ing to the poor all we possess would make the rich burdened with thesame temptations as we were formerly. Yet, the "intent of these max-ims" is all-important. That intent is to "create a certain disposition ofthe soul." The rich man is to become poor "in spirit" and the justman should be beyond requiring restitution so far as his own soul'shealth is concerned.

Bergson maintains that the resumption of the movement of the elantoward the creation of a complete humanity and a complete moralitytakes place decisively only with the Gospels. Stoicism, which mighthave provided for such resumption was still bound by the old staticmorality:

The Stoics proclaimed themselves citizens of the world, and added that all menwere brothers, having come from the same God...If...[the Stoics] did not suc-ceed in drawing humanity after them, it is because Stoicism is essentially aphilosophy. (52)

4. John Joseph Kelly, Bergson's Mysticism (Fribourg, St. Paul's Press, 1954), p. 24,n. 1.

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With Socrates, we are closer to the origin of the open morality. Thisis because he was greater than any system or than any of the rationalarguments which Plato put in his mouth. Socrates' mission "is of areligious and mystic order...his teaching, so perfectly rational, hingeson something that seems to transcend pure reason" (53). Had he notseen it as his first mission to overcome the "moral empiricism" of histime and the "incoherences" of Athenian democracy—had he notlargely refused the Oriental, intuitive, lyrical side of his nature infavor of the Greek, rational, dialectical side—he very possibly wouldhave been the great teacher of the West rather than Jesus. For a time itwas "Socrates against Jesus" as Christians and Neo-Platonists battledit out for supremacy (54-55).

Despite all the credit he gives Socrates and other ancient teachersfor their contributions to the development of the open morality,Bergson insists that by itself Greek philosophy would never have ad-vanced beyond the "half-virtue" of contemplative detachment. An-cient philosophy saw brilliantly the evanescent character of bodily,material pleasures and the greater enduringness of intellectual ones; itcould lead men from the infra-intellectual to the intellectual, but notto the supra-intellectual realm. Much as he is to be praised, Socrates isnot an open soul as much as a soul "in the process of opening" (55).In the end, Greek philosophy is elitist; its universalist implicationsbecome clear only from hindsight through the lenses of Christianity.A purely intellectualist philosophy cannot succeed in explaining "howa moral motive can have a hold upon the soul of men" (57).

Behind each moral motive there are two forces, one "social" andthe other "supra-social," which endow it with strength. Thus, if wesay that we act from "self-respect," or from the "dignity of man" wehave further to inquire of the source of this dignity and respect. The"higher" self to which the average personality defers is the "socialself." We feel the social pressure of our group or country. However,beyond this social pressure which is experienced as impersonal is theattraction of the open society, an attraction which is quintessentiallypersonal.

...the great moral figures that have made their mark in history join hands acrossthe centuries, above our human cities; they unite into a divine city which they bidus to enter. We may not hear their voices distinctly... [but] something answersfrom the depths of our soul; from the real society in which we live we betakeourselves in thought to this ideal society; to this ideal society we bow down whenwe reverence the dignity of man within us, when we declare that we act from self-respect. (59)


Why do we obey the commands of reason? It is not enough to speakof reason abstractly: as, for example, when we say that "reason con-stitutes the dignity of man" and the like. Rather, it is because thatbehind reason there are the

men who have made mankind divine, and who have thus stamped a divinecharacter on reason, which is the essential attribute of man. It is these men whodraw us to an ideal society, while we yield to the pressure of the real one. (60)

Here the open society becomes in effect, the "true city," the City ofGod, of Augustine. In part, at least, the resemblance is there; but inusing the terms "real" and "ideal" society, he is using a language dif-ferent from that of Augustine. The latter would call the City of Godthe truly "real" society.

Bergson's Theory of Moral Obligation—Recapitulation

The final section of the opening chapter on "Moral Obligation" isdevoted to a recapitulation of the book's main thesis: viz, that thereare two sources of morality, and that it is inadequate to say that moralobligation is a dictate of pure "reason." Behind the "rationality" of amoral imperative, there is either the habit making for social discipline(a command of the "closed morality") or the aspiration to emulatethe example of a "mystic hero" (the appeal of the "open morality").Philosophers from Plato to Kant have failed to adumbrate the keyfeatures of moral obligation, Bergson insists, and he writes with theexcitement of someone who claims to be, in the words of Kant appliedto Rousseau, the "Newton of the moral world."

Bergson is well aware that his method has the obvious drawback ofseeming simplistic when applied to the actual human conditions wherewe find neither the pure animality of the closed society nor the quasi-divinity of the open society. Nonetheless, he insists, it is necessary touse his method of disentangling sources that have become intermingl-ed if we are rightly to comprehend the subject of moral obligation.

II. STATIC RELIGION

The second great theme of the Two Sources is religion. Althoughman has been defined ever since the Greeks as a "rational animal," hecould with at least equal justification be called a "religious animal":

We find in the past, we could find today, human societies with neither sciencenor art nor philosophy. But there has never been a society without religion. (92)

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Religion, we like to say, is a product of a human faculty called "im-agination." This observation helps us little, however, because science,art, and philosophy are also inconceivable without imagination. Withgreater precision we might say that religion is the product of the act offabulation (Fr. 1066, 1067), a word which the English translatorrenders as "myth-making."

In its "original and elementary form" the myth-making facultyboth "plays a social role" and "brings added strength to the in-dividual." To illustrate how it works for the individual, Bergson givesan example from the contemporary psychic research, concerning alady whose instinctive or "somnambulistic self" prevented her fromplunging to her death down an elevator shaft: the gate to the elevatorshaft was open as if the elevator was there. Instead, unknown to her, itwas out of order and on another floor. Just as she was about to flingherself through the gate down the gaping void of the elevator shaft,she experienced a life-saving hallucination: it was as if the elevatorman appeared and pushed her backwards onto the landing (110).

Had the lady followed only her intelligence (which correctlyreasoned that if the gate on her landing were open the elevator wasthere) she could have met her death. Instead, the "instinctive or som-nambulistic self which underlies the reasoning personality...had seenthe danger...inducing in a flash the fictitious, hallucinatory percep-tion" best fitted to "evoke and explain the apparently unjustifiedmovement" (110).

Analogously, in primitive and rudimentary societies, a"penumbra" of instinct survives in a being otherwise ruled by in-telligence to prevent the individual from taking the destructive courseof egoism counselled by unbridled intelligence.

The myth-making function of the mind easily embroiders upon thematerial it is given by nature, and we witness, in the name of religion,the emergence of countless absurdities and monstrosities. To allay thefear of death, the idea of a deathless "spirit" or "shade" is calledforth. From there people will devise ways of winning over the spiritsand seeking their aid.

Once started on this road, there is hardly any absurdity into which intelligencemay not stumble. The myth-making function works well enough by itself alone:what will it not do when it is spurred on by fear and necessity! To avert a dangeror secure a favor the living are ready to offer anything they fancy the dead manmay want. They will go so far as the cutting off of heads, if it may be pleasing inhis sight. (125-126)


Evil and monstrous actions such as head-hunting and humansacrifice are probably later refinements of primitive man, however."The true primitives were probably more reasonable..." (126). Overtime, through the "double effect of repetition and exaggeration andirrational passes into the realm of the absurd, and the strange into therealm of the monstrous" (127).

Magic, Religion, and Science

Continuing his reconstruction of the primitive consciousness,Bergson hypothesizes that "primitive intelligence divides its ex-perience into two separate parts.":

There is, on the one side, that which obeys the action of the hand or the tool, thatwhich can be foreseen and relied on: this part of the universe is conceivedphysically, until such time as it is conceived mathematically; it appears as a con-centration of causes and effects...; we need only look at what intelligence does inorder to know what it implicitly thinks. Then, on the other hand, there is thatpart of experience upon which homo faber feels he has entirely lost his grip. Thispart is treated no longer physically, but morally. Since we can exert no powerover it, we hope it will exert some power in our behalf. (153)

Within the second, or unknown part of experience on which "homofaber feels he has entirely lost his grip," there is room for the myth-making function of our mind:

For the pressure of instinct has given rise, within intelligence, to that form ofimagination which is the myth-making function. Myth-making has but to followits own course in order to fashion...gods that assume more and more exaltedform than those of mythology, or deities even more degraded, such as merespirits or even forces which retain only one property from their psychologicalorigin, that of not being purely mechanical, and of...bending to our will. Thefirst and second directions are those of religion, the third that of magic. (154)

Magic, then, is that product of the myth-making function of themind which claims to make "non-mechanical" forces of nature com-ply with our wishes. It is a mechanism of control through theknowledge of secret forces of nature. The Melanesian mana, the oren-da of the Iroquois Indians, the wakanda of the Sioux are all examplesof magic forces that were believed to permeate nature (154).

Throughout his analysis of "static" religion—and magic is treatedas a manifestation or quasi-perversion of such a religion—Bergsonemphasizes the primacy of the practical or utilitarian over thetheoretical. "Before any man can philosophize he must live," he in-sists. "Scholars and philosophers" he declares

HENRI BERGSON 15

are too much inclined to believe that the mind works in all men as with them, forthe sheer love of thinking. The truth is that the mind aims at action, and that, ifthere really is any philosophy to be found in the uncivilized man, it is certainly inaction rather than in thought...(154-155)

In other words; the magical action came first and then the symbol(mana, orenda or whatever) to designate the force in nature "im-pregnated with humanity," which resulted in the change in the outsideworld—over and beyond the mechanical, physical laws of its opera-tion—desired. Magic enabled man to "extend his actions further thanphysical laws permitted" (155). The origin of a practice such asvoodoo is in the desire to punish an enemy who is absent but who canbe impersonated by a puppet or dummy (158) just as the sorcerer'sritual rain dance originates as a response to the very real practical pro-blem of drought (159).

Magic, then, resolves itself into two elements:

the desire to act on a thing, even on that which is out of reach, and the idea thatthings are charged, or can be charged, with what we should call human fluid. Wemust revert to the first point to draw the comparision between magic and science,and to the second to show the connection of magic and religion. (159)

Magic is the "reverse of science" (161). Science "measures andcalculates with a view to anticipation and action. It first supposes,then verifies, that the universe is governed by mathematical laws"(159). Science "demands a twofold effort, that of a few men to findsome new thing and that of all the others to adopt it and-adaptthemselves to it" (160). Bergson continues significantly:

A society may be called civilized when you find in it such a power to lead andwillingness to be led....What was lacking among the uncivilized was probablynot the exceptional man...but the chance for such a man to show his superiorityand the readiness of other men to follow him. (160-161)

What sets a society on the "road to civilization"? Perhaps the"menace of extermination, such as that created by the discovery of anew weapon by an enemy tribe" (161). Societies which are notchallenged and for whom life is too easy become "contaminated bythe products of their own laziness"—i.e., by magic (161).

For magic is the reverse of science. So long as the inertia of the environment doesnot cause it to proliferate, it has its function to perform. It temporarily calms theuneasiness of an intelligence whose form exceeds its content, which is vaguelyaware of its ignorance and realizes the danger of it, which divines, outside the


very small circle in which action is sure of its effect, where the immediate futureis predictable and within which therefore science already prevails, a vast area ofthe unpredictable such as may well discourage action. (161)

Magic is separated from science by the "whole distance betweenwishing and willing. Far from paving the way for science...it has beenthe greatest obstacle against which methodical knowledge has had tocontend" (162). "Civilized man" is distinguished from "non-civilizedman" by his eagerness to encroach, through science, on "that magicwhich was occupying the rest of the field." By contrast, non-civilizedman, "disdaining effort" conceals "incipient science" and replaces itwith magic to the greatest extent possible.

What, in summary, is Bergson's argument regarding "staticreligion"? It is that this religion which appeared in varying forms overmillennia, is grounded on man's primal experience of the worldbeyond the control of his intelligence as composed of "semi-personalpowers" or "efficient presences." (185) This experience itself positeda "fundamental demand of life" which in turn called forth the"myth-making faculty." The myth-making function of the mind wascalled forth as a necessity to balance the narrowness of man's "tool-contriving intelligence." (186-187) Static religion, which originated asa practical need of life (man must live before he can philosophize,Bergson is fond of repeating) then runs away with itself and piles ab-surdity upon absurdity, even to the point of sanctioning the tortureand sacrifice of humans to appease the avenging gods.

One of Bergson's objectives in this chapter is to explain how staticreligion, with its countless monstrosities and absurdities, could haveappealed to an intelligent being. This he does as follows:

Man is the only animal whose actions are uncertain....He is alone in realizingthat he is subject to illness, alone in knowing that he must die...But this is notsaying enough. Of all the creatures that live in society, man alone can swervefrom the social line by giving way to selfish preoccupations when the commongood is at stake; in all other societies the interests of the individual are inexorablycoordinate with and subordinate to the general interest. This twofold shortcom-ing in man is the price paid for intelligence. (193-194)

Nature, which ordained intelligence, also took the precaution thatthe condition of order, disturbed in the above respect by intelligence,should be re-established by the myth-making function. The role of thisfunction fabulatrice, which "belongs to intelligence" but which is notthe same as intelligence, is to

HENRI BERGSON 17

elaborate that religion we have been dealing with up to now, that which we callstatic, and of which we should say that it was natural religion, if the term werenot used [presumably in the Eighteenth Century Englightenment] in anothersense. We have then only to sum up what we have said to define this religion inclear terms. It is a defensive reaction of nature against what might be depressingfor the individual and dissolvent for society, in the exercise of intelligence. (194)(Emphasis added)

The particular aim of static or "natural" religion in the evolution ofmankind has been to "preserve" and "tighten" the traditional bondwhich holds together the members of a given society and which makesit possible for each of them to "defend the group against other groupsand to set it above everything." Religion in this primal sense has thefollowing characteristics:

it is common to the members of a groupit associates them intimately with each other in rites and ceremoniesit distinguishes the group from other groupsit guarantees the success of the common enterprise, and[it] is an assurance against the common danger. (195-196)

Static religion will appear absurd and illogical if we look at itfrom some abstract point of view. If we "place man back in natureas a whole," however, we will perceive intelligence in need of beingbalanced by something akin to instinct that will help man to recoverthe serenity and tranquility enjoyed by other created things. This isthe function of religion:

Unrest and myth-making counteract and nullify each other. In the eyes of a god,looking down from above, the whole would appear indivisible, like the perfectconfluence of flowers unfolding to the spring. (197)'

III. DYNAMIC RELIGION

Given the centrality of the chapter on "Dynamic Religion" to5. In his exposition of static religion's "cunning of reason"—to use Hegel's

term—Bergson even claims to show the "rationality" of human sacrifice. It wasdoubtless an offering made to turn away the wrath or to buy the favor of a god. "If so,the greater the cost and the more valuable the thing sacrificed, the more acceptable itwas likely to be." In addition, it took place in the context of a meal in which the godand his worshippers were supposed to partake in common. Finally, there was the ele-ment of blood. "As the principle of life, it gave the god strength, and enabled him thebetter to help man..." (191-192)


Bergson's argument, it is surprising that it is barely more than half thelength of the chapter on "Static Religion." (The former is 56 pageswhereas the latter is 105 pages.) Indeed, the chapter consists primarilyof a rather sketchy treatment of mysticism (and even here only Chris-tian mysticism is dealt with fully). The result is to leave most of theburden of explaining Bergson's theory of the open society to the finalchapter.

More than anywhere else in the book, in this chapter the reader ismade aware of the extent to which Bergson's moral, social, andpolitical reflections rest on his biology as expounded in his bookCreative Evolution. It is his contention that the evidence of biologyand mysticism intersect with and confirm each other, with mysticismenabling him to go beyond the conclusions of his much earlier bookCreative Evolution in dealing with fundamental philosophical ques-tions.

We left man in the possession of static religion, or natural religion,which is "that element which, in beings endowed with reason, is calledupon to make good any deficiency of attachment to life." (199) In-telligence itself caused man anxiety, for as an "intelligent being" manwas not "living in the present alone; there can be no reflection withoutforeknowledge, no foreknowledge without inquietude, no inquietudewithout a momentary slackening of the attachment to life." "Aboveall, there is -

no humanity without society, and society demands of the individual an abnega-tion which the insect, in its automation, carries to the point of an utterobliviousness of self....A new species coming on to the scene brings with it...allthe elements that impart life to it. (199)

Thus, along with intelligence man was equipped with the functionfabulacitrice, or myth-making function, which "elaboratesreligions" 6(presumably "static" religions). The "office" and"significance" of static religion, then, is to make up for any deficien-cy, caused by the possession of intelligence, of attachment to life.

There is another way out, however, for that mind which, havingperceived that man is the "purpose of the entire process of evolution"(200), aspires to establish contact with the elan vital itself. This con-tact cannot be established through intelligence, for intelligence

6. Fr. 1154. The English text has "contrives the pattern of religions" for elabore lesreligions.

HENRI BERGSON 19

would be more likely to proceed in the opposite direction; it was provided for adefinite object [tool-making], and when it attempts speculation on a higherplane, it enables us, at the most, to conceive possibilities, it does not attain anyresults. But we know that all around intelligence there lingers still a fringe of in-tuition, vague and evanescent. Can we not fasten upon it, intensify it, and aboveall, consummate it in action, for it has become pure contemplation only througha weakening in its principle, and if we may put it so, by an abstraction practicedon itself? (201)

Here we see the extraordinary emphasis Bergson placed on action:the mystical impulse is conceived of in contemplative fashion, "onlythrough a weakening in its principle" and by an "abstraction prac-ticed on itself." What is to be noted in this hypothetical account of thegenesis of "dynamic" religion is that

A soul strong enough, noble enough to make this effort would not stop to askwhether the principle with which it is now in touch [i.e., the elan vital] is thetranscendent cause of all things or merely its earthly delegate [i.e., whether it isGod or a force originating in God]. It would be content to feel itself, pervaded,through retaining its own personality, by a being immeasurably mightier thanitself, just as iron is pervaded by the fire which makes it glow. Its attachment tolife would henceforth be its inseparability from this principle, joy in joy, love ofthat which is all love. (201)

Thus we witness the anomaly of two nations at war, each declaringthat it has God on its side, each thinking that it is invoking the God ofmysticism, the "God common to all mankind." In reality, they are in-voking the "natural god of paganism," i.e., god of the static religion.Despite the absurdity of this situation, we should not overlook thegreat potential influence of the mystical, universal spirit and the factthat its existence has created a new epoch in human history. Needlessto say, if a true version of the mystic God could be attained by all menit would "mean the immediate abolition of war" (204).

From the Mysteries to Mysticism

Leading up to the "indivisible act by which dynamic religion isposited" are various events which in retrospect appear as preparatorystages. Nonetheless, Bergson says, the final achievement of dynamicreligion was marked by a saut brusque or "sudden leap" (Fr. 1159,


205). He proceeds to discuss the pagan mystery religions (they con-tributed the Dionysian element of religious enthusiasm, in contrast tothe "serenity of the gods upon Olympus") (207). It is probably to themystery cults (Orphism, Pythagoreanism, etc.) that we owe the qualityof Greek philosophy that transcends logic and dialectic; indeed "atthe origin of this great movement [Platonic philosophy] there was animpulsion or a shock which was not of a philosophic nature" (208).Plotinus, who is the culmination of the philosophical movementbegun by Socrates and Plato, was "unquestionably" a mystic. What,then, is "complete mysticism" and did Hellenic philosophy achieve it?

In our eyes, the ultimate end of mysticism is the establishment of a contact, con-sequently of a partial coincidence, with the creative effort which life manifests.This effort is of God, if it is not God himself. The great mystic is...an individualbeing, capable of transcending the limitations imposed on the species by itsmaterial nature [!—this sounds like gnostic second-reality language], thuscontinuing and extending [l] the divine action. Such is our definition. (209)

Using such an exalted definition, Bergson, unsurprisingly, findsPlotinus to have flunked the test:

He [Plotinus] went as far as ecstasy, a state in which the soul feels itself...in thepresence of God, being irradiated with His light; he did not...reach the pointwhere, as contemplation is engulfed in action, the human will becomes one withthe divine will. (210, emphasis added)

What draws the Bergsonian condemnation, it turns out unsurprising-ly, is Plotinus' statement (in Enneads viii, 4) that "action is aweakening of contemplation." Here "Greek intellectualism" won outover genuine or complete mysticism (210). Similarly deficiencies arediscovered in non-Western speculation, whether we have in mind In-dian, Persian, or Chinese religious thought (210,ff.).

The "Hindu soul" strove to make the "leap" beyond the religion ofnature and the city in two different ways. One was through takingsoma, the drug that produced a "divine rapture, somewhat like thatwhich the devotees of Dionysos sought in wine," and practicing yoga,a "set of practices designed to inhibit all sensation, to dull mental ac-tivity, in a word to induce states similar to hypnosis" (212). Anotherwas through speculation, for Hinduism (and Bergson includes"Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism" under this category) was"both a philosophy and a religion" (210-211).

Hindu thought led neither to a full-fledged philosophy nor a com-plete mysticism. It was not a philosophy because it did not lead to

HENRI BERGSON 21

knowledge capable of unlimited development. Knowledge for it was ameans rather than an end, the end being to escape from the unremit-ting cruelty of life. Deliverance from the cycle of birth and death (andtherefore, suffering) could be won only by a renunciation whichamounted to "absorption in the whole as well as in self." Even Bud-dhism, which gave a "new turn to Brahmanism,"

did not modify it in essentials. It made it...into something more elaborate. Tillthen human experience had shown indeed that life meant suffering; the Buddhaworked back to the cause of this suffering; he found it in desire of every kind, inthe craving for life. Thus the road to deliverance could be more accuratelytraced... [In Buddhism] the state toward which...the soul [is guided]...is beyondjoy and pain, beyond consciousness. It is by a sense of stages, and by a wholesystem of mystical discipline, that it leads to Nirvana, to the abolition of desireduring life and of Karma after death. We must not forget that the origin of theBuddha's mission lies in the illumination that came to him in his early youth.Everything in Buddhism which can be put into words can doubtless be con-sidered as a philosophy; but the essential is the final revelation, transcendingboth reason and speech. (213-214; emphasis added)

This "final revelation" which is the "essential" of Buddhism, is"an experience closely resembling ecstasy"; it is "an effort at onenesswith the creative impetus [PeIan createur]." Thus, we should nothesitate to see Buddhism as a kind of mysticism (214; Fr. 1166). It is,however, an incomplete form of mysticism. A complete form wouldbe "action, creation, love" (214).

While Buddhism did not ignore charity, it lacked "warmth andglow" [chaleur] in its recommendations and examples. It also—heresyof heresies—"did not believe in the efficacy of human action."

It had no faith in such action. And faith alone can grow to power to move moun-tains. A complete mysticism would have reached this point. It is perhaps to bemet with in India, but much later. That enthusiastic charity, that mysticism com-parable to the mysticism of Christianity, we find in a Ramakrishna or aVivekananda....But Christianity...had come into the world in the interval. Its in-fluence on India...was superficial enough, but to the soul that is predisposed amere hint, the slightest token is enough. But let us suppose even that in the directaction of Christianity, as a dogma, has been practically nil in India. Since it hasimpregnated the whole of Western civilization, one breathes it, like a perfume, ineverything which this civilization brings in its wake. Industrialism itself...springsindirectly from it. (214-215, emphasis added.)

In this remarkable blending of mysticism, Christianity, and in-dustrialism, Bergson finds the explanation for the unleashing of theburning, active complete mysticism of Ramakrishna and Vivekanan-


da. "This burning, active mysticism could never have been kindledwhen the Hindu felt he was crushed by nature as when no human in-tervention was of any avail." It was this "pessimism" this"helplessness" in the face of famine and other forms of disaster,which "prevented India from carrying her mysticism to its full conclu-sion, since complete mysticism is action" (215).

The Gospel According to Bergson:Christianity as "Activist Mysticism"

It is at this point that the quite literal meaning of "dynamic" in thecharacteristics of Christianity as a, or rather the, dynamic religionbecomes clear in Bergson's teaching. The formula he employs is asfollows: Christianity = "activist mysticism" = industrialism = theglobal or "open" society. That he never seriously questioned thisequation either as a whole or in its parts is remarkable. Bergson's in-terpretation of Christianity completely ignores its whole con-templative dimension, the emphasis of Eastern theology, andnumerous other problems such as the Reformation and the rise ofcapitalism, just as his characterization of industrialism fails even toconsider the morally ambiguous side-effects of the industrializationprocess on both human institutions and the natural environment.

The transition from mysticism to mechanism is accomplished withbreathtaking ease. It was pessimism, he remarked, which "preventedIndia from carrying her mysticism to its full conclusion, since com-plete mysticism is action."

But then, with the advent of machines which increased the yield of the land, andabove all moved the products from place to place, with the advent also of thepolitical and social organizations which proved experimentally that the mass ofthe people was not doomed...to a life of grinding labor and bitter poverty,deliverance became possible in an entirely new sense; the mystical impulse...wasno longer going to be stopped short by the impossibility of acting; it was nolonger to be driven back into doctrines of renunciation or the systematic practiceof ecstasy; instead of turning inwards and closing, the soul could open wide itsgates to a universal love. (215, emphasis added)

In the above quotation, openness is no longer conceived as inward-seeing of divine Being with the eye of the mind; such inward-seeing in-stead is viewed as a hindrance, as a form of closure. Bergson's em-phasis on activism, on external action on the world is so powerful herethat we might conclude that he is denying the contemplative momentaltogether did we not know that his idea of complete mysticism in-

HENRI BERGSON 23

cludes both a turning away from the world and its priorities—thepriorities of "closed" or "static" religion—and a turning back to theworld again to act out of universal compassion and love. Incompletemysticism is a half-turn from the world, whereas complete or activistmysticism is thought of as a full-turn back to the world again. Becauseof his extreme emphasis on activism and industrialism, however, hehas scarcely guarded against the danger of the cooptation by a worldlyattitude of the original mystical impulse and of an eclipse of opennessas an experience of world-transcendent Being in favor of a world-immanent reality of Becoming.

That mysticism and Christianity are both in danger of beingcoopted by an essentially secular activism—however much againstBergson's intentions is not fully clear from the passages—is apparentfrom the passages that follow those we have just cited. The "inven-tions" and "organizations" which make possible the liquidation ofage-old famine in India and elsewhere

are essentially Western; it is they who [sic] in this case [i.e., in India] haveenabled mysticism to develop to its fullest extent and reach its goal. We maytherefore conclude that neither in Greece nor in ancient India was there completemysticism, in the one case [Greece] because the impetus was not strong enough,in the other case [India] because it was thwarted by material conditions or by toonarrow an intellectual frame. It was its [i.e., complete mysticism's] appearanceat a given moment that enables us to follow in retrospect its preparatory phases,just as the volcano, bursting into activity, explains a long series of earthquakes inthe past. (215-216)

The "volcano" of activist mysticism, of course, turns out to beChristianity. Bergson's conception of "Christianity" is vague. On theone hand, it appears to be synonymous with complete mysticism inwhich case non-mystical "Christians" would be imposters; on theother hand, Christianity seems to have been a religion of whichmysticism is a part—the leaven or spark as it were—and which in itsentirety as a sociological phenomenon is a "mixture" of mysticismand static religion (ecclesiastical organization, dogma, etc.).

In any event, it is the "great Christian mystics" alone who representcomplete mysticism. It is true that "most of them passed throughstates" similar to those of the incomplete mystics of ancient Greeceand India.

But they merely passed through them: bracing themselves...for an entirely neweffort, they burst a dam; they were then swept back into a vast current of life;from their increased vitality there radiated an extraordinary energy, daring,


power of conception and realization. Just think of what was accomplished in thefield of action by a St. Paul, a St. Teresa, a St. Catherine of Siena, a St. Francis,a Joan of Arc, and how many others besides! (216)

Astonishingly, Bergson throws out this eclectic list as if it were self-evident why each and all of them should be considered mystics. To befair to Bergson, however, he does refer to several books on mysticismin a footnote which he claims either support or were influenced by hisown treatment of mysticism; the books, by Henri Delacroix andEvelyn Underhill are cited because they "call attention to the essen-tially active element of the great mystics" (212, no. 2).

It is surprising that Bergson ignores the later editions of Underhill'snow classic work on Mysticism where she made very clear the primari-ly contemplative emphasis of mysticism. In the 1926 edition, for ex-ample, Underhill declared mysticism to be "wholly transcendent andspiritual" rather than aiming at "rearranging or improving anythingin the visible universe.'"

It is strange that in his (quite short) list of authorities on mysticism,he did not cite William James' great chapter on mysticism in TheVarieties of Religious Experience (London: Longmans, Green andCo., 1908). This is all the more strange because in the Two Sourcesitself (p. 143), Bergson had quoted extensively from another work ofJames, whose work he admired and whom he declared to be "a masterof psychological science." Perhaps his reticence may be explained inpart by the fact that James had listed "passivity" along with "inef-fability," "noetic quality," and "transiency," as a key characteristicof mysticism. Far from feeling called upon to act in the world (as aresult of the mystical experience per se), the mystic, says James,testifies to a suspension of his or her own will, "as if he or she weregrasped or held by a superior power," during the experience itself(James, op. cit., p. 382).

Bergson scornfully rejects the classification of the great mystics asmentally deranged. Instead, he discovers "an exceptional, deep-rooted mental healthiness, which...is expressed in the bent for action,the faculty of adapting and re-adapting to circumstances" and otherqualities making for "supreme good sense" in the ordinary meaningof the term as understood by a man of action (217). Delusions ofgrandeur and hallucinations are parodies of mysticism. The greatmystics have regarded their own "ecstasies, visions, raptures" as of

7. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (New York, Dutton, 1926; Meridian Book, 1960), p.81.

HENRI BERGSON 25

"secondary importance, as wayside incidents; they had to go beyondthem...to reach the goal, which was identification of the human willwith the divine will" (218, emphasis added). (It is in such language asthis that Bergson comes close to representing the gnostic "goddedman"; in general, he seems quite ignorant of gnosticism as a currentof thought and of the need to distinguish mysticism from gnosticism.)

Having established that our mystics are in robust phychic health,Bergson proceeds to give a clinical account of what happens to themystic psyche at the level proper to its genius:

Shaken to its depths, by the current which is about to sweep it forward[presumably, 19elan vital], the soul ceases to revolve round itself and escapes fora moment from the law which demands that the species and the individual shouldcondition one another. It stops, as though to listen to a voice calling. Then it letsitself go, straight onward. It does not directly perceive the force that moves it,but it feels an indefinable presence or divines it through a symbolic vision. Thencomes a boundless joy, an all-absorbing ecstasy or an enthralling rapture: God isthere, and the soul is in God. Mystery is no more. Problems vanish, darkness isdispelled; everything is flooded with light. (219)

Bergson's account of the mystic visio Dei, although in a sense mov-ing, is strangely abstract. No specific examples are given from the richliterature available; neither the Cloud of Unknowing by theanonymous Fourteenth Century English author nor the work of St.John of the Cross is cited. Nonetheless, Bergson does proceed to anaccount of what John had called the "dark night of the soul."Though the soul becomes "in thought and feeling, absorbed in God,something of it remains outside; that something is the will," fromwhich the soul's "action" would proceed.

Its life, then is not yet divine. The soul is aware of this, and hence its vague dis-quietude, hence the agitation in repose of what we call complete mysticism: itmeans that the impetus [I 'elan] has acquired the momentum to go further...thatthere is, besides [seeing and feeling, both affected by the ecstasy], the will, whichitself has to find its way back to God. When this agitation has grown [and]...theecstasy has died out, the soul finds itself alone again...Accustomed for a time toa dazzling light, it is now left blindly groping in the gloom. It does not realize theprofound metamorphosis which is going on obscurely within it. It feels it has lostmuch; it does not yet know that this was in order to gain all. Such is the "darkestnight" of which the great mystics have spoken, and which is...the most signifi-cant thing...in Christian mysticism. (219-220)

At this point, significantly, Bergson resorts to a technologicalanalogy. The soul of the mystic is compared to an instrument oftempered steel. The final phase of the experience of a great mystic isdescribed as follows:


Let us confine ourselves to suggesting that a machine of wonderfully temperedsteel...[had become] conscious of itself as it was being put together. Its parts be-ing one by one subjected to the severest tests...it would have a feeling of...painall over...The mystic soul yearns to become that instrument. It throws offanything in its substance that is not pure enough, not flexible and strong enough,to be turned to some use by God. Although it had sensed the presence ofGod,...had thought it beheld God in a symbolic vision,...had even been united toHim in its ecstasy...none of this rapture was lasting, because it was mere con-templation; action [at first] threw the soul back upon itself and thus divorced itfrom God. Now it is God who is acting through the soul, in the soul; the union istotal, therefore final. (220) (Emphasis added(

From this point on, for the soul of the great mystic, now wedded toactivism in the service of God, there is a "superabundance of life.There is a boundless impetus. There is an irresistible impulse whichhurls it into vast enterprises." Merely contemplative visions are "leftfar behind: the divinity could not manifest itself from without to asoul henceforth replete with its essence" (221). In "divine humility,"the mystic experiences himself as the prototype of a new humanity. Heis now the "agent" of God to proclaim a newly perceived reality,God's love for all men.

At this point, Bergson introduces the practical question: canmysticism succeed in transforming humanity, in resuming the creativeeffort of life with the end of creating a "divine humanity" animatedwith the love of God for mankind? "If possible at all," he writes, "itcan only be by using simultaneously or successively two very differentmethods," viz., "mechanics" and mysticism itself.

The "mechanical" method—discusses at greater length in the finalchapter

would consist...in intensifying the...work [of instrumental intelligence] to suchan extent...that the simple tool would give place to a vast system of machinerysuch as might set human activity at liberty, this liberation being, moreover,stabilized by a political and social organization which would ensure the applica-tion of the mechanism to its true object. (224, emphasis added)

One only wishes that Bergson had expressed himself more definitelyabout the obscure "political and social organization" that would in-sure the application of this "vast system of machinery" to its "trueobject." Presumably, (for we know that Bergson was an enthusiastfor the League of Nations) he is referring to some form of worldgovernment. True, Bergson concedes, such a solution would open aPandora's box of troubles; there is the ultimate danger that

HENRI BERGSON 27

"mechanism...might turn against mysticism." This, however, is a riskthat should be taken. There is in nature some kind of law ofrecompense, apparently, by which an "activity of a superior kind"(i.e., mysticism) will at first have to call forth one of a lower order(mechanics) even at the cost of having the lower activity try tomonopolize the room. The superior activity "will profit by this, pro-vided it has been able to survive; its turn will come again, and it willthen benefit by everything which has been done without its aid, whichhas been energetically developed in strict opposition to it" (225).

In the meantime, while mechanics is pursuing its anti-mysticalcoure, the "mystic impetus" would be kept alive in a

tiny handful of privileged souls which together would form a spiritual society;societies of this kind might multiply; each one...would give birth to one orseveral others; thus the impetus would be preserved and continued until suchtime as a profound change in the material conditions imposed on humanity bynature should permit, in spiritual matters, of a radical transformation. (225, em-phasis added)

As suggested in the chapter on "Dynamic Religion," Bergson in-sists that there is a vital link between the "mysticism of the West" andthe West's "industrial civilization." At least at its moment of origin,industrialization was a moment of openness, of progress, of mobility,as compared to the closed static society. For a long time indeed, it wasthought that modern industry would bring happiness (bonheur) tomankind. (280, Fr. 1223) Today, on the other hand, all the ills fromwhich we suffer are attributed to technology. "An irresistible force"seems to draw humanity more and more violently "towards thesatisfaction of its basest desires." Let us, however, return to the "im-pulsion" or impetus at its origin. A "slight deviation" at the begin-ning [of industrialization] may have been enough to produce a "widerand wider divergence between the point aimed at and the objectreached." If that be so, "we should not concern ourselves so muchwith the divergence" as with the impetus. Indeed, perhaps humanityhas "already prepared the means of rectifying its course, and may be"nearer the goal than its units." (280-281) With these remarks,Bergson proceeds to examine "more closely" the charges levelledagainst industrialism or mechanism—or what today, following Jac-ques Ellul, we would call the "technological society."

There are certain tendencies toward a dichotomy in contemporaryindustrial societies wherever the parliamentary regime prevails. Theparliamentary regime, with its loyal opposition, encourages the alter-nation of parties, encourages dissent against the prevailing policies,


and guarantees dissatisfaction with the government in power.However, such as oscillation of parties and forces is the "result of cer-tain very simple contrivances set up by society"; it is "not the effect ofa paramount necessity...towering above the particular causes of alter-nation and dominating human events in general" (282).

Does such a towering "necessity" exist? Bergson's answer is am-biguous:

We do not believe in the fatality of history. There is no obstacle that cannot bebroken down by wills sufficiently keyed up, if they deal with it in time. There isthus no inescapable historic law. But there are biological laws; and the humansocieties, in so far as they are partly willed by nature, pertain to biology on thisparticular point...[It is] the essence of a vital tendency to develop fan-wise,creating, by the mere fact of its growth, divergent directions, each of which willreceive a certain portion of the impetus. (282-283) (Emphasis added)

After a lengthy excursus in which, building on his earlier book,Creative Evolution, Bergson proclaims his two "laws" or evolu-tionary tendencies of "dichotomy" and "double frenzy," he turns tothe case of materialism and asceticism to show how the two laws ap-ply. Today we see the "race for comfort" proceeding at a "faster andfaster" pace until it is now a "stampede." We might be tempted toproject an indefinite progression of this very tendency:

But should not this very frenzy open our eyes? Was there'not some other frenzyto which it has succeeded, and which developed in the opposite direction, an ac-tivity of which the present frenzy is the complement? (287)

To document his law of "frenzy" Bergson cites the "asceticism" ofthe Middle Ages and the modern movement opposed to it for an im-provement of material conditions beginning in the fifteenth century.From this ever-increasing complexity of modern life, we should nowexpect a "return to simplicity." The return is not a certainty; the"future of humanity" remains indeterminate since it is "on humanitythat it depends" (288). Without this apparently irrational oscillationof two tendencies, there would not have been true progress, thepossibility of the "maximum of creation, both in quality and quanti-ty. It is necessary to keep on to the bitter end in one direction, to findout what it will yield; when we can go no further, we turn back, withall we have acquired, to set off in the direction from which we hadturned aside" (286, emphasis added).

Without once mentioning Hegel in the book—indeed in all ofBergson's collected works there is only one fleeting mention of Hegel

HENRI BERGSON 29

(Fr. 1290)—Bergson proceeds here, in his so-called law of double fren-zy to give a replica (or parody?) of the Hegelian dialectic. The vic-torious party, society, or movement does not simply route thedefeated opponent, but preserved and suspended (aufgehoben) in itsvictory, is what was positive in that which was overcome. There is thus"oscillation and progress, progress by oscillation." Nothing is lost orwasted in any one particular "frenzy"; the "asceticism" of the futurewill be at a higher level in quantity and quality, thanks to havingsuperseded and negated the materialism of modernity. Thus, there are"two opposing manifestations of one primordial tendency" which"contrived to evolve from itself, in quantity and quality, everythingthat it was capable of, even more than it had to give, proceeding alongeach of the two roads, one after the other, getting back into one direc-tion with everything that had been picked up by the way of the other."(288, emphasis added) The latter sentence expressed Bergson's viewthat progress occurs "by the law of double frenzy": there is one direc-tion of progress, emanating from a single "primordial tendency" butmaking its way along "each of two roads, one after the other," get-ting back into one direction with everything that had been gained viathe other.

At this point, the reader may be inclined to ask, "what happened toopenness in history?" Bergson's version of the dialectic may be lessiron-like than Hegel's, but it certainly is not a model of spontaneity orreceptivity to the unexpected. Indeed, are openness and historical"laws," however much disguised as "tendencies," compatible? Whatabout the possibility that some parties, principles, movements aredead losses, or monuments to nonsense? How could Nazism have fit-ted into the "law of double frenzy" where each antithesis profits fromthe other? What would the victims of the Holocaust say about suchspeculation?

Especially in our own time, after the appearance of agonizingcriticisms of the "technological society" and its seemingly irreversibletendencies (Jacques Ellul), Bergson seems much too urbane and cheer-ful about the resolution of the modern imbalance in man's spiritualcondition. There is, he informs us blithely, "nothing improbable inthe return to a simpler life. Science itself might show us the way."Physiology and medical science may proceed to uncomplicate thingsat a rate equal to that which physics and chemistry encouraged us to"multiply our needs." (289) Perhaps we shall all become vegetarians,for example, if science shows that we are slowly poisoning ourselvesby eating meat. Similarly, our whole civilization is said to be organ-


ized around the arousal of sexual passion: Toute notre civilisation estaphrodisiaque, he pungently concludes. (Fr. 1232) Whereas "nature"is sparing in what she requires of sex (for procreation), moderncivilization constantly arouses the senses so that at present "humani-ty" takes the "violent, but paltry sensation" of sex as fundamental.Science can have something to say on this subject too: "there will nolonger be pleasure in so much love of pleasure." Woman will come in-to her own instead of being treated as a sexual object to be pampered.In general, with the asceticism, "luxury, pleasures and comfort" willsharply recede in importance. There will be "less waste, and less en-viousness" (291).

Why is Bergson so confident that the present (1930) emphasis onsexuality and creature comforts will be reversed? Because of the "lawof the double frenzy":

We know that one frenzy brings on the counter-frenzy (292).

However, it is not evident from Bergson's discussion what gain therewill have been for the new asceticism by virtue of the extreme develop-ment of libertinism and gluttony. Rather, he emerges here soundingsimply like a fussy Victorian moralist and a Scrooge-like enemy ofsensuality.

Now nearing the end of the volume, Bergson approaches what hecalls the "essential point of our discussion: i.e., whether mechanicalinvention (the technological explosion of the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies) is not irreversible, and whether in that event there will beany end to the satisfaction of old needs and the creation of new ones.Science, after all, cannot stop. The new mysticism-asceticism must benew precisely in this sense: it will not mark a return to the illiteracyand technological poverty of the Middle Ages. How then, can it beascetic at all? How can it be limited?

His answer is that the "spirit of invention" must come to actcreatively on its own instead of in the service of "artificial"—i.e.,surplus—needs (293). The truth is that "man has always inventedmachines" and that mechanical invention is a "natural gift." In fact,antiquity had "remarkable" machines and "many a clever mechanicaldevice was thought of long before the development of modern science,and at a later stage, independently of it: even today a mere workman,without scientific culture, will hit on improvements which have neveroccurred to skilled engineers" (293).

The difference which modern science has made is this:

HENRI BERGSON 31

[The effects of mechanical invention] were limited so long as it was confined toutilizing actual, and as it were visible, forces: muscular effort, wind or water-power. The machine developed its full efficiency only from the day when itbecame possible to place at its service, by a simple process of releasing, thepotential energies stored up for millions of years, borrowed from the sun,deposited in coal, oil, etc. But that was the day the steam-engine was invented.[It is true that]...the progress made...assumed giant proportions as soon asscience took a hand. [Nonetheless]...the spirit of mechanical invention, whichruns between narrow banks so long as it is left to itself, but expands indefinitelyafter its conjunction with science, remains distinct from it, and could, if need be,do without it. (293-294, emphasis added)

Bergson appears to have anticipated the contemporary ecologymovement and "soft energy path" people. He wants again to securethe "independence" of mechanical invention from science, to reducetechnology to a smaller scale, where it ministers to the real or"natural" needs of man instead of plying him with "artificial" needs.To some extend, he reminds one of Herbert Marcuse's attack on con-temporary industrial society, although he probably would reject anyMarxist (so say nothing of Freudian) influence. (Marx is never citedeven once in his collected works!) Perhaps his similarity is closest to"radical" Christian and Jewish communitarian groups.

Bergson on the Impact of Technology and "Mechanization"

Unfortunately, the final few pages of The Two Sources of Moralityand Religion are dominated by what in my review-essay in the 1979Political Science Reviewer on Karl Popper I called the "insidiouswe"—not the editorial "we," not the royal "we," but the monolithic"we." "Humanity becomes conceived as a massive block akin toRousseau's "general will," so that dissent over what is "humanity's""central, organizing thought" becomes the equivalent of immoralityand treason. Bergson, who was the first person to use the term "theopen societey," becomes at the end a proponent of something strange:a cross between Turgot's masse totale and a gnostic divinized"mankind."

Perhaps the most alarming of the many passages invoking"humanity" at the end of the book is the following:

Generally speaking, industry has not troubled [itself] enough about the greateror lesser importance of needs to be satisfied. It simply complied with publictaste, and manufactured with no other thought than that of selling. Here, aselsewhere, we should like to see a central, organizing intelligence, which wouldcoordinate industry and agriculture and allot to the machine its proper place, Imean the place where it can best serve humanity. (295)


In the French text, the words are actually "une pensee centrale,organisatrice" (Fr. 1236)—a central, organizing thought." Thepolitical naivete of the French philosopher here is breath-taking: as ifthere were a single "thought" or "mind" of "humanity" which could"allot to the machine its proper place," where it can "best servehumanity." Who is to say, without question or debate, what istechnology's "proper place" in the world, conceived of as a globalsociety? Also, who is to say, infallibly, what are the "real" as opposedto the "surplus" or "artificial" needs of human beings? Bergsonresponds that the real need obviously is that human beings must eat,but who is to say again infallibly, what, on a world scale, are the bestmeans of fulfilling such an end? Again, Bergson can reply that "thefact is simply that, production in general not being properly organ-ized," there is no mechanism of exchange on a world-wide bases;therefore, there is so-called "overproduction" in one part of theworld and starvation in the other (295, n.). Perhaps, although notnecessarily, if there were a single "organized intelligence" or centralworld government, such a problem could be more easily solved thanunder the conditions of the present state system, but who is to say,given the ubiquity of incompetence and corruption, that so com-plicated a problem both from the technical and economic point ofview can be so simplistically solved as Bergson suggests?

Henri Bergson gives short shrift to cultural criticisms of in-dustrialization, as promoting a standardized, levelled "mass mind."He cites the standard pro-industrialization position, viz., that theassembly line and the factory system actually give the working manmore leisure time in which to be creative, rather than alienating anddegrading him to the status of a "thing." Doubtless, this view couldbe ably defended if it were accompanied by a concern with thehumanizing of the work place, and if it took more seriously the cen-trality of work in many people's lives as a source of meaning. Aristo-tle's distinction between "leisure" and "recreation" needs to berecalled here as another complicating factor. Once again, however,Bergson resorts to a simplistic analysis of a complicated problem (pp.295-296). The Americans, he observes, have been criticized for all"wearing the same hat." "Allow me to furnish the interior of myhead as I please, and I shall put up with a hat like everybody else's,"he remarks wryly. Unfortunately, Bergson has failed to see that theremay well be a relationship between the "hat" and the "head."

Instead of the above considerations, Bergson's indictment of"mechanization" is as follows:

HENRI BERGSON 33

We reproach it with having too strongly encouraged artificial [needs]..., withhaving fostered luxury, with having favored the towns to the detriment of thecountryside, lastly with having widened the gap and revolutionized the relationsbetween employer and employed, between capital and labor. These effects...canall be corrected, and then the machine would be nothing but a great benefactor.But then, humanity must set about simplifying its existence with as much frenzyas it devoted to complicating it. The initiative can come from humanity alone,for it is humanity and not the alleged force of circumstances...which has startedthe spirit of invention along a certain track. (296)

Once more, one sees the astonishing naivete and uncritical thinkingof Bergson as he approaches contemporary practical problems. Farfrom being "open" to a variety of possibilities, with his "law of dou-ble frenzy" he has narrowed the range of options to those which con-

* form to a Communist-style Puritanism. Thus, there can be no frills or"luxuries" in the new "ascetic" civilization, the cities are to be emp-tied, Cambodia-style, the gap in income and prestige betweenemployers and employed collapsed. Then, presumably, Mecca wouldhave been reached: the "bad" effects of industrialism can beeliminated, and "then the machine would be nothing but a greatbenefactor." (Emphasis added) Is any material force or development"nothing but a great benefactor"? Are there no troublesome side ef-fects, even to the prolongation of life by medical science, for example?Finally, one witnesses the invocation of "humanity" as if it were apersonality. Does this mean every living human being will participatein the new ascetic "frenzy" against materialism? Apparently not.Well, then, are those who continue to enjoy "luxury" and theamenities of city life non-human, not a part of "humanity"? All ofthis is rather terrifying in its implications. Bergson, however, ap-parently had not thought through any of them.

Conclusion: "A Machine for the Making of Gods"

It should be recalled that in the chapter on "Dynamic Religion"Bergson had defined mysticism in an "activist" fashion,' to such anextent that he denies to a contemplative mystic such as Plotinus the ti-tle of a "complete" mystic. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that he

8. "In our eyes, the ultimate end of mysticism is the establishment of a contact, con-sequently of a partial coincidence, with the creative effort which life itself manifests.The effort is of God, if it is not God himself. The great mystic is to be conceived as anindividual being, capable of transcending the limitations imposed on the species by itsmaterial nature, thus continuing and extending the divine action." (209)


finds his own variety of mysticism compatible with a new"democratic" civilization. Indeed, modern democracy, whichoriginated in the Renaissance and the Reformation contemporaneous-ly with the modern "spirit of invention" is only superficially anti-Christian, insists Bergson. Rather, it reacted "against the form takenuntil then by the Christian ideal" (i.e., it reacted against medievalasceticism). The Christian ideal itself persisted, only we were now ableto see its "other side." True, complete and active mysticism aspires toreach beyond a chosen few to radiate its love to all men (297). Today,mankind, no longer necessarily threatened by starvation, can "usematter to rise above materialism." Today, the "mystical summons upthe mechanical" (298). The "body" having greatly expanded relativeto the soul, must now, having reached its limit, make way for an ex-pansion of soul. From material energy we must move to moral energy.In fact, today "the body, now larger, calls for a bigger soul," and"mechanism should mean mysticism" (299).

The origins of the process of mechanization are indeed more mystical than wemight imagine. Machinery will find its true vocation again, and it will render ser-vices in proportion to its power, only if mankind which it has bowed still lower tothe earth, can succeed, through it, in standing erect and looking heavenwards.(299)

Today, the "mystery of the supreme obligation" has been resolved.Such an obligation is response to the "appeal" or the "call" of themystic "genius" or "hero" to resume the forward movement of lifeafter its arrest by the human species. If a "hero" or "great privilegedsoul,'"does not appear however—and perhaps it is "just as well not tocount too much" on his advent—then "some other influences mightdivert our attention from the baubles that amuse us, and the vainshadows for which we fight" (301). These "other influences" have todo with "psychic science" (hi science psychique, Fr. 1244), mentaltelepathy and other concerns of what is today called "para-psychology." These new "scientific" discoveries of a reality"beyond" the sensory would be sufficient to "turn into a live, actingreality a belief in the life beyond," so that most men would become"absolutely sure" of survival (of the soul or consciousness) afterphysical death (305-306).

Such results of the new "psychic science" would be sufficient to ef-fect a mass conversion to the new mysticism:

9. Bergson N clear, if not sufficiently emphatic, about the distinction between aspiritual "hero" or mystic and a pseudo-mystic or imperialistic dictator. Truemysticism is "incompatible with imperialism" or Nietzsche's "will to power." (300)

HENRI BERGSON 35

Our [sensual] pleasures would still remain, but drab and jejune...They wouldpale like our electric lamps, before the morning sun. Pleasure would be eclipsedby joy.

Joy indeed will be that simplicity of life diffused throughout the world by anever-spreading mystic intuition; joy, too, that which would automatically followa vision of the life beyond Ed 'au-dela] attained through the furtherance of scien-tific experiment [dans une experience scientifique e'largie—literally, "in anenlarged scientific experience"]. Failing so thoroughgoing a spiritual reform, wemust be content with shifts and submit to more and more numerous and vex-atious regulations, intended to provide a means of circumventing each successiveobstacle that our nature sets up against civilization. (306-Fr. 1245)

In any event, insists Bergson, a crisis is upon us. Humanity cannotcontinue as it is, "crushed beneath the weight of its own [material]progress." It is to mankind that belongs the responsibility of decidingwhether it merely wants to live, or to "make just the extra effort re-quired for fulfilling" even on this "refractory planet the essentialfunction of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods[une machine a faire des dieux]" (306, Fr. 1245).

Thus, Bergson concludes his extraordinary, but flawed, masterpiecein the position of the gnostic savant, who knows the "essential func-tion of the universe," which is to produce, in effect, the godded man.What is new with him is his emphasis on the way this result is to comeabout through machinery. Indeed, the universe itself is allegedly a"machine" for the manufacturing of mystics who will be in touchwith or coincide with God.

Final Remarks:Openness and Closure in Bergson

Bergson's emphasis upon the reality of the non-metric dimension ofexperience and on the creative potentiality of human beings open tothat dimension marked a significant contribution to the theory of theopen society, as did, of course, his use, apparently for the first time,of this very term. However, this contribution wa gravely compromisedby his overemphasis upon the active, as opposed to the contemplative,mode of relating to reality. It is perhaps significant that in anotherwork, Creative Evolution, which preceded the Two Sources by sometwenty years, he had suggested man be defined as Homo faber insteadof Homo sapiens.'° While his activism tended to close off the

10. Henri Bergson, L 'Evolution Creatrice in Oeuvres (Paris, P.U.F., 1970), p. 613.


autonomy of the contemplative, his scientism tended to close off theautonomy of the non-metric or spiritual realm by drawing it into themetric, as it were. As Henri Gouhier declared in his Introduction tothe Centenary Edition of Bergson's Collected Works "in Bergson'seyes, philosophy is a science"; and Bergson himself had declared inthe Two Sources that philosophy, "thanks to its method, can layclaim to an objectivity as great as that of the positive sciences. ' Thuswe have his overly credulous, indeed naive, belief in the scientificstatus of parapsychology, as expressed in the Two Sources, which wasitself but a continuation of his interests in so-called "psychophysics"in his doctoral dissertation (Essai sur Les Donnees Immediates de laConscience) of 1889. 12 In claiming to deny "any place to what wasmerely personal opinion" in his "objective philosophy,"" HenriBergson ignored the fides or pre-intellectual, personal disposition ofthe philosopher who, in Anselm's words, "seeks understanding"(fides quaerens intellectum).

Although at times he came close to conceptualizing the open societyas universal mankind under God—a "society" which extends fromthe first "man" to the last—he often allows his version of the opensociety to debauch into a world-immanent project to be achieved atsome (perhaps imminent) future time. In other words, he did notgrasp clearly enough a distinction which was to be elucidated withsatisfactory philosophical thoroughness only in our time by EricVoegelin: the distinction between globalism or "ecumenicity" and"universality." Ecumenicity is the dream of organizing all human be-ings presently living under one rule: although it claims to be universal,it is not and cannot be, for there is no way to include under such anorganization the countless generations of mankind who preceded suchan organization—and who are "counted" only to the extent that theyare stepping stones to the present—and those in the unknown futurewho may or may not be organized under this single political communi-ty or world state, animated by a fictitious "single will." It is, ofcourse, a grandiose illusion to think that such an organization wouldresist disintegration for all future time.

Henri Bergson was eloquent in his symbolization of the non-metricspiritual dimension of reality; he properly criticized a narrow "in-tellectualist" epistemology and stressed that the apprehension of

11. Quoted in Gouhier's Introduction to Ibid., ix.

12. in Ibid., pp. 47-49.

13.Ibid., ix.

HENRI BERGSON 37

spiritual reality must occur as the result of a passion of the soul il-lumined by the noetic or "rational" properties of man. The ex-perience could not be the result of reason alone. His philosophy con-stitutes a perennially important corrective to a so-called political"realism" which brackets out or ignores the reality of the spiritual do-main. However, Bergson fails sufficiently to stress the force of the"counterpull" (to use Plato's formulation of human existence as afield of forces in tension between openness and closure, life and death,eternity and-time) within the process of reality. The great "spiritualrealism" of Plato or Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, wherein we cansee the intimation of an overcoming of the forces of the counterpull ina way now shrouded in mystery but beyond time and the world, is for-saken by Bergson for activist mysticism. Bergson has made an un-forgettable contribution to the theory of the open society, but histheory is in need of thoroughgoing revision.

Looked at in terms of the four original modes of openness (myth,philosophy, revelation, and mysticism), Bergson may be judged tohave been wide of the mark in describing myth as such a force forclosure instead of as a relatively undifferentiated mode of openness toreality, but a mode of openness nonetheless. He also tended to ignorerelevation altogether, collapsing it into a form of mysticism, so thatwe may say that Bergson's theory of openness and the open societysuffers from an imperialism of activist mysticism.

Despite its many faults, Bergson's analysis of the open society hasthe great merit of having developed out of the author's philosophicalquest for the ground(s) of moral obligation. By contrast, KarlPopper's study, which uses a deformed concept of the open society,was engendered by the author's self-confessed polemical intent ofdiscovering an "enemies list" of thinkers in the past who allegedlyspawned fascist and communist totalitarianism. For Popper, the opensociety was a synonym for a particular, questionable interpretation ofdemocracy. That Popper's unphilosophical treatment of the "opensociety" idea has received wider attention than Bergson's critical andtheoretical treatment is a measure of our time's decadence of the mindand spirit.

University of Virginia DANTE GERMINO

les deux sources de la morale et de

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