Summary: The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

I/ Moral Obligation

Our earliest memory is that of obligation, and of prohibition: The memory of forbidden fruit is the oldest in the memory of each of us, just as it is in that of humanity ¹.

We obeyed because they were our parents or our masters—but beyond them, society itself.

Society appears as a vast organism whose parts, or organs, are interconnected and subject to a discipline that ensures the proper functioning of the whole.

This analogy has its limits, however: society differs from an organism in that the relationships within an organism are necessary and unchanging, whereas in society they evolve through human freedom.

In society, habit plays the same role as necessity in the workings of nature ². The sum of these habits, mutually reinforcing, constitutes duty—the moral law.

A common mistake is to conflate the moral law with a natural law.

Duty originates in society but is not imposed on the individual from without, since part of the individual's self is the social self. Society has integrated itself into the individual. This social self stands in opposition to the intimate or deep self, which represents what is unique, singular, and inexpressible in the individual—and which may be another source of morality, one that Bergson will examine later.

For now, Bergson focuses on the social self, one of the two sources of moral obligation: Cultivating this social self is the essence of our duty to society ³.

It would be wrong to suppose that we can live without a social self. No one can completely cut themselves off from society. Bergson takes the example of Robinson Crusoe, who remains in contact with society through the objects he salvages from the shipwreck and because he draws strength from the society to which he remains ideally attached ⁴.

We most often perform our duty not by conscious and voluntary choice but by allowing ourselves to be carried along by habit:

We make no effort. A path has been laid out for us by society; we find it open before us and follow it. Duty, understood in this way, is almost always fulfilled automatically ⁵.

How is it, then, that acting out of duty can seem difficult and to require effort? Because there are rare, exceptional cases in which we must make a hard choice—and these are the ones we remember, since we pay no attention to what we do automatically.

Habit, more than reason, is therefore a source of morality. We act morally not because it would be more rational to do so, but because we are accustomed to it. Reason does not compel: One might as well believe that it is the steering wheel that makes the machine move ⁶.

Reason only ensures the logical coherence of obligations.

For human beings, habit is an imitation of instinct in animals. At the root of moral obligation lies social instinct.

Bergson is about to show the limits of this first source of morality—society—which implies that a second source must necessarily be conceived.

But what kind of society is this? Not the open society that would encompass all of humanity ⁷, imposing duties towards all human beings, but one concerned with maintaining cohesion in the face of an enemy ⁸.

It is a closed society: the nation. Yet between the nation, however vast it may be, and humanity, there is the entire distance from the finite to the indefinite, from the closed to the open ⁹.

Love for the nation is a primitive instinct, whereas love for humanity is acquired with difficulty—and rarely.

It is time, then, to examine this second form of morality—the absolute, or complete morality, which stands in opposition to social morality—and to determine its origin. This is what Bergson does in the pages that follow.

¹ Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion, PUF, Quadrige, Paris, 2000 chap.1, p.1
² p.2
³ p.8
⁴ p.9
⁵ p.13
⁶ p.17
⁷ ibid., p.25
⁸ p.27
⁹ ibid.