Summary: The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

I/ Moral Obligation

Our earliest memory is that of obligation, as well as 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.

This society appears as a huge organism whose parts, or organs, are interconnected, subject to a discipline that ensures the proper functioning of the whole.

However, this analogy has its limits: society differs from an organism, for in an organism, relationships are necessary and unchanging, whereas in society, they evolve due to human freedom.

In society, habit plays the same role as necessity in the workings of nature ². The sum of these habits, which reinforce one another, constitutes duty, or 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, for part of the individual's self is the social self. Society has integrated itself into the individual’s self. 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 believe that we can live without a social self. No one can completely isolate themselves from society. In the Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 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 appears to be difficult and to require effort on our part? Because there are rare, exceptional cases in which we must make a difficult choice. These are the ones we remember—since we do not pay attention to what we do automatically.

Habit, more than reason, is therefore a source of morality. We do not act morally because it would be more rational to do so, but because we are accustomed to doing so. 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 man, habit is an imitation of instinct in animals. At the root of moral obligation lies social instinct.

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

But what is this society? It is not the open society that would encompass all of humanity ⁷, imposing duties towards all human beings, but rather a society 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 therefore time 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 following pages of The Two Sources of Morality and Religion.

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.