Summary: The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (page 5)

II/ Static Religion

We may, following Lévy-Bruhl, observe the facts of religion and examine how various religions are practised in different societies. However, we must also seek their origin, in an attempt to understand how such unreasonable practices could and can be accepted by intelligent beings ¹.

The author of The Two Sources of Morality and Religion argues—against Durkheim and sociology—that collective mentality is not fundamentally different from individual mentality.

A primary source of religious feeling is superstition. Bergson refers to the act that reproduces phantasmatic representations, including those found in poetry, myth, or religion, as the "myth-making function".

An essential need lies at the root of this function. What is it? Facts override all reasoning: We see today the finest reasoning in the world crumble in the face of experience; nothing resists facts ². As a result, intelligence faces a great danger when confined to experience alone. The role of the myth-making function is precisely to lift intelligence beyond the mere experience of facts.

This leads Bergson to expound his famous conception of the élan vital (vital impulse).

The vital phenomenon cannot be reduced to purely physical and chemical processes. The biologist affirms this not as a definitive fact, but as a methodological principle. In reality, science remains far from providing such an explanation. There is something in life that remains irreducible to mechanical physico-chemical processes. This is what Bergson calls: élan vital.

Bergson also seeks to demonstrate the inadequacies of Darwinism. For him, the evolution of species did not occur randomly through small accidental variations preserved by selection and heredity, but rather unfolded in determined directions.

Changes are not acquired but innate, and the source of these innate changes is the élan vital, which he defines as follows:

An internal impulse, passing from germ to germ through individuals, which carries life, in a given direction, towards an ever greater complexity ³.

It can also be characterised as the capacity of living beings to solve the problems posed to them by their environment.

Matter is both an instrument and an obstacle to this impulse. On the one hand, matter divides what it specifies ⁴ and is the cause of the plurality of the great lines of vital evolution.

Life can be defined as a particular effort to extract certain things from brute matter ⁵.

Instinct and intelligence are tools designed for this purpose.

While instinct contributes to the cohesion of societies, intelligence—through its capacity for freedom and initiative—threatens this cohesion. A counterbalance to intelligence is therefore required, and the myth-making function, at the origin of religions, serves this role.

Intelligence encourages selfishness, but nature is watchful ⁶. The myth-making function produces an illusory representation—a protective god of the City, who defends, threatens, and represses ⁷. From this perspective, religion is thus a defensive reaction of nature against the dissolving power of intelligence ⁸.

All religion is moral insofar as, from the outset, it serves as a safeguard against the danger of thinking only of oneself.

Mythology represents a later stage of religion. It intertwines the physical and the moral: the forbidden object is both sacred and dangerous—it is taboo.

From the perspective of the individual, the taboo is irrational. However, from the perspective of society and the species, it is rational, as it proves advantageous to them.

Where does the notion of taboo originate? In The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Bergson argues that the intelligence of primitive peoples does not fundamentally differ from our own; like ours, it tends to convert the dynamic into the static and to solidify actions into things ⁹.

As a result, over time, prohibitions became ingrained in the objects to which they related ¹⁰—hence the notion of the taboo object.

Thus, the first function of religion is identified: social preservation.

¹ chap.2, p.106
² p.112
³ p.117
⁴ p.118
⁵ p.122
⁶ p.126
⁷ ibid.
⁸ p.127
⁹ p.134
¹⁰ ibid.